Meghan’s fruity flop? Only THREE unfamous faces out of 50 chosen jam-fluencers have spilled the jelly on her new Montecito sweetmeats! So just WHO else made the cut? MAUREEN CALLAHAN has an idea…
So, who is Number One?
That’s the burning question, now that Meghan Markle has launched the first offering from her lifestyle brand ‘American Riviera Orchard’ — jarred jam, capped with bow-wrapped muslin, meant to feel artisanal, authentic and aspirational, its debut limited to 50 rations.
How do we know there are only 50? Well, our duchess appears to have hand-labeled and numbered this run as if her jellies were priceless works of art — doubtless they are, in her mind — on par with Hockney, Hirst, Hunter Biden.
Whoever received that coveted first jar — Oprah? Anna Wintour? Kim K? — has yet to post to Instagram or otherwise reveal themselves.
In fact, 47 of the 50 recipients have yet to publicly acknowledge this most anticlimactic merch drop.
Could they be embarrassed? Unimpressed? On Ozempic?
Or perhaps they, like decent people everywhere, find the timing of Meghan’s launch more unseemly than usual, given that the Princess of Wales and King Charles are both battling cancer. Perhaps they would rather not use their platforms to push sticky sandwich spreads and tacky jeremiads.
Surely we all anticipated a little more than the scant thanks of just a few people who aren’t even famous?
Tracy Robbins, wife of Paramount Pictures president and CEO Brian Robbins, wrote on Tuesday: ‘Thank you for the delicious basket! I absolutely love this jam so not sure I’m sharing it with anyone’.
On Tracy’s Instagram, the jar — ’17 of 50′, its brand-new label already peeling off from one side — otherwise remained sealed. How could Tracy possibly attest to this jam’s excellence? Was she present in Meghan’s test kitchen?
Relatedly, Meghan began shooting her Netflix show about ‘the joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship’ this week, reportedly at an undisclosed location that is most definitely not her Montecito mansion.
Doesn’t that say it all? Meghan welcoming you into hearth and home not her own.
How delicious, too, that Tracy Robbins is on Meghan’s exclusive list, the pair having met as guests of Brian Robbins at the ‘One Love’ premiere in Jamaica mere months ago — a premiere at which Meghan and Harry were seated several rows back, for a movie no one has since seen.
Those A-list friends are shedding like so much spring pollen.
Delfina Blaquier, wife of Argentinian polo player and Harry pal Nacho Figueras, also displayed Meghan’s largesse on social media on Tuesday.
Alongside a photo of the spread on toast — as if these people eat carbs — Blaquier wrote: ‘Strawberry jam makes me happy. And I love your jam, @AmericanRivieraOrchard.’
Faint praise. Then again, Blaquier was only No.10 out of 50.
Kelly McKee Zajfen — a mom-fluencer and former model whose work may be unfamiliar to most — is, as this writing, the only other beneficiary to publicly acknowledge Meghan’s jam. Her jar was labeled No.3.
Number one, surely, had to have been Oprah. Who else could it have been?
Oprah lives down the road in Montecito, attended Harry and Meghan’s wedding, then conducted that insufferable sit down in which Meghan claimed the royals were racists — but call her duchess!
Oh, what fresh disappointment Meghan may now suffer. One can only guess at her starry list of giftees, the fantasies entertained about which vaunted celebrity would post what superlative praise.
Luminaries, frenemies and hard enemies grouped – I imagine – as…
The Girl Power Squad
Gwyneth Paltrow, Greta Gerwig and the woman Meghan has known all of five minutes yet calls ‘Glo’ — that’s Gloria Steinem to us.
Beyoncé, who randomly texted Meghan one day to say — according to Meghan, in that risible Netflix docuseries — ‘She admires and respects my bravery and vulnerability and thinks I was selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.’
Whither Queen Bey’s post about generationally-healing, justice-seeking jam?
And let’s not forget Taylor Swift, who was sent a handwritten note from Meghan — surely a ‘1 of 1’, though written in that ridiculous calligraphy, no doubt — asking Swift to appear on her now-defunct podcast ‘Archetypes’.
Swift, through a representative, reportedly declined Meghan’s request. Does anyone really think Meghan gives up that easily?
If we’ve all learned anything, it’s that Ms. Markle is not going to be ignored.
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Beyoncé, who randomly texted Meghan one day to say – according to Meghan, in that risible Netflix docuseries – ‘She admires and respects my bravery and vulnerability and thinks I was selected to break generational curses that need to be healed.’ Whither Queen Bey’s post about generationally-healing, justice-seeking jam?
Michelle Obama has kept away since that Oprah interview, telling Access Hollywood that ‘there is nothing more important than family’.
Would some organic preserves out of Montecito be enough to win back the nation’s preeminent force for healthy eating?
Jill Biden, meanwhile, along with Joe, may have given a hard ‘no’ when Harry and Meghan asked to fly on Air Force One after Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, but hey — bygones!
Surely Meghan would have put Jill on her list, perhaps with a note that the Bidens know about jams and how to wiggle out of them.
Melania Trump was likely snubbed, but what about Ivanka?
‘Beautiful… intelligent… she does it all,’ Meghan gushed on The Tig — her precursor to American Riviera Orchard — in 2014.
‘When we have drinks,’ Meghan went on, ‘I will make sure I order whatever she does — because this woman seems to have the formula for success (and happiness) down pat’.
She may not have gotten martinis with Ivanka, but perhaps she sent a little MAGA jam to Miami.
Unknown heroes
Who can forget the cabbie who spirited Harry, Meghan, and Meghan’s mother Doria through New York City after ‘The Women of Vision’ awards in 2023?
The Duke and Duchess said they were the victims of a high-speed car chase through midtown Manhattan, implying that they had barely escaped with their lives.
In lieu of a generous tip, one imagines this cabbie – who nonetheless said, ‘It wasn’t scary… I never felt like I was in danger. It wasn’t like a car chase in a movie’ – would at least merit some Montecito sweetmeat.
Then there’s steward who, upon Harry and Meghan’s desperate flight to freedom from the UK, knelt before our duchess and, per her recollection on Netflix: ‘He took his hat off and I just remember looking at him. And he goes, “We appreciate everything you did for our country.” It was the first time that I felt like someone saw the sacrifice.’
A smear for this airborne servant, at least!
And the ‘Lion King’ cast member who, again per Meghan, paid fealty that the rest of Hollywood just will not.
As she told The Cut in 2022, she had gone backstage and was greeted by a nameless South African who said: ‘I just need you to know: When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison’.
No matter that the lone South African actor in that production told the Mail that he had never met Meghan. Nor that Mandela’s own grandson snapped back that ‘overcoming 60 years of apartheid is not that same as marrying a white prince.’
Perhaps a little ‘Mandela marmalade’ to make up for that mishap?
Olive branch gift baskets
To Ted Sarandos, for paying a reported $100 million in Netflix money and getting a hacky docuseries, a flop doc on the Invictus games, and now two specials about polo and cooking in return. Nothing says sincerity like warm, pulverized fruit labeled with the recipient’s numerical importance — much like falling ratings do.
To Bill Simmons, the Spotify exec who called Harry and Meghan ‘f***king grifters’. Now who’s literally cooking, Bill?
And, finally, to Trey Parker and Matt Stone of ‘South Park’, who memorialized our duchess as a professional victim and empty vessel, desperate for the fame she pretends to despise.
‘We just want to be normal people,’ cartoon Meghan said in a now-legendary episode. ‘This attention is so hard.’
Two jars to Matt and Trey — numbers 49 and 50, respectively — to prove that a sense of humor, just maybe, has replaced Meghan’s sour grapes.
