Five months after Meghan Markle’s Netflix show With Love, Meghan first premiered, she’s back with another suite of eight episodes, in which she feels less like one of the most famous women in the world and more like a skilled talk show host. Though the food certainly looks good, the show seems to understand that the duchess’s activities—frying potato chips or pouring soap into silicon molds—work best as a display of her ability to keep a smile on as she’s doing something incredibly complex.
Earlier this year, Meghan’s critics complained that the show’s pace was slow and she didn’t exactly come across as a Martha Stewart–level talent in the kitchen. Now, her As Ever brand has gone through multiple drops, giving her a bit of credibility in the lifestyle space. In With Love, Meghan, she is most successful when she is putting the attention on others, on a field trip to watch olive oil production, or learning about seafood from a fishmonger.
In season two, the weather changes from Santa Barbara summer (an average daily temperature of 76 degrees) to winter (a still balmy 70 degrees), but the structure of each episode remains the same—a few crafts, a few unusually fancy gifts, a simple yet effective meal, and effusive praise. The alterations are simple but effective, with more attention paid to conversation and eye contact. Season one’s running theme was Meghan’s emphasis that viewers can recreate the crafts and cookery at home, but for season two, that refrain is mercifully dropped, though the activities are still fairly simple. She emphasizes that she is trying many of these recipes and crafts for the first time, supplying enthusiasm rather than expertise.
When Meghan married Prince Harry in 2018, her newfound mega-celebrity status gave her a paradoxical mystique. The media was tracking her every move, even when she wasn’t going anywhere. Her name was everywhere, and her stated desire for a more private life only seemed to heighten the public interest. After a spring publicity blitz and many, many hours of content, she has finally managed to puncture the myth that thrived when she wasn’t able to speak for herself, and it makes every word she says feel less risky. Back in January, her return to Instagram got minute-by-minute coverage, but now her posts feel less like an event and more like the average musings of a mother, business owner, and philanthropist. With Love, Meghan season two leans into that delightful mundanity.
The guest list includes fewer displays of her real-life friendships, though makeup artist Daniel Martin is a notable returning cohost. Other episodes also feature pilates instructor and longtime friend Heather Dorak, her charity collaborator José Andrés, and chef Clare Smyth, who catered her wedding reception in 2018. Instead, we see more Netflix talent, including David Chang, Christina Tosi, Tan France, Samin Nosrat, and personalities like model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen and podcaster Jay Shetty and his wife, cookbook author Radhi Devlukia.
This time around, the show is more explicit about the duchess’s thought process for welcoming guests she has never met. She starts with a dossier of their qualities and develops a series of gifts and activities with them in mind. Tosi, the founder of dessert mecca Milk Bar, is known for always wearing a scarf in her hair, so Meghan uses a marbling technique to tie-dye scarves and pocket squares for everyone to take home. France has two young sons and a love of spices, so she spends the episode finding and wrapping gifts for his family, including a vintage spice cellar for him to take home. Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, is known for including references to her Iranian heritage in her flavor palette, so Meghan makes lavashak, an Iranian fruit leather that can be made from pomegranate and apples. “No one’s ever made this for me, other than my grandmother,” the chef says. “This is perfect—I can’t stop eating it.”
Because she has history with a few of the guests, she does supply a few dishier moments than ever before. Her husband’s quirks come up a few different times; with Andrés we learn that Harry isn’t a fan of lobster and that he said “I love you” first. Teigen and Meghan discuss the time they both spent as models at the game show Deal or No Deal, and the way they would all stand in a row for the application of fake eyelashes. Smyth reveals that she catered a private surprise dinner in an old chapel for the couple’s first anniversary back in 2019.
