Meghan Markle‘s once favoured magazine The Cut turned against her last year with an article saying her projects ‘keep flopping’ – and now, its sister publication has taken another swipe at the Duchess.
The left-leaning site famously published a cover interview with the mother-of-two, 43, in August 2022 in which she made controversial comments about the royal family.
But in a new scathing takedown, The Intelligencer – which like The Cut, is another offshoot of New York Magazine – has poked fun at her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, and her lifestyle brand, As Ever, ahead of its official product launch.
The new article mocked Meghan’s ‘big idea’ of ‘rinsing and reusing jam jars’ and ‘selling factory-made food to plebs’.
Writing in The Intelligencer, its senior editor, Margaret Hartmann also ridiculed how the Duchess ‘poured things from one container into a prettier container and passive-aggressively informed Mindy Kaling that her last name is now Sussex’ in her series.
The Netflix show, which was released on 4 March, amassed a lowly rating of 3.1 overall, with reviews from across the media political spectrum slamming what The Guardian described as ‘toe-curlingly unlovable’.
Meanwhile, the New York Magazine’s outlet said it was ‘not entirely clear’ what Meghan was selling as part of her lifestyle brand – but pointed towards her website, where the Duchess posts updates for As Ever – though is yet to include prices or product descriptions.
The publication also mocked the ‘tips’ section of Meghan’s site, where she advises customers to repurpose ‘keepsake packaging’ by rinsing glass jars and using them to store ‘love notes or special treasures’.
The article continued: ‘And a video posted to Instagram last week revealed that us plebs will receive factory-produced jam, not the handmade stuff that Meghan sent to several dozen celebrity friends.’
Additionally, she said the most ‘remarkable’ thing about the notorious raspberry spread was it’s packaging, which presented it as ‘fancy perfume’.
The piece reflected on Meghan’s latest Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, which saw the Duchess sharing her favourite recipes, domestic tips and hosting glamorous dinner parties from her sunshine-soaked home in Montecito.
Reviews for the eight-part Netflix series were largely scathing, with Vulture describing how it has pioneered ‘new frontiers in unreliability’.
Both The Telegraph and The Independent branded the series ‘exhausting’, with the latter giving only one star to what ‘feels like a millennial blog come to life’.
Even usually pro-Sussexes publications like the Guardian awarded the series just one star, calling it a ‘tone-deaf lifestyle show’ that ‘vibrates with vacuous joylessness’.
Once a pro-Sussex publication, The Cut famously published a cover interview with Meghan in August 2022 in which she made controversial comments about the royal family.
But in December, the left-leaning publication appeared to follow in the footsteps of other US outlets who turned on the couple following their bombshell Netflix series and the prince’s biography, Spare.
Writing for the publication, pop culture and entertainment writer Danielle Cohen admitted that she hadn’t watched their latest series at the time, Polo, but said it formed part of the couple’s ‘tortured attempts to launch a successful Stateside endeavour’.
Continuing, she wrote: ‘It’s called Polo, and while you might think a sport involving horses, fancy hats, and fan-cammable athletes would do well with viewers, Polo is already getting horrific reviews.
‘Seems like this one is bound for the same fate as Markle’s beleaguered jam company.’
Cohen, who wrote the piece, has also penned several pieces about the Trump campaign – including how Barron Trump is a ‘ladies man’ and what the student’s voice sounds like.
Her other pieces include a piece attacking Taylor Swift for spending the day before the US election supporting her boyfriend Travis Kelce ‘with her Trump-y friends’ and who celebrities are dating.
The three-paragraph review was very brief – especially when compared with Meghan’s lengthy 2022 cover feature.
The initial piece was titled ‘Meghan Markle on Her New Life in California’ and published on August 29, 2022.
It sent shockwaves through the royal family, as Meghan said she and Prince Harry were ‘happy’ to leave Britain and were ‘upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy… just by existing’ before they quit as senior royals.
She claimed that what the couple asked for when they wanted financial freedom was not ‘reinventing the wheel’.
The article also heard from Harry who suggested some members of the Royal Family ‘aren’t able to work and live together’, while Meghan revealed that her husband told her that he had ‘lost’ his father King Charles.
Meghan made a series of other apparent swipes at her British family, claiming they had been treated differently to other senior royals, and warned she could ‘say anything’ in an interview promoting her Spotify podcast.
The interview sparked incredulous backlash from readers in the US, with critics slamming the piece as ‘vanity PR’ and branding Meghan ‘shameless’.
Meghan later admitted she was ‘too trusting’ and ‘too open’ in her interview with The Cut, saying it was only ever meant to focus on her podcast, Archetypes, and her and Harry’s other projects.
In a second interview two months later with Variety, Meghan was questioned about the backlash over her piece in The Cut.
When Variety writer Matt Donnelly noted that some people had ‘found [the interview] to be snarky,’ the Duchess of Sussex appeared to take aim at The Cut – and interviewer Allison P. Davis – claiming that she had been too ‘trusting’ and ‘open’ during the chat, adding that the interview was only ever meant to focus on her podcast, Archetypes, and her and Harry’s other projects.
‘The [New York] story was intended to support “Archetypes” and focus on our projects,’ she said, before adding: ‘I’ve had some time to reflect on it. Part of me is just really trusting, really open — that’s how I move in the world.’
When contacted by DailyMail.com at the time, a spokesperson for The Cut declined to comment.
The Duchess of Sussex insisted that she doesn’t want to lose the ‘trusting’ part of herself, adding that she can ‘survive’ the controversy.
‘I have to remember that I don’t ever want to become so jaded that that piece of me goes away. So despite any of those things? Onward. I can survive it,’ she said.
The Cut also previously received backlash when it published an extraordinary assault on King Charles III – calling him a ‘big, fussy baby and a jerk’ when he walked behind his mother’s coffin at her funeral.
The magazine published the article titled: ‘King Charles’s Reign of Fussiness Has Begun’ at around the time the mourning monarch, his siblings and his children accompanied the late Queen’s coffin on her final journey to Westminster Hall to lie in state.
