Duchess Do-Little herself,
Meghan Markle, has unveiled yet another harebrained scheme to make a buck. On Thursday, the 42-year-old debuted a new lifestyle brand called
American Riviera Orchard on Instagram. The Goopy project sounds like a name one of her Montecito, Calif., neighbors might give their third-born child, but I digress. In this softest of launches, Markle’s
Social Media post and new website offered no details of what products she will sell or what exactly she’s doing. However, a trademark application says she plans to push cookbooks and home goods . So far on
Instagram , we’ve been treated to a golden logo written in calligraphy — Wow! How royal! — and a grainy video clip of Megs stirring away in the kitchen, picking flowers and standing at the end of a hall. Wonderful. Another stop on her Quixotic quest to become Martha Stewart . Well, Martha Stewart if nobody watched Stewart’s TV shows, or bought her magazine, cookbooks and kitchenware. Let me call it now: This glorified Etsy page, if it ever gets off the ground, will be one more embarrassing blip. Remember Markle’s now-defunct lifestyle blog The Tig (2014-2017)? Thought not. Markle dubbed the site “a hub for the discerning palate” and used it to hawk recipes and beauty tips. She name-dropped more-famous
Friends like
Serena Williams and interviewed Elizabeth Hurley and
Ivanka Trump (a fact she would no doubt rather we all forgot). The Tig, however, was terminated — along with her acting career — when she married
Prince Harry and became a working royal. Which she and Harry promptly quit less than two years later. And then there was the Duchess and Harry’s $20 million Spotify deal. That was scrapped when the duo didn’t meet “productivity benchmarks.” Or, as one Spotify exec and podcaster Bill Simmons put it: “ The f–king grifters . That’s the podcast we shoulda launched with them.” The two have hardly been workhorses at
Netflix, who they signed with for an obscene $100 million. (Consider that Timothée Chalamet was paid just $8 million for “Wonka.”) That partnership has amounted to little more than a couple of forgettable documentaries. Sources told The Wrap that Harry and Meghan “have worn out their welcome in
Hollywood with an iron-fisted desire for control, combined with a lack of experience.” Shocker. Can’t say I sympathize much with either party — Hollywood or the Sussexes — in this instance. It’s been bungle after bungle, lazy move after lazy move. For Markle, CV has come to stand for Costly Vanity. And what a shamelessly opportunistic moment to pull back the curtain on some tablecloths and coasters. Her arch-nemesis
Kate Middleton has been pummeled by the public for days for doctoring a family photo after being hidden from the public eye for months. Royal conspiracy theorists have suggested everything from infidelity to a facelift. Don’t worry, Kate, Meghan is here to steal the spotlight! On Wednesday, at an event honoring the late Princess Diana in
London,
Prince William spoke in-person — while Harry appeared only by video stream after his estranged brother had left the building. Perhaps Harry was too busy in the garage packaging his wife’s American Riviera Orchard inspirational coffee mugs. What a prince.