Last Sunday, Netflix confirmed that the Duchess of Sussex’s cooking show, With Love, Meghan, was being delayed because of the Southern California wildfires. WLM was supposed to be released on the 15th, and now it will come out a few days after the Oscars in March. Clearly, the Windsors held some emergency meetings in early January and made a plan of action to try to steal Meghan’s thunder by sending the Princess of Wales out to a hospital and sending William out to day-drink in a Birmingham pub. Sources also said that the WLM delay was at Meghan’s request, and that “it was an easy decision” for Meghan in the wake of the wildfires. Well, it looks like the Windsors are fuming – royal sources wept to Richard Eden at the Mail about the postponement. You’ll never guess why they are so upset!

The Duchess of Sussex’s decision to postpone the release of her long-awaited Netflix cookery show, With Love, Meghan, because of the devastation wreaked by wildfires in her home state of California has been praised by her fans. One of her favoured publications, People, reported that Meghan ‘didn’t think twice’ about delaying the eight-part series until March.

‘I don’t think she could imagine putting out a show centered on joy and hosting when so many people in her home state no longer have homes to host people in,’ an insider sympathetically told the American magazine.

Her decision has, however, led to some wry remarks from those connected to the Royal Family, I can disclose. One friend of the royals pointed out to me this week that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex allowed their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey to be broadcast in 2021 even though Prince Philip was seriously ill in hospital. Prince Harry’s grandfather died four weeks later.

‘Meghan seemingly didn’t think twice about going ahead with the Oprah interview, did she?’ commented the royal source. Let’s not forget how deeply the interview with America’s chat show queen must have wounded the Royal Family. Meghan’s lurid accusations, including claims that the Princess of Wales had made her cry and that unnamed senior royals had raised concerns about her baby’s skin tone, would have undoubtedly hurt Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth.

Some courtiers are even wondering whether the postponement of her cookery programme is a commercial one. ‘Would people really want to watch a glossy TV show about someone’s luxury lifestyle when thousands of Americans have seen their homes and lives destroyed?’ one figure with connections to the royals asked me this week. It’s questionable whether the delay until March will make much difference to the appetite for such a programme. There will still be thousands of people homeless in three months’ time.

And the Oprah interview wasn’t the only project that the Sussexes knew would hurt Harry’s family but went ahead with anyway. They recorded their Netflix ‘docu-series’, or reality show, Harry & Meghan in 2022, when Queen Elizabeth was in rapidly declining health. That six-part programme, broadcast in December – two months after the queen’s death – worsened relations with the royals by accusing them of ‘leaking’ and ‘planting’ stories in the media. Some even felt Meghan demonstrating the extravagant curtsy she had performed for the late Queen had the effect of mocking her. The Queen had died two months before it was broadcast.

Two books have since reported that the Queen was suffering from bone cancer for a year before her death. It’s not clear if the Sussexes knew this, but they would have been acutely aware that she was increasingly frail. Yet they recorded the hurtful series anyway. Most disrespectful to the Queen were the sections of the programme devoted to denigrating the Commonwealth, the organisation close to her heart.

Harry similarly didn’t think twice about writing his tawdry memoirs while his grandmother’s health was worsening. Thank goodness that it was not published until four months after the Queen’s death, so she did not have to read about his betrayals of private conversations and vilification of her loved ones. It’s not hard to see why some close to the Royal Family would treat Meghan’s concern for the feelings of others with profound scepticism.

[From The Daily Mail]

I actually mentioned in the WLM postponement story that the Sussexes have a history of unlucky timing. The big one, for me, was their unluckiness with the timing of the Oprah interview. To be fair to them, they had already scheduled the interview with Oprah before Prince Philip went into the hospital for the last time. To be fair, the palace used Philip’s rapidly declining health as an excuse back in 2021 to scream about how the Sussexes’ interview should be delayed. It didn’t matter, it was honestly beyond the Sussexes’ control, and I’m glad the interview went ahead as planned. I also don’t think “the Sussexes released a bunch of big projects after QEII died” is some big controversy. I really wish they had released some of that stuff when QEII was alive, you know? The Netflix show especially, I always thought that should have come out a year earlier. Anyway, this piece is just another reminder that no one is more obsessed with Harry and Meghan than the Windsors and their “friends.” Everyone in the royal establishment has been following every single thing the Sussexes do and say for years.

Photos/screencaps courtesy of Harpo/CBS, LA Fox affiliate and Sky News.