With Love, Meghan Season 2 Review: The Labor of Leisure

The second season of With Love, Meghan arrives, presenting itself as an invitation. We are welcomed into a sun-bleached Montecito farmhouse, a space that exists somewhere between a real home and a television set. Here, the Duchess of Sussex plays host to a parade of notable figures, guiding them through a gentle itinerary of cooking, gardening, and crafting.

The air is thick with the promise of authenticity. Every surface gleams, every fruit platter is a cornucopia, and every project is undertaken with a serene, instructional calm. This is lifestyle as high art, a meticulously constructed reality where conflict is absent and every flower knows its place in the arrangement. The program continues the format of its predecessor, offering a series of episodes that function as vignettes of a perfect life.

It is a beautiful world to observe, though one begins to suspect the beauty is a type of armor. The camera lingers on handmade details, asking us to admire the craft while ignoring the immense architecture of the performance itself. The effect is hypnotic and strangely disquieting, like watching a flawless dollhouse come to life.

Portrait of a Hostess on a Soundstage

Meghan’s role is not simply that of a host; she is the curator of this entire experience, the architect of a meticulously crafted world. Her performance is one of absolute capability, a televisual treatise on modern domestic perfection. She is a polymath of the home arts, equally adept at arranging flowers without symmetry (a stated, almost philosophical preference) and executing recipes that require both intuition and precision.

This is not the fumbling, relatable chaos of a home cook. It is a demonstration. The schedule of events in each episode runs with the quiet, unyielding precision of a military operation, a stark contrast to the breezy, sun-drenched atmosphere the show labors to project. This creates the central paradox of the series: it is a work obsessed with appearing effortless.

The effort, however, is visible in every frame. It is in the frequent, seamless outfit changes that occur with a logic untethered to the actual passage of time or activity. It is in the way every kitchen utensil is perfectly clean and artfully placed. The entire production is a fascinating study in what might be called performative domesticity, a phenomenon that has migrated from social media feeds to high-budget streaming platforms.

The private sphere is repurposed as a public stage, and everyday life becomes a script. She projects an image of effortless grace, but the result is so polished it feels hermetically sealed. When she provides personalized gifts and drinks for her guests, aiming to make them feel “loved and nurtured,” the gesture feels both thoughtful and calculated, an item to be checked off a hostess’s master list.

We are watching the labor of appearing leisurely, a concept that defines so much of contemporary celebrity. This isn’t her home, but a rental, a soundstage dressed as a sanctuary. This fact deepens the sense of artifice, making the entire enterprise a performance of a life, rather than life itself.

Friends, Acquaintances, and Human Props

The series lives or dies by its guests, who serve as a barometer for the show’s strained authenticity. They are the unpredictable variables in a highly controlled experiment, and their reactions reveal the cracks in the facade. The quality of each episode hinges entirely on their ability, or inability, to play along. Some encounters achieve a warmth that feels genuine, moments where the script seems to fall away.

Food personalities like Samin Nosrat, David Chang, and José Andrés appear unburdened by the production’s artifice. They bring their own authority to the kitchen, a confidence born of tangible skill. They engage with Meghan as peers, not supplicants, and in doing so, they disrupt the program’s default power dynamic. Their shared passion for food creates a common ground that feels believable, and for a few minutes, we are simply watching people cook together. They seem to have missed the memo about being awestruck.

Then there are the more curious encounters, which are far more revealing. The episode with Chrissy Teigen is a masterclass in strained cordiality, a slow-motion study of two people performing a friendship. Their shared history as “briefcase girls” on a game show is invoked as a founding myth for their connection, a bizarre origin story that only highlights the strange machinations of modern fame.

The episode’s most telling moment, a piece of accidental documentary, comes when Teigen cannot recall her children’s birth dates from the tattoos on her arm. She must shout to her husband, John Legend, for help. We learn he has been banished to another room for the duration of the visit, a surreal detail that punctures the illusion of a casual double date.

It is a human moment in an inhumanly perfect space. Other guests occupy a middle ground. Fashion expert Tan France, a self-declared “new friend” whom Meghan has never met, manages to cut through the polish with moments of actual humor. His candid reactions and gentle teasing elicit from Meghan a rare admission of enjoying UK’s Magic FM radio, a detail so mundane it feels shockingly authentic. These flashes of normalcy are fleeting, serving only to highlight the managed nature of everything else.

The Phantom of the Pantry

Prince Harry is the ghost at this televisual feast, the organizing absence around which the show orbits. He is mentioned constantly, a verbal ghost summoned to bless the proceedings with a touch of authentic family life. He is the invisible anchor to the very existence that theoretically underpins the show, yet he is never seen.

This absence is so complete, so total, that it becomes a character in itself. He is the phantom of the pantry, the unheard voice from another room, a constant reference point that makes his physical non-existence all the more profound. It is a deeply strange choice for a series predicated on offering a glimpse into a private world.

The show compensates for this void by dropping carefully measured crumbs of personal information. These are not revelations; they are narrative pellets, dispensed at strategic intervals to create a feeling of intimacy with the audience. We learn Harry dislikes cinnamon. We hear that he initiated the first “I love you.” We are told their children pronounce “zebra” with an American accent, a detail freighted with unspoken meaning about their transatlantic identity.

Each factoid is a carefully curated piece of data, designed to humanize a public figure without ceding any actual vulnerability. It is a performance of intimacy, a transaction that mimics closeness. One must question this transaction.

Is this genuine sharing, or is it a form of currency used to purchase viewer loyalty? The practice feeds directly into the culture of parasocial relationships, where audiences are encouraged to feel a deep, personal connection to figures they will never know. The show is a factory for producing these little pellets of information, each one a substitute for the genuine connection it withholds.

The Labor of Leisure

The series is built upon a foundation of relentless activity. It is a whirlwind of cooking, baking, gift wrapping, flower pressing, and, in one truly memorable segment, bookbinding. The activities are presented as joyful, almost spiritual, expressions of a creative life. The actual viewing experience can be quite different. Watching someone bind a book is, it turns out, a lot like watching glue dry.

The project becomes a perfect metaphor for the show itself: a slow, tedious, and meticulous process of constructing something that is meant only to be admired from the outside. These are not spontaneous hobbies; they are mandatory assignments for the guests, a way to fill screen time with aesthetically pleasing content that neatly avoids any real conversation or potential for conflict.

The relentless crafting schedule becomes a symbol of the show’s underlying emptiness. This is a world where people are always making things (rosewater, sourdough, “shower soothers,” pressed flowers) but never seem to be simply being. It reflects a broader cultural anxiety, a need to frame all leisure time as productive and photogenic.

The show’s primary purpose becomes clear. It is an exercise in brand curation, a long-form advertisement for a lifestyle so aspirational it detaches completely from reality. With Love, Meghan is not truly a cooking show, a craft tutorial, or a celebrity chat show. It is an elaborate, sometimes beautiful, and frequently tedious branding exercise that has mistaken itself for a television series. The final product is a document of leisure that feels, more than anything else, like hard work.

With Love, Meghan is a Netflix lifestyle series hosted and executive-produced by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. The second season, which became available on Netflix on August 26, 2025, was filmed in Montecito, California, and features a variety of guest chefs and friends. It is available exclusively on Netflix and complements the Duchess’s lifestyle brand, As Ever.

Full Credits

Director: Michael Steed

Writers: Meghan Markle (concept), Leah Hariton

Producers and Executive Producers: Meghan Markle, Chanel Pysnik, Aaron Saidman, Eli Holzman, Leah Hariton

Cast: Meghan Markle, Chrissy Teigen, Tan France, Jay Shetty, José Andrés, Samin Nosrat, Daniel Martin, Christina Tosi, Clare Smyth, Mindy Kaling, Alice Waters, Roy Choi, Delfina Blaquier, Abigail Spencer, Kelly Zajfen, Vicky Tsai, Heather Dorak, Jamie Kern Lima, Radhi Devlukia

Editors: David Isser, Michael Chaskes, Kevin Hibbard, Martin Biehn, Gasper Chiaramonte, Jeff Marcello, Alex Wall