With Love, Meghan: What we learnt from Duchess of Sussex’s new Netflix series
The Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle series premiered this morning – in which she talks about her life in California, her time spent living in Argentina and her love of food.
With Love, Meghan – an eight-part series on Netflix – had been delayed from a January release due to the Los Angeles wildfires.
The episodes, which last about 30 minutes each, feature a host of celebrity friends along with a few cameos from her husband, Prince Harry.
From her first jobs growing up to what she was like on the Suits set, here are some things we learnt about the duchess.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Mindy Kaling.
Pic: Netflix
‘I’m Sussex now’
One of Meghan’s guests is The Office star Mindy Kaling, who she bonds with over their lives as toddlers’ mums while putting together a tea party in the garden.
As they put sandwiches together for the tea, Meghan talks about her love of Jack In The Box – a classic US fast-food chain, to which Kaling responds: “I don’t think anyone in the world knows that Meghan Markle has eaten Jack In The Box and loves it.”
The duchess laughs and says: “It’s funny, you keep saying Meghan Markle, you know, I’m Sussex now.
“You have kids, and you go, ‘now I share my name with my children’… I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me, but it just means so much to go ‘this is our family name, our little family name’.”
Similarities with Archie
During episode four, the duchess goes on a hike with her friend Delfina Blaquier, who is married to Argentinian polo star Nacho Figueras, and together they have a picnic with homemade focaccia bread.
The duchess reveals how she passed time during her childhood – and the similar traits her son, Archie, has: “As a kid, I was taking a bag of tea from the drawer in my house, putting it in a mason jar or probably an empty jar that once held spaghetti sauce and putting it in the sun, and sitting there… waiting for it to change colour.
“Funny enough, which Archie does now.”
Days before the show aired, in an interview with People magazine, the duchess said Archie had told her: “Mama, don’t work too hard” during filming.
She added the five-year-old helped with the clapperboard while visiting the set with his sister Lilibet and Harry.
Delfina Figueras and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Pic: Netflix
Life in Argentina
The two friends met through their husbands – “The moment we met, we bonded over our love of the outdoors and being in nature. We always hike together whenever she’s in town. And sometimes we let our husbands join us,” Meghan says.
Reflecting on when they first met, Meghan says: “What’s so funny is, I remember when we first met, and you were like: ‘Wait a minute, you speak Argentinian Spanish?’ But it’s such a pretty language because it sounds so musical.”
Her friend says: “When you started speaking Spanish and I recognised the Argentinian, I was blown away, because I didn’t know that…”
“That I’d lived there,” Meghan responds.
She adds: “When I lived in Argentina, I think the reason I loved it so much is because it reminded me of California in a lot of ways. Where you have the mountains and you have this joy of life and the joy of being outside.
“I was only there for a few months interning at the US Embassy, but I loved it.”
First jobs in doughnut and yoghurt shops – and some more childhood memories
In episode five, as Meghan hosts long-time friends, former Suits co-star Abigail Spencer and Kelly McKee Zajfen, she says that her first job was at Humphrey Yogart, a frozen yoghurt shop in Los Angeles playfully named after actor Humphrey Bogart.
That came after she told chef Roy Choi in episode three, as she presented him with doughnuts she prepared for him, that she once had a job at a doughnut shop.
“Doughnuts in general just remind me of my childhood,” she said.
“I once had a job at a little donut shop called Little Orbit Donuts. They made tiny, tiny, little mini donuts.”
She said she often helped them sell at craft venues, adding that doughnuts generally were a big part of her childhood.
“Growing up, driving down Highland to get to school, there was always a Yum Yum Donuts right there.”
“Highland and Melrose,” Choi clarifies.
“Exactly… is it still there?”
When Choi says it is, she responds: “Oh my god. I should go back in.”
In another episode, Kaling asks whether Meghan began cooking at home or picked it up later. Meghan replies: “I was a latch-key kid so I grew up with a lot of fast food and also a lot of TV tray dinners.
“It feels like such a different time but that was so normal with the microwavable kids meals.”
Meghan also recalls her “many years” as a Girl Scout, telling Delfina Blaquier: “I started as a Daisy, which is when you’re five or six, and I sold a lot of cookies, and my mum was my troop leader.
“To get kids out in nature, that in and of itself is worth its weight in gold. And it just breeds curiosity, and you never forget that stuff you learned.”
Life in Montecito house
Branden Aroyan and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Pic: Netflix
The lifestyle show, which was filmed in a California farmhouse rather than in her Montecito house, features her describing her every day life – including how it is a “daily” task to pick fruit when it’s in season at her home.
Episode one Hello Honey! features Meghan’s friend Daniel Martin as she prepares a “thoughtful guest basket”.
It begins with her harvesting honey from bees, saying: “The biggest thing is keeping a low tone – talk in our bee voice.”
With the help of a beekeeper, she talks about “trying to stay in the calm of it because it’s beautiful to be this connected”.
Harry is the king of eggs
When asked by Kaling about how best to season eggs, the duchess says: “I have a family, a husband, who no matter what meal is put in front of him before he tastes it puts salt on, so I try to under salt.”
Harry himself, it is later revealed, is something of an egg connoisseur.
Speaking to two close friends in a later episode, she says “H” is a “great cook” and makes “the best scrambled eggs”.
She further praises him by saying he generally makes “a really good breakfast”.
Bacon was the subject of discussions on more than one occasion during the series, with Meghan saying that whenever she cooks it the kitchen “becomes full of husband and three dogs”.
“It’s not my perfume that’s bringing them all in,” she jokes.
What the duchess was like during Suits
Meghan’s days of playing paralegal Rachel Zane in popular drama Suits came to an end in 2018, the year she married Harry.
But she has clearly remained close with co-star Abigail Spencer, who played Dana Scott.
In episode five, as the pair sat in Meghan’s garden alongside Kelly McKee Zajfen, Spencer reflected on what Meghan was like during the Suits days.
She said Meghan was “the head of morale on the show,” to which Meghan thanked her and added: “I liked to plan fun for everyone.”
Heart-warming moments of Meghan with beloved beagle
The whole series ends with a tribute to Meghan’s late dog, Guy, who featured prominently in several episodes.
One morning, the duchess is seen making bone-shaped peanut butter biscuits for the rescue beagle, who died shortly after filming wrapped, saying you can make them with leftover bacon from breakfast.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex with Guy. Pic: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex
She admitted there was “never” any leftovers in her house because “we eat a lot of it” – another reference to the Sussexes love of bacon.
“I would do anything for Guy, and he knows it,” she then says. “He can have whatever he wants ’cause he is whatever kind of guy you need him to be depending on the day. My sweet guy, my silly guy, my saucy little guy. Always my spoiled guy.”
Later, as she hands him a peanut butter cookie, she adds: “They provide us with unconditional love, so they get unconditional peanut butter dog biscuits. Why not?”
The Sussexes also have two other dogs – another rescue beagle named Mia and a black Labrador called Pula, who is seen trying to steal some of Meghan and her guests’ food at various points during the series.
Meghan’s ‘next chapter’
In the eighth and final episode, called Feels Like Home, Meghan prepares for Prince Harry to make an appearance.
She is putting together a brunch for family and friends to celebrate the “next chapter” in her life.
Sharing details of how she envisages the so-called “next chapter”, Meghan, wearing a blue maxi dress and putting the finishing touches to a spread of food outdoors, says: “Of course, my husband will be here, my mum will be here, my best friend since college, my community having a brunch in the sunshine with the people that I love, celebrating this next chapter of my life.”
Three people have died following a helicopter crash during a flying lesson on the Isle of Wight.
A fourth person is in hospital in a serious condition following the incident, according to Hampshire Police.
Officers were called to the scene of a “helicopter that had come down” off Shanklin Road near Ventnor at 9.24am on Monday, the force said.
A spokesman for the aircraft’s owner Northumbria Helicopters said G-OCLV – which is listed as a Robinson R44 II helicopter – was involved in the accident during a flying lesson.
Fire and rescue vehicles at the scene near Ventnor. Pic: Stu Southwell
Aerial view of the crash site
Helicopter ‘spiralled out of sight’ – live updates
Four people, including the pilot, were on board the aircraft, which departed nearby Sandown Airport at 9am, the company also said in a statement.
A critical care team, including a doctor and specialist paramedic, was also sent to the crash site, Hants and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance added, alongside fire engines and other emergency vehicles.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch confirmed it was alerted to the incident and is sending a team to investigate. A major incident was declared but has since been stood down.
A spokesperson for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance said in a statement: “We have treated and airlifted one patient to the Major Trauma Centre, University Hospital Southampton. Our thoughts are with them, and everyone involved in today’s incident.”
Darren Toogood, editor and publisher at the Island Echo, told Sky News presenter Kamali Melbourne the helicopter crashed on a “significantly busy, high-speed road” between the village of Godshill and the seaside town of Shanklin.
“It was on one of the first flights of the day,” he said.
“It’s a bank holiday weekend in August on the Isle of Wight. It’s an incredibly busy area. Lots of tourists down at the moment. It appears no vehicles were involved, which is incredible, given how busy this road would have been this morning.”
A witness, Leigh Goldsmith, told the Isle of Wight County Press she saw the helicopter “spiralling” before crashing into a hedge as she drove along the road.
Read more from Sky News:
Bands pull out from festival after group ‘cut off’ over flag
Ofwat probes payments to water bosses after Yorkshire row
Police have closed Shanklin Road, blocking it off with several emergency vehicles, and are warning people to avoid the area.
Northumbria Helicopters said it is “giving its full cooperation to the authorities investigating this incident”.
UK
Ten organisations write urgent letter to home secretary over violence against women and girls strategy
Ten child protection organisations have written an urgent letter to the home secretary expressing concern about the omission of child sexual abuse from the government’s violence against women and girls strategy, following a Sky News report.
Groups including the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and The Internet Watch Foundation wrote to Yvette Cooper to say that violence against women and girls (VAWG) and child sexual abuse are “inherently and deeply connected”, suggesting any “serious strategy” to address VAWG needs to focus on child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The letter comes after Sky News revealed an internal Home Office document, titled Our draft definition of VAWG, which said that child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “explicitly within the scope” of their strategy, due to be published in September.
Poppy Eyre when she was four years old
Responding to Sky News’ original report, Poppy Eyre, who was sexually abused and raped by her grandfather when she was four, said: “VAWG is – violence against women and girls. If you take child sexual abuse out of it, where are the girls?”
The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, which is funded by the Home Office and a signatory to the letter, estimates 500,000 children in England and Wales are sexually abused every year.
The NSPCC “welcome” the government’s pledge to halve VAWG in a decade, but is “worried that if they are going to fulfil this commitment, the strategy absolutely has to include clear deliverable objectives to combat child sexual abuse and exploitation too”, the head of policy, Anna Edmundson, told Sky News.
Poppy is a survivor of child sexual abuse
She warned the government “will miss a golden opportunity” and the needs of thousands of girls will be “overlooked” if child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “at the heart of its flagship strategy”.
The government insists the VAWG programme will include action to tackle child sexual abuse, but says it also wants to create a distinctive plan to “ensure those crimes get the specialist response they demand”.
“My message to the government is that if you’re going to make child sexual abuse a separate thing, we need it now,” Poppy told Sky News.
Read more from Sky News:
Why Donald Trump believes he ‘deserves the Nobel Peace Prize’
Bank holiday temperatures to climb close to 30C before rain arrives
Rape Crisis, which is one of the largest organisations providing support to women in England and Wales, shares these concerns.
It wants plans to tackle child sexual abuse to be part of the strategy, and not to sit outside it.
The internal Home Office document detailing its violence against women and girls strategy
“If a violence against women and girls strategy doesn’t include sexual violence towards girls, then it runs the risk of being a strategy for addressing some violence towards some females, but not all,” chief executive Ciara Bergman said.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government is “working tirelessly to tackle the appalling crimes of violence against women and girls and child sexual exploitation and abuse, as part of our Safer Streets mission”.
“We are already investing in new programmes and introducing landmark laws to overhaul the policing and criminal justice response to these crimes, as well as acting on the recommendations of Baroness Casey’s review into group-based Child Sexual Exploitation, and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse,” they added.
Hundreds of shoplifting cases have gone unsolved every day, with the number of unsolved incidents rising by more than 40,000 over the past year.
New figures show that 289,464 cases of shoplifting were shut by police without a suspect in England and Wales in the year to March 2025, according to House of Commons library analysis.
Of all shoplifting cases, more than half (55%) were closed without a suspect identified, while fewer than one in five (18%) led to someone being charged.
Politics latest: Ministers announce new measures to clear asylum backlog
The data shows the number of cases closed without a suspect has also risen significantly on the previous 12 months, with 245,337 cases shut by police forces without a suspect being identified in 2023-24, a rise of more than 40,000.
The analysis, produced for the Liberal Democrats, suggests that on average, 793 shoplifting offences went unsolved every day.
Senior Conservative politicians have told Sky News that the figures “explain why Britain feels lawless”, and are urging ministers to scrap plans to largely end the use of short prison sentences, in favour of people serving time in the community.
What else does the data show?
The data covered all police forces in England and Wales, except for Humberside, but also included the British Transport Police.
It revealed the Metropolitan Police had the worst record, with 76.9% of its 93,705 shoplifting cases being closed with nobody identified as a suspect. Just 5.9% of shoplifting incidents recorded in the capital and the wider region resulted in a charge.
While the data has shown the number of unsolved cases is on the rise, it also revealed that the total number of shoplifting offences has increased dramatically, too.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Do we send too many people to prison?
In 2023-24, 444,022 cases of shoplifting were recorded. But in 2024-25, this rose to 530,643, a record high since the practice of recording the data nationally began in 2002-03.
Overall, 2,071,156 offences of all types went unsolved in the 2024-25 year. This means, on average each day, 5,674 crimes were committed that went on to be closed without a suspect. Only 7.3% of all crimes recorded resulted in somebody being charged or summoned.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Greggs shoplifter caught
The Lib Dems have repeated their calls for police and crime commissioners – elected politicians who have authority over each police force – to be scrapped. They believe the money spent on these would be better invested in frontline policing, and that police boards, made up of local councillors and other individuals, could replace them.
Lisa Smart, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, said that the data reveals an “absolute scandal” because it shows that “thousands of innocent victims are being left without the justice they deserve” every day.
She added: “The previous Conservative government left behind a legacy of failure, but the Labour government has not been quick enough to address the unsolved crime epidemic – particularly as shoplifting spirals out of control.”
Home affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart, with party leader, Sir Ed Davey. Pic: PA
Tories: There should be a ‘zero tolerance approach’ to shoplifting
Meanwhile, the shadow home secretary pointed out that shoplifting has risen by 20% under Labour, and that ministers show “no signs of gripping it”.
Chris Philp told Sky News: “The vast majority of criminals aren’t even caught – and Labour are now proposing to abolish prison sentences of under a year, so even the few that get caught won’t suffer any real punishment.”
He has called for a “zero tolerance approach” and the greater use of technology, such as facial recognition technology, so that “Labour’s shoplifting epidemic can be stopped”.
Read mores:
Workers say shoplifting is ‘out of control’ after surge in brazen thefts
Why legion of shoplifters is causing an explosion in crime
Theft and fraud costs Co-op nearly £40m in just 6 months
Earlier this month, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a significant expansion of the use of facial recognition tech by police forces in England and Wales, with 10 new vans being rolled out – though the move was criticised by civil liberties groups.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Jenrick slams justice system shake-up
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said the “damning stats explain why Britain feels lawless”.
He told Sky News: “Starmer’s plan to scrap prison sentences for shoplifters will only make this worse. We need the authorities to go after these criminals and lock them up for much longer to keep the public safe.”
The government has defended the proposals to largely end the use of shorter sentences, as recommended by the independent sentencing review, carried out earlier this year by former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Without further action, we will run out of prison places in months, courts would halt trials and the police [would] cancel arrests. That is why we are overhauling sentencing to make sure we always have the prison places needed to keep the country safe.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment11 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024