Serena Williams "Botched" the As Ever Unboxing. The Internet Has Entered the Chat
Serena Williams "Botched" the As Ever Unboxing.
And Honestly? It's the Most Accurate Brand Review Meghan Has Ever Received.
Smashed chocolates. A woman who openly doesn't like chocolate eating the chocolates. Candle scents she absolutely cannot pronounce. £42 of Compartes reduced to rubble. The As Ever Mother's Day PR moment, as delivered by Serena Williams, unfiltered and in real time.
A Lifestyle Brand. A Best Friend. A Box of Luxury Chocolates. What Could Possibly Go Wrong.
Picture the scene. Meghan Markle, founder of As Ever — the lifestyle brand formerly known as American Riviera Orchard, formerly known as a dream, currently known as the subject of more unintentional comedy than anything on Netflix — has just launched her Mother's Day collection. There are candles. There are chocolates. There is a curated powder-blue box with blue flower details and, we can only assume, the kind of tissue paper that takes three minutes to undo and costs more per sheet than a decent lunch.
Meghan sends this carefully constructed love offering to her best friend of sixteen years. Serena Williams. 23 Grand Slam titles. 18 million Instagram followers. A woman who has never, in her entire public life, been anything other than exactly, chaotically, gloriously herself.
This was either an act of extraordinary trust or an extraordinary miscalculation. The jury, as of Instagram Stories, has its verdict.
"I've botched it. She's like so classy, and I'm like — look at this. This is nuts. Anyway, the chocolate was beautiful, and it was delicious. I don't like chocolate, but I've been killing them."
— Serena Williams, Instagram Stories, April 2026, gesturing at the remains of £42 of artisan chocolatesA Forensic Breakdown of What Actually Happened — With Full Notes
Let us go through this moment by moment, because every single beat of this video deserves its own paragraph.
Beat one: "I just got this in the mail from my friend Meghan." Normal. Great. This is fine. We're doing a heartwarming celebrity friendship moment. Meghan's team is somewhere nodding encouragingly.
Beat two: She opens the box. Inside is the Mother's Day As Ever collection — candles inspired by Archie and Lilibet's birthdays, and a £42 box of Compartes chocolates. These chocolates are, in their intended state, gourmet artisan confections arranged carefully in a presentation box. They are the kind of chocolates you photograph before you breathe near them.
Beat three: The chocolates. Reader, the chocolates were not in their intended state. They were displaced. Liberated. At complete peace with chaos. Several had made a break for it. Some had already been eaten. Serena, with the rapid situational assessment of a woman who has spent her life reading a tennis court in milliseconds, clocked the vibe immediately: "I've botched it."
Beat four: "She's so classy, and I'm just like — look at this." Nine words. Nine words that contain, in their entirety, every tension in the As Ever brand. The aspiration. The gap between aspiration and reality. The fact that the gap is now being broadcast to 18 million people. Nine words.
Beat five: "I don't like chocolate." Said while visibly having eaten the chocolates. Said with the energy of someone who has absolutely no idea why this sentence is funny in this specific context. Said, and we cannot stress this enough, immediately before saying the chocolates were beautiful, delicious, and that she had been "killing them."
Beat six: The candles. Signature Candle No. 506. Signature Candle No. 604. The scent notes — neroli, santal, things you would find on a spa menu in Malibu — gave Serena what can only be described as a moment. She squinted. She attempted. She moved on. The internet transcribed this as "couldn't pronounce the candle." We prefer to say she engaged with it authentically.
Beat seven: "Thank you, Meghan. I love you." And scene.
"She's so classy, and I'm just like — look at this. This is nuts."
— Serena Williams, accidentally summarising the entire As Ever brand tension in one sentenceEverything That Went Wrong, Ranked by How Much Meghan's PR Team Is Crying
The candle royal titles situation was its own saga. We covered it in full.
Read: Royal Titles Used to Sell Candles →The First As Ever PR Launch vs The Mother's Day Edit. A Study in Contrast.
Cast your mind back to the first As Ever launch. The jam collection. Kris Jenner held a jar of strawberry jam like she was presenting the Shroud of Turin. Chrissy Teigen posted a perfectly lit flat lay with the energy of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and had done it professionally for years. The whole operation projected: we have arrived.
Now look at this week's Mother's Day edit and what it projected instead.
The notable absences from the Mother's Day list are, themselves, a piece of information. Kris Jenner: unconfirmed. Chrissy Teigen: unconfirmed. Zoe Saldana: unconfirmed. The recipients who did get packages included Meghan's Pilates instructor (12,000 followers) and a Today show editor (7,000 followers). We are not saying the A-list is cooling on the As Ever brand activation. We are simply noting the facts and leaving you to arrange them in whatever shape you find most comfortable.
We've been tracking the As Ever brand since day one. The gap between what the brand promises and what it delivers has been a recurring theme. The full story is worth reading.
But Are They Actually Still Friends? Probably. Unfortunately for the Story.
We know. You want this to be a friendship collapse. You want the smashed chocolates to be a metaphor. You want "I've botched it" to be a coded message. You want the internet theory about Serena trolling Meghan to be real.
Here is the boring, honest answer: Serena Williams and Meghan Markle are almost certainly still friends. They have been friends since 2010. Serena attended the royal wedding. Serena hosted the baby shower. Serena ends the video by saying "I love you, Meghan." None of these are the actions of a woman staging an elaborate chocolate-based betrayal.
The simpler explanation — Serena had already eaten half the box before she thought to film, picked up the devastated remains, laughed at herself, and posted it because she is constitutionally incapable of performing anything she doesn't genuinely feel — fits all the available evidence and requires approximately zero conspiracy.
The friendship is probably fine. The PR is not fine. Both things can be true simultaneously. And the fact that Meghan's best friend of sixteen years, who has 18 million followers, who received the flagship Mother's Day gift — produced a video that reads as an accidental satire of everything As Ever is trying to be — is the brand story here, regardless of intent.
The Most Honest As Ever Review the Brand Will Ever Receive. And It Was Free.
Here is the thing about the As Ever brand. We have said before that the brand's problem is not quality — it's the noise that follows everything it does. The product might be genuinely good. The jam might be excellent. The chocolate, even in its smashed state, was apparently delicious enough for a woman who doesn't like chocolate to have eaten most of it before filming.
But when your most high-profile Mother's Day PR recipient produces a video that functions, beat for beat, as an accidental parody of everything you're trying to project — you have a brand cohesion problem that seventeen influencer packages and a powder-blue box cannot fix.
Aspirational brands cannot survive accidental honesty. That is the whole deal. The image has to be seamless. The packaging has to be perfect. The recipients have to hold the product like it is precious. The second the curtain slips — the second someone holds up the smashed chocolates and says "I've botched it" to 18 million people — the fantasy cracks in a way that is very difficult to un-crack.
Serena didn't mean to do this. She was being herself. But "being herself" produced a video that told the truth about As Ever more accurately than any critic could: it is a beautifully packaged aspiration that keeps arriving slightly damaged, in the hands of people who can't quite say what it is, at a price point that requires you to already believe in it before you open the box.
The chocolates were delicious, though. She made that very clear.
Despite not liking chocolate.
While surrounded by the remains of the chocolates.
We just wanted to make sure we got all of that in there.
If you want the full picture on how we got here — the $2,000 retreat, the royal tour, the brand that keeps generating more headlines than revenue — it's all there.
Read: The $2,000 Retreat That Tells You Everything →The brand's problem has never been the jam. It's that everything around the jam keeps making it impossible to just enjoy the jam.
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The Royal Mess. Every Week. No Softening.
Crowns optional. Receipts mandatory. Coffee strongly recommended. We cover the Meghan-industrial complex so you don't have to squint at the scent notes.
