Meghan Markle opened 2025 with a bright, upbeat Instagram return and hints that big projects were on the way. She’s ending the year in a very different spotlight: facing a pile of harsh critiques of her Netflix series and a wave of online parody.
Over the past 12 months, the Duchess of Sussex leaned hard into a lifestyle-influencer reinvention, rolling out a TV show, With Love, Meghan, a business-focused podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, and a commerce brand, As Ever. But while she’s made progress smoothing out early issues with her store, she closes the year with plenty still to prove—especially on the entertainment front.
Meghan Markle Returns to Instagram
The shift began January 1, when Meghan reappeared on Instagram with a beach video and traced “2025” into the sand. As the year unfolded, she used the platform to announce a rebrand of her lifestyle venture from American Riviera Orchard to As Ever, describing the new name and what it represents for her:
“In two weeks, my series on @netflix launches—but there’s something else I’ve been working on. I’m thrilled to introduce you to As Ever—a brand that I created and have poured my heart into.
“‘As ever’ means ‘as it’s always been’ or some even say ‘in the same way as always’. If you’ve followed along since my days of creating The Tig, you’ll know this couldn’t be truer for me. This new chapter is an extension of what has always been my love language, beautifully weaving together everything I cherish—food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy in the everyday.”
She also generated headlines with a separate video showing her heavily pregnant in a hospital room, attempting to induce labor by doing the “Baby Momma” dance popularized by Starrkeisha.
Meghan the Lifestyle Influencer
In March, Season One of her Netflix cooking series, With Love, Meghan, arrived. The show featured scenes of Meghan making a one-pot pasta with chard and tomatoes, and mixing bath salts to gift to a guest.
The critical response was unforgiving. While rough treatment from parts of the British press was expected, the bigger story became the reaction from U.S. outlets that had often been more sympathetic.
Vulture’s critic, Kathryn VanArendonk, delivered one of the sharpest assessments:
“With Love, Meghan is an utterly deranged bizarro world voyage into the center of nothing,” she wrote, “a fantastical monument to the captivating power of watching one woman decorate a cake with her makeup artist while communicating solely through throw-pillow adages about joy and hospitality.
“It is painfully defensive. Meghan comes across as constantly worried about what people will think, and because of it, the show can neither flaunt her unusual life, nor can it embrace legitimate ordinariness.”
Online, another wave hit: TikTok parodies that leaned into the idea that Meghan seemed out of her depth. One of the most widely mocked moments involved her taking Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels out of their original packaging and transferring them into a clear bag labeled with a guest’s name.
The show also drew confusion over a scene where actress Mindy Kaling referred to her as Meghan Markle, only for Meghan to respond, “you know I’m Sussex now.”
With Love, Meghan currently holds a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 23 percent after releasing two seasons and a Christmas special, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration.
Season Two and the holiday special attracted fewer U.S. reviews than the first season, but the Washington Post weighed in on the special with a pointed headline: “This can’t be the future Meghan Markle envisioned: What in the name of Wallis Simpson is going on with the repatriated royal’s new Netflix special?”
Columnist Monica Hesse wrote:
“The people who walk into Meghan’s cottage are supposedly her friends,” she wrote, “but many behave as though they’ve just had a burlap sack pulled off their heads and learned: Bad news, the kidnapping wasn’t a dream; good news, if you just make some lavender syrup with this woman, she’ll let you go.”
Hesse argued that Meghan may not have had many post-royal options that felt entirely natural, adding that the concept could make sense—yet the execution still grated:
“With Love, Meghan is probably a pretty good fit, but no matter how genuinely Meghan tries to come across on screen, I felt irritable toward her.
“Either her advice felt so basic as to be condescending (Yes, Meghan, even we peasants understand to hang ornaments so they catch the light), or so elevated as to be out of touch (Babe, I work full time and clean my own toilet; I don’t have time to make my family members personalized Advent calendars), and always delivered with a level of chipper that nobody with children younger than 8 should be able to relate to.”
The year also included news that Meghan and Prince Harry signed a new “first look deal” with Netflix, extending their relationship with the streamer, though reportedly on less favorable terms.
Meghan’s As Ever Shop
As Ever launched as the retail arm of Meghan’s lifestyle push, selling items like jam, edible flower sprinkles, and cookie mix. Early on, the rollout was complicated by limited inventory.
The first drop sold out within minutes. A restock took months—and also disappeared within minutes.
Later, Meghan added an As Ever wine, which also sold out. But by August, the brand had reportedly addressed initial supply-side issues, and in the final stretch of the year some products have remained available more consistently.
A source with knowledge of the business told Newsweek in November: “Everybody’s really pleased that some of the gremlins that were there at the start—that are inevitable with any new business—seem to have been ironed out now… as it related to things like supply chain, production, scalability, that sort of thing.
“It all seems to be in a pretty good place but it’s still a young business. There’s still and always will be room for improvement, but it’s going really, really well. It’s starting to find its stride now.”
