In the wide world of royal aficionados, this question has taken up more rent space in heads around the globe then maybe we care to admit: what will the reinvention of Meghan Markle entail? Any royal fan could surmise, after she hired powerhouse talent agency William Morris Endeavor last April, that a change (or two, or 10) was on the horizon. But what, exactly? Would she return to acting? Write a memoir? Run for political office? All have been tossed into the ring as possibilities, but it’s becoming more and more likely that we were wrong about them all, and that another path could be the one the Duchess of Sussex chooses to walk down.
Page Six reports that Meghan is looking to take the final year of her multi-million-dollar Netflix contract—which was inked in 2020, and which she shares with husband Prince Harry—and use it to become a lifestyle guru, a la Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Joanna Gaines.
Harry and Meghan’s Netflix deal runs until the end of 2025, and the couple have already produced the bombshell six-part docuseries Harry & Meghan and Harry’s Heart of Invictus documentary. They’re also currently producing a film adaptation of Carley Fortune’s hit novel, Meet Me at the Lake, and Harry is in talks to travel to Africa for another documentary. For Meghan’s part, Hollywood insiders expect Meghan’s next Netflix project to be in the same realm as her former lifestyle blog, “The Tig,” which she shuttered before she married Harry in 2018.
“From what I understand, I think Meghan will take on Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ina Garten and play them at their own game,” an industry source told Page Six.
The outlet reports that she’s getting advice from friends like Clare Waight Keller, the former artistic director of Givenchy and the designer of Meghan’s wedding dress. Meghan and Waight Keller grabbed lunch Thursday “at Beverly Hills power spot Ciccone,” Page Six reports; Meghan is also reported to be getting tips from Victoria Jackson, a makeup entrepreneur and QVC star who appeared as a guest on Meghan’s podcast “Archetypes.”
The breadcrumbs are being laid for a return to the lifestyle space for Meghan: earlier this month, she visited the Southern California Welcome Project for “an evening of cooking and storytelling.” In 2018, while still a working member of the royal family, she penned a cookbook to raise funds for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in London. Page Six reports that the publishers of that cookbook “also pitched a cooking series—along the lines of the power of food bringing communities together” to Meghan. (All of this sounds incredibly up her alley.)
“This would not surprise me,” they said of Meghan wanting her own piece of the lifestyle pie. “She would have to be relatable and natural, the way Drew Barrymore is. It can’t feel contrived or like she’s acting.”
The move back into lifestyle would require her to do exactly what she did on “The Tig”—let fans into her personal life. “The reason Martha, Joanna, and Gwyneth have crushed it is because they’ve let viewers into their most private spaces and shared their biggest secrets,” said Rachel Robinson, a former Snapchat executive and writer for the “Highly Flammable” newsletter on Substack. “Authenticity is key in the lifestyle arena and those that succeed tend to be willing to share their whole lives. Think about it—what do we not know about Gwyneth Paltrow?”
Richardson added “In Harry & Meghan and the Oprah interview, Meghan let cameras capture some aspects of her private life. But to pull off a successful lifestyle show, she’ll have to be prepared to swing the door all the way open.”
Meghan herself teased multiple projects coming up, telling reporters on the red carpet at the Variety “Power of Women” event in November “We have so many exciting things on the slate. I can’t wait until we can announce them, but I’m just really proud of what we’re creating.” Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria also said earlier this month of Harry and Meghan that “They have a couple of unscripted things they’re working on…[and] they have a movie in development, a [scripted] series that they’re working on.”
It's certainly not a challenge to imagine Meghan in the lifestyle space; she found success with “The Tig” long before she ever met Harry, and home décor and cooking and travel have long been passions of hers. “Becoming a lifestyle guru offers endless opportunities to make serious money via brand deals,” Richardson said. “It’s not difficult to imagine the clamor for Duchess of Sussex-branded cookware, furniture, loungewear, yoga mats.”
In an interview to promote his book Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, Sussex biographer Omid Scobie said that stepping into the lifestyle space is very much a possibility: “I’m not being deliberately mysterious,” Scobie told The Independent about the somewhat vague passage in Endgame where he references Meghan’s return to lifestyle content. (In the book, Scobie wrote Meghan is currently focused on building “something more accessible, something rooted in her love of details, curating, hosting, life’s simple pleasures, and family.”) “My mind always goes to [Paltrow’s] Goop, but when I suggested that to someone with some knowledge, they said, ‘Oh, no, this isn’t going to be about selling products.’ So, who knows? The next Martha Stewart?”
By the way, Page Six reports that, when the deal between Netflix and the Sussexes ends at the end of 2025, neither side will likely want to renew the deal. “Look, both Meghan and Harry and Netflix got exactly what they wanted,” a Netflix source told Page Six. “It was a good deal for both of them, if you look at the success of the Harry & Meghan documentary. But where else does it go?”
