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Meghan Markle and Harry visited Canada earlier this week for the charity event of David Foster (which has a goal of raising funds for Canadian families with children needing life-saving organ transplants).
During the event, Meghan used Princess Diana’s diamond and sapphire earrings, and Meghan has also shared a video (via Instagram, of course) to show a delightful and authentic time for everyone.
This could quite possibly have been a feel-good piece for Meghan Markle, but it shall be overshadowed by the very badly handled feud Meghan has jumped into with Martha Stewart.
To step back, Martha was being interviewed by People, and she apparently used the opportunity to talk about her partying, giving the label “LIFO: last in, first out” for her friends (and then stating that she had in fact been out to dinner at a party where Meghan had been present).
Now, if you watch Martha’s interview (linked above), she is clearly speaking in general terms. She is not stating, as Meghan and her defenders would have you believe, that Martha is claiming that Meghan is spilling all the gossip about her Highgrove sojourn.
What Martha actually says is that “I had dinner with Meghan Markle the other night. We were both guests at a dinner party in California. She had just come back from the palace. I didn’t talk to her really more than to say a couple of words, but I know that she was talking about it.”
Meghan Markle Responds to Martha Stewart’s Comments
Then Meghan does the most idiotic thing possible, gets the host of the dinner party to call up People magazine to say that Martha’s allegations were simply untrue, that “Meghan didn’t talk about her European vacation other than to say the family had a great time.” Even worse, Martha was referred to as “confused.”
Calling an 85-year-old woman (who reinvented American cooking, and whose brand as a food and lifestyle icon made her America’s first self-made female billionaire) “confused” is incredibly rude, and Meghan knows it, which is why she jumped to do this defense in the first place; because she thinks she has no other way to respond.
Why the Meghan Markle Martha Stewart Feud Escalated
The Royalist suspects it has less to do with Martha’s alleged “confusion” and more to do with her comments about why Meghan’s television show was so bad.
Martha noted that “If you’re an actress, it’s hard to then transition to a princess and then from a princess into a homemaking guru on a television show. It doesn’t sort of follow. So go from there.”
The only decent response to that is what Queen Elizabeth would have called “never complain and never explain.” Trying to beat up Martha in People with a counter story about her “delusions” is a fight that Meghan is going to lose.
Martha Stewart’s Celebrity Success vs. Meghan Markle’s Brand
Martha has achieved celebrity in its absolute most perfect sense, having built up her brand over 40 years, while Meghan represents ascribed celebrity with her being handed the Royal title on a silver platter (even if she did have to pay for the platter herself).
You could make the case that Martha has been remarkably magnanimous towards Meghan, who has spent the last year shamelessly copying her and bailing out at the first sign of trouble.
The sad fact is that Meghan’s television show was a disaster, and she knows it; hence her lying about the “jam photographs” to try to blame it on “fake news.”
Martha has far more credibility as an authority on homemaker shows than Meghan, whose idea of a homemaker program seems to be decanting the contents of a bag of pretzels into a smaller bag, pretending that ordering take-out and plating it on nice china is “real food,” and telling viewers that she doesn’t like “baking” or “jam.”
Her show failed because it sucked, which is why she failed to land a second deal with Netflix, and why the brand she was attempting to create never took off outside the United States. There’s far more that Martha should have said, in fact.
Meghan Markle’s Brand and the Authenticity Debate
The last time Martha said anything about Meghan was in her Yahoo interview when she said that “authenticity, to me, is everything,” and that she hoped Meghan “knows what she’s talking about,” which brings us right back to the “jam photographs”, which is a theme this blog has written about extensively in the past: inauthenticity.
Martha, on the other hand, is the queen of authenticity, having paid her dues and served her time in prison (which she always spoke about as “a horrible thing that happened to me”), and never once groveling for her fans.
It was definitely a good move for her PR when she came up with the redemption story, but her natural personality and true authenticity were the real keys to her being who she is today.
The new book she released this week, “Martha Stewart Living”, will be out soon, and it is already number one on the bestseller lists.
Moreover, one of Martha’s recent projects was creating a TV show called “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party” that reached many new viewers and therefore expanded Martha’s audience significantly. She has been the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue at age 81, the oldest ever.
Meanwhile, Meghan has created a brand based almost entirely on trying to pretend she is someone she isn’t (even as late as last month saying that “authenticity” is the most important quality for her new role as philanthropist), and she has sabotaged that brand by being so defensive about the tiniest of criticisms.
Meghan Markle’s Response Could Make the Feud Worse
What makes the response so much worse is that she has gone to the lengths of getting someone else to phone in the response to People (had she simply issued a statement saying that she didn’t discuss the palace with Martha, she would have been fine), and this is far more reminiscent of her “five best friends” lie to People following that infamous letter to her father.
It is also reminiscent of the stories about her wonderful management following the “dictator in high heels” scandal. This is another case of the “lying to protect her brand by creating a bigger scandal” narrative that has repeatedly been shown to backfire spectacularly, with the public believing the other side.
Meghan has made a monumental error, and it is very, very unlikely this will be the last we have heard of it. It is now the middle of August, and the last thing people want to think about is the royal family or Meghan; if you can get a bigger story out of Martha Stewart, suddenly that tiny item gets turned into a seven-day wonder.
