‘With Love, Meghan’ Misses Netflix Top 10

Topline

The second season of Meghan Markle’s critically panned lifestyle show “With Love, Meghan” had at least 500,000 fewer viewers in its first week on Netflix than its first season earned in the same time, and didn’t make it into the streamer’s most-watched shows in its debut week.

Meghan Markle in “With Love, Meghan” Season 2.

Netflix

Key Facts

Eight new episodes of “With Love, Meghan” dropped on Netflix on Aug. 26 and had six days to rack up viewers before the streamer released its most-popular list for the week.

But the show didn’t make the Top 10 list for Aug. 25 to Aug. 31, according to viewing data which became available Tuesday, despite the No. 10-ranked show (“Untamed”) earning just 2.1 million views.

Netflix doesn’t release weekly viewing data for shows outside of its Top 10, but for “With Love, Meghan” to have missed the list it had to have been watched by a half-million fewer viewers than its first season in its first week (2.6 million back in March of 2024).

The drop in popularity came amid a barrage of negative reviews around its release—the Times of London’s critic said it “occupies the sweet spot where irrelevant meets intolerable”—and after Netflix made significant changes to its production deal with Markle and her husband, Prince Harry.

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What We Don’t Know

If “With Love, Meghan” will get a third season. But the relatively low viewership numbers may not be a death knell for the show considering it’s used, in part, to promote products from Markle’s lifestyle brand As Ever, which Netflix is heavily invested in. Markle launched As Ever with the streamer last year and uses the brand to sell products like tea, wine and baking mixes, some of which are made through Netflix’s consumer product group. Netflix also shares in the brand’s revenue. As Ever restocked many of its previously sold-out items ahead of the season two premiere and dropped a new product, an orange marmalade, on the day the episodes dropped. Netflix said “Meghan suggests using” the marmalade as a spread, in yogurt, in ice cream or as a glaze for chicken or salmon.

Key Background

“With Love, Meghan” is one of five shows or films to come out of a $100 million, five-year deal between Netflix and Archewell Productions, Harry and Meghan’s company, that expired earlier this summer. The show’s log line describes the series as Markle inviting “friends and famous guests to a beautiful California estate, where she shares cooking, gardening and hosting tips.” As she cooks with her famous guests—which included Chrissy Teigen, Tan France and David Chang in the second season—Markle occasionally offers revelations about her life as a royal and her relationship with Harry. The show has a 27% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and, ahead of season two, reviews for the series ranged from “baffling” to “intolerable.” Times critic Hilary Rose said it was, “like an advert for somewhere we’ll never go and aren’t invited, an ego trip in a sun hat” and The Telegraph’s Anita Singh branded Markle a “Montecito Marie Antoinette.”

Tangent

After rumors Meghan and Harry’s Netflix deal wouldn’t be renewed, the streamer did sign a new, but much different, deal with Archewell Productions. The new arrangement is a multi-year, first-look deal that will give the streamer the right of first refusal for all Archewell film and television projects. The first massive deal saw Netflix pay Harry and Meghan for the exclusive rights to all Archewell content. No dollar amount was attached to the new deal, but the New York Times reported it is worth less than the first. The new agreement includes a film adaptation of bestselling novel “Meet Me at the Lake” and a documentary short about an orphanage in Uganda, famous for its viral videos, called “Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within.”