What On Earth Is Meghan Markle Doing?
CATEGORY: Royals
TAGS: Meghan Markle · Harry · Royals · Satire · Netflix
By Sara Alba · The Royal Mess
Let's take a moment. A quiet, respectful, deeply caffeinated moment. And ask the question that everyone is thinking but only some of us are willing to say out loud:
What on earth is happening with Meghan Markle?
Not in a mean way. In a genuinely baffled, anthropological, I-am-watching-this-unfold-in-real-time way. Because from where I'm sitting — with my oat milk latte and zero agenda — the last six months of Meghan Markle's public life look like a masterclass in how to make every situation worse while appearing to believe, sincerely, that you are making it better.
Let's go through it. Brewtifully.
The Deals Are Gone. All of Them.
There was a time — not so long ago — when Meghan Markle was going to be the next Oprah. Netflix deal. Spotify deal. The American Dream, royal edition. She and Harry had left the institution, moved to California, and were building something. You could feel it. The potential was real.
And then, one by one, it all quietly collapsed.
Netflix walked away from the Meghan Markle Cinematic Universe — and not with a bang. With the specific silence of a company that has decided not to fight publicly over something it has already decided privately. The Spotify deal was gone before that. And then, the cherry on top: Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix, unfollowed Meghan Markle on Instagram. In 2026, getting unfollowed by the person who ran your production deal is the digital equivalent of having your desk cleared while you were at lunch. Efficient. Efficient and very, very loud.
Hollywood's trade bible dropped a bombshell exposé on the whole Netflix era and none of it was flattering. This was not the trajectory anyone had planned for. Least of all Meghan.
The Ozempic Chapter Nobody Is Talking About
I will talk about it.
There was a version of Meghan Markle that was genuinely, undeniably beautiful. Healthy. Glowing. Plump in the way that reads as alive. You could see it in the early Sussex years — there was a fullness to her face, a warmth to her appearance that made sense for a woman who claimed to be happy and thriving.
That version has left the building.
Whatever has happened to Meghan's face in the last year looks like the very specific consequence of aggressive weight loss on someone who was not carrying extra weight to begin with. The jawline is sharper. The cheeks are hollower. The glow has been replaced by something that reads more as very good lighting and considerable effort. We are not diagnosing anyone. We are simply noting that the before and after exist, they are visible, and the after is — to put it gently — not an improvement.
Ozempic has a signature look. Meghan now has that look. The irony is that she spent years building a wellness brand. A whole lifestyle platform. Green juices and breathwork and the suggestion that she was living in a state of sustained spiritual equilibrium. And now she looks like she's been on a drip since November. You cannot build a wellness empire and then visibly waste away and expect nobody to notice. We noticed. We've been noticing her style choices for a while now.
Her Father. Her Actual Father.
This one is less funny and more genuinely uncomfortable.
Thomas Markle is not a perfect man. He made mistakes. He spoke to the press when he probably shouldn't have. He has, at times, handled his public grief in ways that weren't ideal.
But he is her father. He had a stroke. He is aging. He has, by multiple accounts, attempted to reach his daughter and been met with silence.
Whatever your feelings about Meghan Markle — and mine are complicated — the treatment of her father is the thing I find hardest to defend. There is something deeply unflattering about a woman who publicly champions compassion, vulnerability, and the importance of human connection while apparently refusing to pick up the phone for the man who raised her. It does not track. It has never tracked. And the longer it goes on, the worse it looks.
The Kelly Situation
Okay. NOW we're having fun.
On March 19, 2026 — approximately 48 hours after Ted Sarandos unfollowed her on Instagram — Meghan Markle appeared at a Beverly Hills charity gala to support her friend Kelly McKee Zajfen, who is pregnant and doing genuinely meaningful work for children in foster care.
This is the part where I want to be clear: Kelly is lovely. The cause was real. The gala raised $1.4 million. Good things happened.
And then there was Meghan.
She cradled the bump. She held the hands. She beamed at every camera with the luminosity of a woman who has done significant research into which is her best side. She stroked the belly of her pregnant friend with the focused tenderness of someone who is acutely aware that a photographer is four feet away. The speech she gave about Kelly was warm, generous, and also — structurally — largely about how meaningful Kelly's friendship is to Meghan. How grateful she is. How much this means to her.
Kelly looked genuinely moved. Meghan looked genuinely photographed.
Is she on something? Does she have social anxiety that presents as the opposite of social anxiety? Is she simply completely unaware of how she reads on camera? I genuinely do not know. I have read the footage three times and I still cannot tell if this is calculated to the millimetre or blissfully, catastrophically unconscious.
Either way, the sequencing — Sarandos unfollows, Meghan appears at high-profile event 48 hours later, glowing, photographed, very much present — was, as it so often is with Meghan Markle, immaculate.
The rebrand is always underway. The pivot is always one red carpet away.
What Was She Expecting?
This is the question I keep coming back to.
When Meghan and Harry left the royal family, there was a plan. California. Deals. Independence. A platform. A new narrative. She was going to be taken seriously on her own terms.
Six years later: the deals collapsed, the streaming era is over, the fashion is missing, the wellness brand evaporated, and the public goodwill — which was genuinely there at the beginning — has been worn down by years of staged moments, strategic leaks, and the specific exhaustion of watching someone work this hard to appear effortless.
We wrote her an open letter. We meant it kindly. Sort of.
The tragedy of Meghan Markle is not that she failed. It's that she had everything she needed to succeed and somehow kept making choices that undid it. The talent is real. The ambition is real. The instinct for a moment is real. But something — the advice, the strategy, the fundamental miscalculation of what the public actually wants from her — keeps getting in the way.
And so we watch. Coffee in hand. Mildly horrified. Completely riveted.
As always. ☕
