December 4, 2025 • 41 mins
It’s officially the festive season — and Meghan Markle is showing us exactly how she thinks we should be celebrating Christmas this year. So today, we’re giving you our brutally honest review of her brand-new Netflix special, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration.
Laura and Em are diving into everything from the surprising celebrity drop-ins, to the wholesome-but-slightly-unrealistic hosting moments we wish we knew how to execute... we're across all the juicy nuggets so you don't have to be.
We’re unpacking the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details, the unexpectedly funny moments, and the reason behind Laura's admission that she secretly wants to be besties with Meghan. And of course… we need to talk about Prince Harry. Specifically, why his biggest enemy this Christmas might not be who you think.
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CREDITS
Hosts: Laura Brodnik and Em Vernem
Executive Producer: Monisha Iswaran
Audio Producer: Leah Porges
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
From Mamma Mia, welcome to the Spill, your daily pop
culture fix. I'm Laura Brodney and I'm Em Burnham, and
we're getting so close to Christmas, festive cheer is in
the air. It's the time to be nice to people,
it's the time to give back and think about what
you want your life to look like, indulgence in festive cheer,
and with that in mind, wait, what's your favorite Christmas carol?
(00:33):
Christmas carol.
This is such a plot twist. I know you're just
thinking what, what the scene in Mindy's Project where she
sings sexy Santa Baby.
Well, she wants to come out and sing it. She's
got a whole plan, but then she doesn't do it
and Miriam Menos is like, I'll give it a go.
(00:53):
She sings it perfectly. Yeah, I would love to say
a beautiful song, but is maybe that was my first thought,
is my favorite Christmas song. I actually wanna watch that
episode baby. Let's just stop the recording and watch it
right now, everyone. What's your favorite? Oh, I quite like
Deck the Hall of Holly la la la la.
La la la. OK, yeah, that, that particular rendition was great.
(01:18):
I thought you were gonna say like a Jonas Brothers
Christmas song or something, so I do feel like I
bet they do. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they'd be all
over that shit. So we both have questions like my
son tried to sound like Nick, it's fine. Yeah, you
really did. Um, so we both obviously from your little
side quest there, it's very clear.
We both have questionable taste in Christmas songs. You know
(01:42):
who doesn't have questionable taste in Christmas music? Who I
bet has a just impeccable selection of songs of her
Christmas holidays? Meghan Markle. Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, that's
Meghan Sussex to you. Well, I know, can I just
say in the credits for all her recent projects, it
does say Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. You know what,
for better and for worse people, that is her name.
(02:02):
And she's entitled. She's got this identity crisis. If anyone's upset,
you can just go and change your own name to
something too, like anyone can have any name they want.
That's her official name. Could I be Emily, Duchess of Sussex?
I don't think you're allowed to use Duchess. I could
be any name. No, there's some rules around titles. This
is not the intro we had planned.
(02:23):
There's some rules around titles, but you could call yourself
Emily Sussex and no-one would say anything. I might say something,
I'd be like, are you OK? Yeah, thank you, I
would need that. That intro aside.
I'll be impressed if that makes a dare, to be honest.
That intro aside, we are here to do a brutally
honest review of With Love, Megan Holiday Special. That is
(02:44):
the official title. The girl doesn't sleep. She does not sleep. Well,
I mean, this is a project that has been chopped up, so,
so do you think they filmed this in like July? Yes, yes,
I I definitely do. So obviously this year we have
been blessed or cursed.
Depending how you took that show, with two different seasons
of With Love, Megan, her lifestyle show where she took
us through cooking and entertaining and making flower jewelry and
(03:07):
having tea parties with Mindy Haling. What a rollicking time.
And they were filmed back to back, but we got
them like a year apart. I don't know if it's
quite a year, but many, yeah, many months apart. So
just this week, Wednesday night to be exact.
Netflix gave us a hour early Christmas present, which was
Megan's holiday special. I do think they were filmed all
together and they've just sliced them up, which I think
(03:29):
is probably a very good thing for her and her
guests because there were some very critical people, especially of
the first season, then especially of the second season. There
were some really hateful comments and I don't know how
you would go back and film such a whimsical show
knowing that people were ready to hate you, so I
think it was good it was filmed in one go. Yeah.
This latest holiday rendition, it's still fairly new, but the
(03:51):
reviews have been trickling in and they're not good. Yeah,
so a lot of critics like us, because here's the thing,
for anything to do with Meghan Markle, Netflix does not
give us screeners. So for a lot of other things
that come on Netflix, we often get new shows and
movies a week or so before they drop into our
accounts and we can watch them and get our reviews
ready and formulate our thoughts. With Meghan Markle we have
to watch with the,
(04:11):
of the world, so 7 p.m. Wednesday night, you and I,
separate couches in our little city girl apartments, pressed play
on this and we watched it all the way through,
and I do think the only people watching it potentially
were just us and the other critics. I knew it
was just us because it was just us. Netflix was
not even feeding it to me, like I actually had
to search it in Netflix. Yeah, I had to search
it too. I had to say to you, hey, it's
(04:31):
up there now. I'm sure you can't find it because
you have to go and you have to type out
the full name. I know.
I thought they would put a long name as well.
I thought they would put it up in the splash
in the banner. Netflix, don't hide this, come on. They're
busy with Stranger Things. I know, but they like, it's
like you paid Meghan Markle to make this and put
it in the front page. I remember they, I had
to do the same thing with the second season of
(04:52):
With Love Meghan as well, like I had to search
it up, it wasn't being fed to me even though
I watched the full first season. Netflix is like nothing
to see here. Yeah. And I mean after the first season,
Netflix did.
Like their topmost shows and how many people watched each show,
and With Love Meghan got watched a lot, but I
remember when we were talking about that on the podcast,
it was lower than we expected. Yeah, especially how much
(05:14):
money they gave them. Oh absolutely, I think a lot
of with these sort of shows and with Meghan Markle
just because her name is such a thing for headlines,
that a lot of people don't always watch the show
but they're very invested in the content around it and
the reviews and the opinions and the thoughts.
Which is why we thought we'd do a brutally honest
review today. So normally with brutally honest reviews, because we're
talking about the biggest TV shows and movies that have
(05:35):
just come out, we do say watch it first because
spoilers galore. There's no spoilers for this. You don't have
to have watched the special, no plot twists are coming,
no little surprise. I mean, we have a few surprising thoughts.
Let me tell you. So this is gonna be a
bit of a wild ride, but if you haven't watched it,
that's fine. We'll, we'll walk you through it.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
I love the holiday season.
It's about finding time to connect with the people we love.
Embracing traditions. I like this and making new ones. We
are now in. It's pretty jolly here. Let's go crab.
(06:16):
Hey y'all.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So we start off with Meghan Markle, and again, no
hate to Meghan Markle, can I just say, I have
said the same thing every time we've talked about a
Meghan Markle show, is that I would love to be
friends with her or someone like her.
I have no-one in my life who makes pretty cocktails
like that, who like goes all out with festive things,
who would make me little gift baskets and calligraphy my
(06:38):
name on things. She's got beautiful handwriting. She's got beautiful handwriting.
I'll give her that. Well, I mean I no, I'd
give her so many things. I'm impressed with her every
time I watch one of these specials. The handwriting thing
always throws me, and again this year she was writing
on the Christmas cracker thing, she was writing Christmas cards
and that,
That made me really sad because my handwriting has gotten
so bad over the years, like it was never good,
(06:59):
but because we don't do it anymore, I. Absolutely not.
I cannot tell you the last time I picked up
a pen or pencil. I actually think my hand would
like start shaking, do you know my handwriting is so
bad to the point where the only time I usually
handwrite is on a card, so it's gotten so bad
that at this point in time, if someone's farewell card
is circling the office or someone's,
(07:20):
Birthday card, I have to run away, or I do
that thing where someone passes it to me and I've
already done it and I pass it on and I
haven't done it. That's because I can't, my handwriting's so
bad I can't when you write cards to people like
I don't write cards to people. That's so cute, you
got your nephew Jack to do this for you and
you're like, yeah, I used to get my mum to
do it but she's not always around, so we see
Meghan Markle's beautiful handwriting, but we start the show in
(07:42):
a Christmas tree farm. We do, OK.
I forget that like a Christmas tree is a thing
that people from overseas do, like we never did this.
We get a real Christmas tree. Well, firstly, we're in
the wrong climate to have a real Christmas tree. We
used to have one when I was kids in a
little tub out the front, a real Christmas tree in
a pot plant, we'd bring them inside, but it was
(08:04):
so awful we ended up throwing it away because you
know what, bringing that thing inside, it would stick you
with needles, dirt would fall shed everywhere, we had to
clean it every day, my brothers and sisters and I
would be crying.
It was also in like North Queensland summer, so bringing
it in and out was like, eventually I was like,
let's not ruin Christmas anymore and get rid of this
real Christmas tree. But Meghan Markle doesn't have that, she
(08:24):
sails through the Christmas tree farm like a little fairy,
and she wants an 8 ft to 9 ft Christmas tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which means it's like very, very tall, and she points
to the tallest one there and then the person who's
like finding the Christmas tree for her is like that's
too tall for you. Oh, yeah, but there was a part.
In there, so you know how she does like these
little jump cuts of where she's, and she does this
(08:44):
in season one and two where she's pre-making something for
the guest. There was one thing in the, right in
the beginning of the season that I was like, this
is my worst nightmare. What was it? It was when
she was making the advent calendar. Oh yeah, yeah. Did
you see her? Yeah, but I don't know what's upset you. Well,
she was putting like little notes in the advent calendar
(09:06):
that was cute, no.
Oh, Advent candy needs chocolate. Oh, I think she was
gonna put treats in there as well. Oh my God,
if my mum did that to me and I was
a kid and I opened like day 1 December first,
and it's like, I pull out a note that just says,
I love you, you're my favorite daughter, I'd have been like,
how dare you? Yeah, you would have thrown that in
the fire. I assumed she was putting chocolate in, but
(09:28):
maybe not. Oh my God, did I just invent that
in my head because the reality was too I don't.
Do you think little Archie and little Lilibeth are opening
their advent calendar every day and, and she was writing
little notes like I love you cos you're smart, I
love you cos you're brave. That's really nice, but I
also feel like if Meghan Markle's your mum, you're probably
hearing that all the time. She seems like she'd be
a really sweet mum who says that all the time.
I just feel like, I mean if my mum gave
(09:49):
me that now, I'd be like so grateful. I'd be
like this is so nice, but also are you OK? Yeah,
but also where's my chocolate, also where's my chocolate na
na na.
The one thing, sorry I'm jumping all over the place,
that's fine, there's no plot to follow, Emily, you go
where you want. The one thing I love about this
that I am gonna try this year, are you gonna
try something from Meghan Markle's special? Yes, wow, because I
(10:11):
am notoriously so bad at doing this one thing that,
Everyone else in my family is great at, yeah, wrapping gifts. OK,
I'm so glad we're talking about this because, as you know,
I was looking forward to the wrapping segment, when the
trailer for this came out, you and I watched it
and we were very excited for wrapping for many reasons.
One of them is like, so you're a bad rapper
(10:32):
you're saying, horrible rapper. Yeah, me too. So like the
paper becomes so loose that my like, even if I'm
wrapping something that's like, say like a board game, like
a perfect rectangle, it just you can't do a rectangle, OK,
not that I can judge.
My wrapping is so bad that when I was working
at Kmart as a teenager, I really wanted to get
on the Christmas wrapping table, so people would buy their gifts,
(10:52):
they'd come over and we'd wrap them because that was
the plum gig. You didn't have to stand at the
checkouts all day, you didn't have to go pick up
shoes or you didn't have to go clean like the
gardening area, or I'm like 15 and a man's like,
what lawnmower should I buy? And I'm like, I don't know,
I'm 15, never touched a lawnmower. Yeah, and so everyone
wanted to be on the Christmas wrapping table, and one
year I got on it cause I'd been at Kmart
for 3 years already and I was so excited. I
like did my hair nice that day cause I'm like
(11:13):
gonna be public facing.
And I got there and I was there for about
1 hour until my manager came and tapped me on
the shoulder. I was about 17, she's like, oh well,
we're just gonna take you off, cause my wrapping was
so bad. I was, I was trying so hard and
I've been really scarred since then and even now like
when my family see the big pile of presents under
the Christmas tree, cause I wrap so many presents at
(11:35):
Christmas time for my nieces and nephews and my sisters
and my mum, they always laugh at them and I
have to pretend to laugh, but inside I'm not laughing.
It really sucks and I always say yeah, oh my God,
I'm like yeah Andrew, I did it in a rush,
but I didn't do it in a rush, Emily, and
it really like I really feel it cos I also
feel like being like an adult woman who is single
and you're bringing presents to like an event, you, I,
(11:58):
in my head I'm like I should be the best
at this because I've had the most time to work
on this.
And that's always my oh my God, that's so true,
like we both swan into our family homes. Yeah, I'm
the only single one in my family. I've come from
the big city with my fancy job. I come from
the big city. I come from the big suburbia. I'm
(12:18):
Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home, Alabama, like coming home to
my little country town, and I should have the fancy gifts,
but instead they look like they've dropped off the back
of a tractor and then a bus has run over them.
It's so bad. I once saw my sister rewrap my presents.
To other people cause she was so embarrassed. So watching
Meghan Markle's Christmas special for us was not a game. No,
(12:38):
and can I say she's amazing at rapping. Oh, see,
I didn't find it that helpful. What did you find helpful?
Did you know she doesn't use any tape? Yeah, that
freaked me out. What the hell? I, I think she
went like 5 steps above where beginners like us should be,
and the worst part was.
Assumed we should be at a certain level, we're not
even on level one. She thought we've got the basics,
so she's like, oh these girls want real like artisanal,
(12:59):
like out of the box ways, yeah, where you're making
like a pattern, like origami with the wrapping paper, and
she's like, you could grab things around the house and
twist them in here and pull them in here, it's
an ancient Japanese style of, and I'm like, girl, I
don't have anything around my house. I have empty bottles
next to my vape maybe.
I have some old flowers in a vase, they're dead.
I've got a lot of lip gloss, I've got so
much hand sanitizer, nothing I can stick in a Christmas wrapping,
(13:21):
and then she's like, now I'm gonna help you with
the hardest thing to wrap that everyone struggles with, and
I was like, oh my God, thank God, it's gonna
be like a weird, even when.
You give like kids like the clothes still on coat
hangers and there's things sticking out weirdly or like you're
trying to wrap different items or something, I'm like, OK,
she's gonna do the hardest wrapping paper and I was
sitting there, it, I wasn't even watching for work, I
was watching for me. And then she pulls out a
(13:41):
bottle of wine, she goes, it's really hard to wrap
a bottle of wine. That's one of the easier things
to write, they come in their own bags.
You just go to Liquor Land and you'll be like,
I need a gift bag for this, sir. You just
pull the paper around it and wrap it around the
top and it like sits up like a little peacock thing.
I don't know, then that's when she started doing origami
around it and I was and then she pulled out
a handkerchief.
(14:01):
And she's like, you can find this at your like
local store for $1. I'm like, you do not, we
are going to a $15 scarf. Yeah, and also I'd
be giving that as the gift. That's the gift. She's
like I had this lying around, so already she's alienated
us when we needed her the most. Yeah, that's fair,
I did think about that with the bottle and when
she tried to do that, I mean she succeeded at, yeah,
(14:24):
she succeeded um bonbon like thing with the.
toy in the middle. Oh, OK, making the Christmas crackers.
So that was with our first guest, and again guys,
this is gonna be a very light, like factual episode,
so don't stress if you don't know who these guys are.
It's the holiday season. Yeah, it's the holidays, we're all
being merry. So one of the first guests was Will Gerro,
who's an American restaurateur. How do you become one of those,
(14:46):
a restaurateur, you have a lot of family money. No,
I'm sure I've said that and now it's everyone's like,
he worked up from his bootstraps, but do you just
go to a lot of?
Restaurants? No, no, no, you own restaurants. Sorry. Did you
think there was a job where you just hang out
at restaurants they were just like people who go to
restaurants and then post about them. No, that's a food critic,
got it, or a food blogger. A restaurateur is someone
who owns restaurants and runs them. I think we could
(15:08):
do that. We just said we can't use sticky tape. Why,
why do you think we'd be able to run a restaurant?
Once we've nailed wrapping, that's our next, that's it. Look
out world, it's over for the rest of you.
So Will comes in. What I thought was interesting is
because the same with the last two seasons of With
Love Megan, Meghan Markle does like a little pre-setup for
every guest. This is why I want to be friends
(15:29):
with her. I would love to arrive at one of
my friends' houses and have like a tailored cocktail, a
tailored snack, a tailored gift, all made with my personality
traits in mind. None of my friends do that, and
also I don't do it for them, so that's fair enough,
but she's like, oh, Will really loves Cachoe Pepe.
I she says with a little pepe pepe, but then
she's like, well, I'm not gonna make him a whole
(15:50):
bowl of pasta cos that would be excessive. And I
was like, what the, why the hell not? I was like, Megan,
I wanna know how you make cas pepper. Also this
whole show has been excessive. What do you mean? You
had someone come stay for one night and you custom
made them bath salts and wrapped them up in like
handwritten notes next to their bed with all of these
other handmade treats, and now she's like, oh no, making pasta.
I don't wanna be crazy. I actually got really sad.
(16:11):
That point, she was like he loves Caccio Pepe. I'm like, yes,
something I can make. I'm in the kitchen, tools ready,
this is an easy pasta, I know how to do it.
I wanna know how Meghan Markle does it. And she's like,
so I'm making Caccio Pepe gruyere, and I'm like, what
the hell is that? I still don't know what a
gruyere is, I feel like she's said it about 15 times.
And then she uses 5 appliances that I don't own,
didn't even know existed, and she's like, this is just
(16:33):
really fun and quick for when you have people come over.
I'm like, girl, that blender thing you're using looks.
Like a spaceship, yeah, and why are you wearing a
white jumper? Oh, well she can, she never spills. It's wild.
She's and her hair's so perfect and I don't think
anyone's like that, to be honest. There's a handful of people,
it's like her and Nigella that just wafted about a
kitchen like a little fairy looking beautiful, never, never stressed.
(16:57):
Guy sleeping, guy. Oh, OK, do you wanna talk about that?
Do you wanna do a little ode to your favorite dog?
Guy's still in Guy's still here guys.
Tell, tell people who Guy is because Emily, people have
real lives and jobs and they they don't know this.
So Guy is Meghan Markle's rescue beagle that she's had
for a very, very long time that she's in love with,
as you should be with your pet dog. He passed
(17:18):
away a long time.
Time ago now, but because the dog, but because they
filmed this back to back, he passed away before season
one ended, and because they filmed a back to back
guy's in season one, he's in season 2, and he's
now in this holiday special, and I'm like, can we
just let this dog rest?
When he jumps up in the Christmas special, cos it's
all of a sudden like he's there and I was like,
(17:40):
oh my God, it's Guy, and I was like, wait,
he's dead. He's been dead for I was like oh
my God, is he a ghost of Christmas past? That's
because I weirdly didn't acknowledge him in this app. Yeah,
maybe there was more guy scenes they had to cut him.
I thought he was like a little ghost coming back
to like help her like that dog so much. And
also speaking about the guy in the room, yeah, I come.
(18:00):
From a family that owned beagles, like we had two
beagles growing up. I've never seen a where's Meghan Markle.
I've never seen a beagle like that ever in my life.
What do you mean? Like he is just the perfect dog.
Like he like wants to be carried when she carries him,
he just sleeps the whole time. Our dogs slept the
whole time, but they snored really loudly. You can hear
(18:21):
him snoring a little bit in season one in a
different room, they must have relocated him.
It got moved out, but like I've never seen a
beagle so well behaved, and if you've had beagles, you
know there's no way in hell you can even cook
in front of them. Really? That dog would like on
his deathbed, that dog would be running around circles cos
that's literally what my dogs did, like literally the day
(18:42):
before they passed away, they were like eating.
Everything, every crumb, every like, I don't know why she's
just got the perfect, that's what I mean, there's something
in her life that just makes everyone around her be perfect. Yeah, see,
that's why we should be friends with her because we
would just be, what do you think would we'd be
like if we were friends with her? Oh my God,
I just, I feel like I just have one of
those cutaways in like an old school sitcom where everyone
just like.
(19:04):
And all of a sudden it's me. I just imagine
myself like wearing like really beautiful like soft cashmere jumpers
and floral dresses. I think I'd be down to earth
and only wear Zara. Oh my God, OK, Zara is
not down to earth. That's what she said. I know
that's high and low, that's low. I feel like my
hair would never.
be frizzy, I feel like I would never have a
stress-related rosacea flare-up. I feel like oh my God, imagine
(19:26):
us with our rosacea disappeared. The moment we step into
her kitchen, it just goes away. My skin tone will
fully change color. You become white. I'm like, I'm a
white person really on the inside this whole rosacea.
I just think we'd be better versions of ourselves. We're
just be making origami gift wrapping and it'd be so beautiful.
A girl can dream. So moving on to what she
(19:48):
did with Will, we're literally, guys, we're, our producer told
us to move on. Guys, I can't stress enough how
much we're 10 minutes into the special, and it was
an hour long. There's so much to say. We're more
than we did for the whole seasons when we did.
The woman knows how to make a TV show, can
I just say.
It's a TV show that people will watch, but she
knows how to make a TV show that's just like
layered with different, you know, things that are happening and
(20:10):
also to give her credit, I know a lot of
people have rubbished her, but as I was watching it
I was like, it is hard to be like the
one who's hosting and speaking to the camera and explaining
everything and still coming across natural, like she does a
good job. She does a good job and a lot
of the guests for this special, like, I wanna talk
about Naomi Osaka in a bit, but she was meeting
for the,
First time, which is so hard, so hard, so you're
(20:32):
meeting this person for the first time, they're like super,
super famous, you have to impress them, you also have
to get them on board with doing the stuff that's
part of your show, which is stuff that like celebrities
just don't do, yeah, like you're making Naomi Osaka paint
a plate, why? Yeah, exactly, and you're also like Naomi Osaka,
like so, so famous but also not camera facing famous,
(20:53):
so you're also having to make them,
Comfortable in the environment with like these big production cameras
in your face. Yeah, and it's a hard job. Exactly,
so with people you haven't met, it's hard, with people
you're friends with it's hard. I mean we get a
little taste on the pod, like, I know you've had
the same thing where you've had to host with someone
for the first time you don't know and you're trying
to make it sound warm and bantering and that's hard,
but then it's also hard when we have like friends
from the office come in here on the pod cos
(21:14):
it's a weird thing of like, we're friends but we
can't be like that on the pod so we have
to act differently in front of the camera, so,
In some ways we are Meghan Markle, that's what I'm
trying to say. We're, we're like 1 step forward, we're
1 step forward, 10 steps back. So with Will, she
makes the Christmas crackers. You know what I'm, I thought
was interesting because as they're making these Christmas crackers, she
talks about living in the UK and she never says
(21:35):
anything about the royal family, but she alludes to one
of the very few times in the series where she
alludes to her life in the UK and the fact
that she was a duchess there and she gave birth,
A child there and she was married there and she's
part of their history and all that sort of stuff like,
and she speaks quite fondly of it. Yeah, she does.
I think that that's very deliberate in a way because
so much of this show it's like a love letter
(21:56):
to California, it's a love letter to Montecito, it's a
love letter to this, to where she grew up and
she talks about like I went to school here and
I used to go here to shop and I, I
love going here for lunch and it's, it's very much
like in her world, which is the point of the show,
but she never really talks about her time in the UK.
Fair enough, historically wasn't great for her, but she talks
about the fact that with Christmas crackers, she says in
the UK it was more of a joint thing instead
(22:17):
of like reaching across the table and just two people
pulling one that everyone joins hands around the table and
makes a chain and they all pull at the same time,
and we do that here too, don't we? I did
think that, but I'm like maybe we have a lot
of Americas they don't America's, Americans, they don't, because I
remember a scene.
From Bluey went viral in America, really, because in Bluey
(22:39):
they had the Christmas crackers on the Christmas lunch table
and someone took a screenshot and posted it onto Reddit
and going, what are these things on the table? Really?
And then everyone had to explain it's like a UK
tradition because we were obviously colonized by the UK so
we have it as well, where we pull Christmas crackers
together and they were like, oh, wow, wow, Bluey has
blown minds across the world, honestly.
(23:00):
And now and now Meghan Markle has done the same thing,
and yeah, she talked about it being this really lovely
thing and people laugh and joke and there's riddles inside
and all that sort of stuff, and when I saw
that scene I was like, oh, everyone's gonna pull this
out and do all these crazy headlines around like Meghan
Markle references royal family in the UK and her special
and and I thought that would work even though she didn't.
And I actually haven't seen anyone do that yet, so
(23:22):
well done everyone, it's probably coming. It's like in the
copy but it's not in the headlines.
Yeah, exactly, no-one's trying to be salacious about it, which
I like. What I do wanna say about those Christmas
crackers is that they were packing heats. OK, I've never
had such a good Christmas cracker because they were making
them stuffing them cos they were personalized Christmas crackers. And
again she's like, you can buy these, but it's nicer
to make them at home with things you are lying around.
(23:43):
I'm like, again, Megan, I don't have stuff lying around,
everything in my apartment is for me and I need it.
Yeah I've got nothing lying around to give someone out
with a candle.
No, there's just like so much stuff in there that
I'm like, when those kids pull those apart, one of
them's losing an eye. Yeah, especially when the guy who
she's helping will be handy in there. Yeah, there's full
hard toys in there because he was like, oh, my
(24:04):
son would like a car, and she's like, we don't
have a car, she's like, can we get a car
to the face.
And then next minute the crew comes rushing back with
these cars to put in the bonbon and Meghan Markle
looks at the camera in terms just driving around California's like,
I need toy cars immediately, and then Meghan looks at
the camera and she goes, ah, the magic of television,
(24:25):
and it's all cute and stuff, but I've actually now
that you say that, I wonder if you know how
they keep saying that people keep leaving her company, if
like one of her assistants had to go find a
little plastic car within like 10 minutes or they were fired,
do we think that that's led here.
Do you think it's led to some of the people
who left her company? Maybe, Megan's like, you either find
the car or you're out there churning jam. It's like
(24:45):
Miranda Priestley in Devil Wears Prada. You have to pick,
if you're working for Meghan, you have to pick two roles, either,
The car person or the jam person, ah, neither of
those are plum jobs at the end of every season,
including the special, she does this big party for the
cast and crew. Can you imagine all her staff who
are churning jam outside watching this happen, watching that they're
not getting a party, they're not going to a party, mm,
not out of the jam factory. na na na. Alright,
(25:08):
do you wanna talk about Naomi since that's your, part
of the show that you most resonated or were horrified by?
I think I was just very uncomfortable with the situation
at hand. So firstly she like,
I assumed she was gonna bring on Serena Williams. Serena
wasn't ever gonna do that, but they're such close friends. No,
they are close friends, and she supports Meghan in other ways,
(25:29):
and I think Meghan is all about going to her
events and stuff. I just think Serena was like, oh no.
She's like, I've been in the, I get publicly scrutinized
as well. I'm running my empire with my fancy hot husband,
and she's got, she's got stuff going on. And the
way she was like teasing the,
Audience on who was coming, I was like, oh it's
so clearly Serena, and she was like, it's Naomi Osaka,
and I was like, 00, also love. I was gonna
(25:50):
say yeah, no-one would be let down by Osaka was
not let down by Naomi Osaka. It's, I think like
with all the guests who come on the show, you can,
it's so obvious that they're not filming during the holiday
season by their immediate reaction of walking into that kitchen
because they're all just like, 00, it's so Christmassy, so
jolly slaps you in the face.
Naomi comes across as very like scared. Oh, did you
(26:13):
get that? Did you not? Maybe, I was just like
maybe that's what she's like in it because she's scares
the wrong word. I think it's more bemused. Yeah, I
think she probably, cause you've gotta think, you arrive at
this mansion, there's 10 crew trucks out, like we don't
she's never met Megan. Yeah, so you have that meeting
someone you don't know, that's a set she's arrived at,
like they make it look like a cozy house, this
house they've rented for Meghan Markle to fill.
(26:34):
But it would be a set, sets are crazy. And
on the outside there'd be like 10 trucks and then
you've gotta have like porta potties outside, then you've gotta
have all the tech stuff, and then you've gotta have
craft services outside cause no one's eating in the kitchen,
they would eat at plastic tables outside. And then you
go in and you have all the different like set
up studio camera areas. I think there's about 10 people
on that filming crew at least cause sometimes they turn
(26:54):
the camera and you see everyone, all the producers because
they're eating all the food. Yeah.
And then they had to get her in there and
she's been mic'd up, so she's had a weird, we've
both had this many times, you have a weird guy's
hands and your boobs and your bra and your pants,
and sometimes in your hair, which is a hard one
for me. They always go, your hair's so thin. I'm like,
why would you bring that up? So we don't know
what's happened to my my my go to is always like,
(27:15):
Do you really need to wear those glasses, and I
was like, yes sir, I can't see. He's like, alright. Yeah,
no one talks about getting mic'd up. It's it's quite
a vulnerable experience. It's such a vulnerable experience. They point
out all your insecurities. They're like, oh no, that bra
strap's a bit thick, I won't be able to put
it on there. I'm like, oh my God.
So that's why do they do that? No, they're just like,
(27:37):
cos I guess they're like, we're colleagues, we're trying to
work out this mic, and you're like, oh my God,
you've just insulted my face, my hair, my eyesight, my
bra size. I once, sorry, tangent, I once got, oh,
your dress is a zipper, it would have been better
if they were buttons. OK, OK, I guess I'll just
go message the designer. Yeah, sorry about my cheap zipper dress,
sorry about my H& H&M dress. Jesus.
(27:58):
So what we're trying to say is, cause there is
a point to that, what we're trying to say is
Naomi came in already frazzled from all of our because
she would have had to be mic'd up to go
on there and she was probably like, this never happens
in tennis. I don't have to get mic'd up. They
just pass her the mic, a handheld mic when they're
finished playing the match. So she's frazzled, she's frazzled, she
comes in, Megan makes her a snack, and then they're straight.
(28:22):
To the craft making, yeah, and they're making plates, not
making plates, like painting plates, yeah, that looked quite fun,
but I think Meghan was a bit, she gave nervous
energy during this. Oh, do you think so? I think
it's every season she kind of has the one guest
that's a bit of like the really well-known, the celebrity guests,
so like obviously the first season Mindy Kaling, second season
I would say Chrissy Teigen, obviously there's lots of other
(28:43):
people on that have huge followings, but there's always one.
A-lister like actors, celebrities there's always one who's a bit
more like mainstreamy and I think Naomi Osaka was the
mainstream person and Naomi Osaka was not helping her out
at all. And I think Megan did the thing which
I think all interviewers do where you have to put
yourself down to make the other person look really good
(29:04):
and feel comfortable, and she did that by telling Naomi
that she really sucks at tennis.
And then I think that's literally when Naomi opened up
and she's like I have to see this, and Megan's
like no, and I was like, OK girls, we got there,
we got there, we made Naomi smile, that's all we wanted.
And then she had this thing where like she was
really frustrated with the way she was painting a plate,
which looked beautiful. Yeah, wow, this is the most like favorable.
(29:27):
You've bearded this whole show. Yeah, cos she tried to
do the little Holly and she's like that's not how
you do Holly, and I was like that looked like
Holly to me. Yeah, yeah, well we're the bars low
and then she went back to the calligraphy cos that's
what she knew. Yeah. But I just found that whole
interaction like as someone whose job is to constantly talk
to people who you don't know and pretend that you
already have that comaderie, like I felt that for her.
The heavy lift, yeah, the heavy lift and Naomi.
(29:51):
There was one part where Megan was like, and the
holidays are meant to be like relaxing, like you're with
your family, and Naomi's like yes, and then she just
mentioned how like the only like little stressful part is
that she constantly has to run after her daughter and
then Megan's like, but that's so nice. And He's just like,
like it jumped cut to her reaction and then straight
away cut back to Megan cos her face was literally like,
is it? She's probably like, no, it's it's exhausting exhausting
(30:13):
I'm really tired. But yeah, what a friendship, I hope
they stay friends.
Something tells me no. Something tells me no. No, I
feel like she was kind of, I mean, the thing is,
it just sounds like Naomi Osaka's kind of busy and
she doesn't really wanna hang out doing homewares. She looked
amazing though. She always wears great clothes. Oh, everyone in
the show, not the men because I wasn't really looking
at them, all the ladies looked fab. I liked when
Meghan had her friends over and they had the little
(30:34):
pajama party. That was fun. Yeah, you know what I
really liked about them, how they made the Christmas wreath. Oh,
and Meghan was like.
I'm excited to see how different all of us look. OK,
I did wanna talk to you about this cos this
is the only time where I saw like, what I
kind of think might be the real Meghan Markle come
through because it was so funny cos they were, at
first it was all fun, like they were all in
(30:54):
pajamas and she's making little treats for them and they
arrived and I'm like, again like this is why I
wanna be friends with you, because I would love to
go to a pajama party and make cocktails, and they
were just having the best time and then she was like,
we're gonna make Christmas wreaths. And then as she's laying
out all,
The materials and do anything and she goes, we're all
gonna make them, and it's not a competition, but the
way she said it, it was so a competition and
(31:15):
then it was, it felt like quite there was some
like tension in the room. No, I think there was,
you know what it was like the two of them
were like bantering together and she was off in a
corner by herself. No, she was making the best wreath.
She was not messing around. No way she was not
making the best wreath, like it was, there was no way.
Any kind of yeah fun when someone's like, oh it's
just for fun, don't worry about it, no.
That was a deathly serious game of wreath making, you
(31:36):
know what it reminds me of when she and Chrissy
Teigen were making the flower jewelry in season two, do
you remember that? How it started all like cutesy and
they're making the flowers and then Chrissy forgot the names
of her kids and when they were born. Just classic.
When were they born? What are their names, how many
are there? Fair enough, she's got a lot of kids.
And then they started making the flower jewelry, and it's
that thing of like you have with a friend where
(31:56):
you're like, oh, I'm gonna show you, it's OK if
you do it badly, and all of a sudden they
start doing it really good, and you're like, 00, and
so that's when Meghan Markle saw Chrissy Teigen's jewelry, she
was a bit like, oh, and it was quite good,
and she kind of was a bit like, it was
very subtle, but she was like, cut that part, cut
that part. Yeah, she was floundering. And I think with
the Christmas wreeves too, she was like, it's.
(32:16):
Totally fine as long as mine's the best. Yeah, oh that, yeah,
that was fun. Competitive Christmas wreath making. I know we
saw the same thing, the first time we saw it
was I think it was season one, season one when
they did the flower arrangements. Oh my god, yes, I
forgot about that. Oh, so it's it's been an ongoing
arc in every season. Oh Megan, love you. Well, if
you're meant to be the expert, yeah, you can't have
(32:38):
someone come on and make a better flower wreath than you.
She did make something crazy though. What? When she invited
Tom Collocchio over.
He's like the Top Chef judge, and she had that
snack arrangement to make it look like a wreath, and
I'm like these are all just raw vegetables and a
dip at the end. I know, but you get like
he's such a renowned chef, like are you going to
make something that he's gonna love, like shouldn't you just
(32:59):
go for something that looks good on TV? So you
give him like raw vegetables? Yeah, I mean I'm sure
wasn't there a dip or something, I don't know. I
feel like she was quite starstruck around him, maybe she
was just nervous, and she told him, she's like, I
love you, yeah, and I believed her.
You know how sometimes you just meet someone who you're
just like, I'm weirdly obsessed with you. Nothing I say
is gonna make it OK. So he's in the last
bit and so they're making the gumbo, right? Yeah, her
(33:21):
mum's gumbo, yeah, which looked freaking amazing. Oh my God,
have you been to New Orleans? No, but it's top
of my travel list. You have to go because gumbo
is like insane. I know, I wanna have the beignets.
I wanna have beignets gumbo and I wanna go look
for all the, you know, the vampire myths started there.
There's like a whole history of vampires. Do you know that, right? OK,
(33:43):
well I'm going for the beignets, I'm going for the gumbo,
I'm going for the vampires and the ghosties. you'll find them.
I know they'll all be there. I never come back.
And then we see H. Yeah, so this is so
important because at the end of every Meghan Markle specials,
this is our third one now, at the end of
every one, a bewildered Prince Harry wanders into frame, and
that's when you know, you know, like in the old,
(34:04):
like back when when you were a kid, I don't
know if you had this like.
Like at the end of like the kids' programming for
the night, like 7 o'clock, a little like animal would
come on and be like, it's time to go to bed.
That's what I think when I see Prince Harry coming on,
he's like it's the end of the special. Prince Harry's
here you think someone announced him before he walked into
the room, like they announced her? Yeah, probably, like from
(34:24):
that viral article where they announced Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,
oh God, last minute after all the reviews of season
one and season two, she had to be like, they
had to cut that.
So Harry wanders in, bewildered, a little nervous. The weird
thing is, and probably one of the reasons it was
so smart that he married her, apart from the fact
that I do think that they're like desperately in love,
but just from a logistics point of view, is that
(34:46):
like he seems weirdly, maybe it's just when he's on
TV but he's been raised to be in the spotlight.
He's been raised to talk to people he doesn't know,
his whole life was being in the public eye. So
you think he would be really good at that, and
he is sometimes, but not compared to Meghan Markle.
She's just so good at stuff like that. I think
you could, she could walk into a room of 30
people that she doesn't know who are all awkward, and
(35:07):
they would say to her, host a 1 hour special
with each of these people, and she could do it.
Like she's so good at it. If I needed someone
to be like a live presenter or someone or someone
to host an event and just be like make everyone
feel comfortable and happy and stuff, like she's your go
to girl. His job is to be the down to
earth chill guy because that's all he's. Well, he chills
so much he barely, he like sinks into the background.
(35:28):
I liked how he came in and he just straight
away started bad mouthing her jumbo and saying that it's
not as good as your mum's. Yeah, well he's trying
to get points for I paraphrased.
That's essentially what happens. Meghan, Markle, and Harry are fighting. Yeah, yeah,
he likes her mum's gumbo better than hers, and you know, well,
it's her mum has perfected the recipe, so it's probably fair.
Can I tell you what I thought? He's a picky eater.
(35:48):
Oh my God, OK, yes, I need to get to this.
He gave me the biggest dick ever. OK, how's she
dating this man? Well, they're not dating, they're married. They're
married with two children. You're like, it doesn't matter, stop
dating him. Longest situation I've ever seen. You can be married,
but you can't date him anymore.
OK, here's the fun thing about this, is that everyone
thinks that Prince Harry's biggest enemy is his brother Prince
(36:10):
William and by default Princess Catherine, or maybe they think
his enemy his biggest enemy in the world is the
British press, like there's all these things.
Prince Harry's real biggest enemy in the whole world is
a salad, the salad that had the audacity to come
onto this show. Yeah, he hated everything in that salad.
That salad, I felt like he was gonna like leave
(36:31):
that salad sounded like my wet dream. Yeah, do you
remember what was in it? It was like, yes, it
was like beetroots, olives, I think pickles, definitely anchovies. I
think that was it. So Tom, the acclaimed chef who,
Meghan Markle is fawning over, has made this salad, Prince
Harry wanders in, hi, I'm Harry, nice to see you,
kind of vibes, and then Meghan makes a crack about
(36:52):
the fact that he would hate everything on that salad,
and they, as they list all those ingredients, Prince Harry's
just getting like sicker looking and sicker looking, he's like,
I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't
like that. He's like, he hated that salad. He was
traumatized by the salad, he was victimized by the salad
so picky that like even when they were talking about
her mum's gumbo, he's like, I love.
Her mum's gumbo before the fish goes in, yeah, and
(37:13):
then she's like, oh yeah, my mum always saves a
little portion for H before she puts the rest of
the ingredients in sausage. Yeah, and then she's like, yeah,
cos this gives it a real kick, you know what,
I think like, and you know what, this is actually
pissing me off. This is a man who grew up
with everything at like his fingertips, like he could eat
whatever he wants, anything he wanted, he could have, and
as someone who literally eats everything and loves all food,
(37:36):
I am mad.
He doesn't, he doesn't deserve that. Well, I wonder if
I deserve to be a prince. I eat everything. You
should have been Prince Harry. Uh, like that actually made
me so sad. It was, and also he's married to
this incredible cook, and he has all these incredible cooks
and chefs coming in and out of the house, and
you know what, I think he realized he was coming
across badly because he comes into the room, he's been
(37:57):
there for 5 minutes. He doesn't like the salad, he
doesn't like the gumbo, he doesn't like fish, he doesn't
like sausage, it's like, sorry sir, what do you wanna eat, sand?
And then he was like, oh, I'm not a picky eater.
I eat everything. And I was like, thou doth protest
too much, sir, because you just didn't eat like 50
things in this room. Oh my God, what a liar.
What a liar. I remember him saying. Why is someone
talking about the lies of Prince Harry? Yeah, he, he
(38:17):
didn't put that in spare. I can tell you that
right now. Maybe he's saving for his next book, the
real me. The next book, maybe it's a cooking book,
it's like.
His ingredients is like he's like flour, water, eggs, don't
eat anything else. Oh my god. So I, yeah, I
got the bit, I think I got the ick too
from him being a picky eater. He's a grown man
and grow up, grow up. Eat an olive. Try it,
(38:40):
you might like it. I bet he hates caviar, he's
one of those rich people who hates caviar. Oh my God,
you hate cos you love caviar. Oh my god, don't
tell them.
Someone send us caviar cause when we go to events
and M sees a little bump of caviar, I don't
see her for the rest of the night, she's across
the room. Don't tell them that. No, I'm telling her
that they send us caviar. It's OK if we can't
afford caviar. Yeah, that's like we can't afford it, so
(39:01):
when I get it, I don't eat it exactly, and
I would love Megan's spicy gumbo, so like the whole
family can't eat the proper spicy gumbo, they've gotta make him.
A little special I literally, everything she's made in that show,
I would literally gobble, except those weird reindeer droppings. What
was that about? What did she say these are called
pet food? Yeah, pet, but, no, she said pet food
(39:22):
I think. I didn't. She's like these are called pet food,
but for this moment in time we'll call them reindeer food.
It reindeer and I was like, I was like, Megan,
neither of those sounds great. No, and it was for
his wife. Imagine coming home from Meghan Markle's house and
that's what you get. Jesus.
I know there's a lot, there's a lot of hidden
dramas here that no-one's talking about. So then they have
all the cast and crew come in for like their
normal end of year thing, shaming the people in the shed,
(39:45):
churning jam. Yeah, everyone else is eating all the beautiful
gumbo in the food. Harry's in the corner eating a
stale white piece of bread cause all he could stomach
with his delicate stomach. Should have left a Caccio Pepe
rue for him. He probably couldn't handle the.
I just, yeah, I just feel like Prince Harry has
not come out of this looking great. No, sorry, Harry. Well,
I guess that is the end of our Meghan Markle
brutally honest review. Can I just say we have watched
(40:07):
my favorite one. This one, it was such a fun,
simple time, wasn't it? I like the length of it.
One hour. We do love Meghan, we stand in solidarity
with her and her picky eater of her husband. We wish.
She just gave more relatable gift wrapping tips, but maybe
that's an us thing. Yeah, we needed a beginner's lesson
before we went the rest of the world, yeah, maybe
the rest of the world has mastered sticky tape. So,
(40:28):
but anyway, if you would love to, even though I
maybe haven't given it the best review and we've spoiled
all the fun parts, with Love, Megan Holiday special is
now streaming on Netflix. If you would like to watch it,
Christmas inspo.
Thank you so much for listening to the spill today.
If you're enjoying what you're hearing, please leave us a
5 star rating and review. It will take you 1 2nd,
(40:49):
and it is the single best way to help us.
Plus our morning dose of entertainment news, morning tea, drops
right here in this feed on Monday morning. Just hit
follow so you don't miss a thing. The spill is
produced by Meetia Warran with sound production by Scott Stronick.
We will see you next week. Bye, bye. na.
From Mamma Mia, welcome to the Spill, your daily pop
culture fix. I'm Laura Brodney and I'm Em Burnham, and
we're getting so close to Christmas, festive cheer is in
the air. It's the time to be nice to people,
it's the time to give back and think about what
you want your life to look like, indulgence in festive cheer,
and with that in mind, wait, what's your favorite Christmas carol?
(00:33):
Christmas carol.
This is such a plot twist. I know you're just
thinking what, what the scene in Mindy's Project where she
sings sexy Santa Baby.
Well, she wants to come out and sing it. She's
got a whole plan, but then she doesn't do it
and Miriam Menos is like, I'll give it a go.
(00:53):
She sings it perfectly. Yeah, I would love to say
a beautiful song, but is maybe that was my first thought,
is my favorite Christmas song. I actually wanna watch that
episode baby. Let's just stop the recording and watch it
right now, everyone. What's your favorite? Oh, I quite like
Deck the Hall of Holly la la la la.
La la la. OK, yeah, that, that particular rendition was great.
(01:18):
I thought you were gonna say like a Jonas Brothers
Christmas song or something, so I do feel like I
bet they do. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they'd be all
over that shit. So we both have questions like my
son tried to sound like Nick, it's fine. Yeah, you
really did. Um, so we both obviously from your little
side quest there, it's very clear.
We both have questionable taste in Christmas songs. You know
(01:42):
who doesn't have questionable taste in Christmas music? Who I
bet has a just impeccable selection of songs of her
Christmas holidays? Meghan Markle. Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, that's
Meghan Sussex to you. Well, I know, can I just
say in the credits for all her recent projects, it
does say Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. You know what,
for better and for worse people, that is her name.
(02:02):
And she's entitled. She's got this identity crisis. If anyone's upset,
you can just go and change your own name to
something too, like anyone can have any name they want.
That's her official name. Could I be Emily, Duchess of Sussex?
I don't think you're allowed to use Duchess. I could
be any name. No, there's some rules around titles. This
is not the intro we had planned.
(02:23):
There's some rules around titles, but you could call yourself
Emily Sussex and no-one would say anything. I might say something,
I'd be like, are you OK? Yeah, thank you, I
would need that. That intro aside.
I'll be impressed if that makes a dare, to be honest.
That intro aside, we are here to do a brutally
honest review of With Love, Megan Holiday Special. That is
(02:44):
the official title. The girl doesn't sleep. She does not sleep. Well,
I mean, this is a project that has been chopped up, so,
so do you think they filmed this in like July? Yes, yes,
I I definitely do. So obviously this year we have
been blessed or cursed.
Depending how you took that show, with two different seasons
of With Love, Megan, her lifestyle show where she took
us through cooking and entertaining and making flower jewelry and
(03:07):
having tea parties with Mindy Haling. What a rollicking time.
And they were filmed back to back, but we got
them like a year apart. I don't know if it's
quite a year, but many, yeah, many months apart. So
just this week, Wednesday night to be exact.
Netflix gave us a hour early Christmas present, which was
Megan's holiday special. I do think they were filmed all
together and they've just sliced them up, which I think
(03:29):
is probably a very good thing for her and her
guests because there were some very critical people, especially of
the first season, then especially of the second season. There
were some really hateful comments and I don't know how
you would go back and film such a whimsical show
knowing that people were ready to hate you, so I
think it was good it was filmed in one go. Yeah.
This latest holiday rendition, it's still fairly new, but the
(03:51):
reviews have been trickling in and they're not good. Yeah,
so a lot of critics like us, because here's the thing,
for anything to do with Meghan Markle, Netflix does not
give us screeners. So for a lot of other things
that come on Netflix, we often get new shows and
movies a week or so before they drop into our
accounts and we can watch them and get our reviews
ready and formulate our thoughts. With Meghan Markle we have
to watch with the,
(04:11):
of the world, so 7 p.m. Wednesday night, you and I,
separate couches in our little city girl apartments, pressed play
on this and we watched it all the way through,
and I do think the only people watching it potentially
were just us and the other critics. I knew it
was just us because it was just us. Netflix was
not even feeding it to me, like I actually had
to search it in Netflix. Yeah, I had to search
it too. I had to say to you, hey, it's
(04:31):
up there now. I'm sure you can't find it because
you have to go and you have to type out
the full name. I know.
I thought they would put a long name as well.
I thought they would put it up in the splash
in the banner. Netflix, don't hide this, come on. They're
busy with Stranger Things. I know, but they like, it's
like you paid Meghan Markle to make this and put
it in the front page. I remember they, I had
to do the same thing with the second season of
(04:52):
With Love Meghan as well, like I had to search
it up, it wasn't being fed to me even though
I watched the full first season. Netflix is like nothing
to see here. Yeah. And I mean after the first season,
Netflix did.
Like their topmost shows and how many people watched each show,
and With Love Meghan got watched a lot, but I
remember when we were talking about that on the podcast,
it was lower than we expected. Yeah, especially how much
(05:14):
money they gave them. Oh absolutely, I think a lot
of with these sort of shows and with Meghan Markle
just because her name is such a thing for headlines,
that a lot of people don't always watch the show
but they're very invested in the content around it and
the reviews and the opinions and the thoughts.
Which is why we thought we'd do a brutally honest
review today. So normally with brutally honest reviews, because we're
talking about the biggest TV shows and movies that have
(05:35):
just come out, we do say watch it first because
spoilers galore. There's no spoilers for this. You don't have
to have watched the special, no plot twists are coming,
no little surprise. I mean, we have a few surprising thoughts.
Let me tell you. So this is gonna be a
bit of a wild ride, but if you haven't watched it,
that's fine. We'll, we'll walk you through it.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
I love the holiday season.
It's about finding time to connect with the people we love.
Embracing traditions. I like this and making new ones. We
are now in. It's pretty jolly here. Let's go crab.
(06:16):
Hey y'all.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So we start off with Meghan Markle, and again, no
hate to Meghan Markle, can I just say, I have
said the same thing every time we've talked about a
Meghan Markle show, is that I would love to be
friends with her or someone like her.
I have no-one in my life who makes pretty cocktails
like that, who like goes all out with festive things,
who would make me little gift baskets and calligraphy my
(06:38):
name on things. She's got beautiful handwriting. She's got beautiful handwriting.
I'll give her that. Well, I mean I no, I'd
give her so many things. I'm impressed with her every
time I watch one of these specials. The handwriting thing
always throws me, and again this year she was writing
on the Christmas cracker thing, she was writing Christmas cards
and that,
That made me really sad because my handwriting has gotten
so bad over the years, like it was never good,
(06:59):
but because we don't do it anymore, I. Absolutely not.
I cannot tell you the last time I picked up
a pen or pencil. I actually think my hand would
like start shaking, do you know my handwriting is so
bad to the point where the only time I usually
handwrite is on a card, so it's gotten so bad
that at this point in time, if someone's farewell card
is circling the office or someone's,
(07:20):
Birthday card, I have to run away, or I do
that thing where someone passes it to me and I've
already done it and I pass it on and I
haven't done it. That's because I can't, my handwriting's so
bad I can't when you write cards to people like
I don't write cards to people. That's so cute, you
got your nephew Jack to do this for you and
you're like, yeah, I used to get my mum to
do it but she's not always around, so we see
Meghan Markle's beautiful handwriting, but we start the show in
(07:42):
a Christmas tree farm. We do, OK.
I forget that like a Christmas tree is a thing
that people from overseas do, like we never did this.
We get a real Christmas tree. Well, firstly, we're in
the wrong climate to have a real Christmas tree. We
used to have one when I was kids in a
little tub out the front, a real Christmas tree in
a pot plant, we'd bring them inside, but it was
(08:04):
so awful we ended up throwing it away because you
know what, bringing that thing inside, it would stick you
with needles, dirt would fall shed everywhere, we had to
clean it every day, my brothers and sisters and I
would be crying.
It was also in like North Queensland summer, so bringing
it in and out was like, eventually I was like,
let's not ruin Christmas anymore and get rid of this
real Christmas tree. But Meghan Markle doesn't have that, she
(08:24):
sails through the Christmas tree farm like a little fairy,
and she wants an 8 ft to 9 ft Christmas tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which means it's like very, very tall, and she points
to the tallest one there and then the person who's
like finding the Christmas tree for her is like that's
too tall for you. Oh, yeah, but there was a part.
In there, so you know how she does like these
little jump cuts of where she's, and she does this
(08:44):
in season one and two where she's pre-making something for
the guest. There was one thing in the, right in
the beginning of the season that I was like, this
is my worst nightmare. What was it? It was when
she was making the advent calendar. Oh yeah, yeah. Did
you see her? Yeah, but I don't know what's upset you. Well,
she was putting like little notes in the advent calendar
(09:06):
that was cute, no.
Oh, Advent candy needs chocolate. Oh, I think she was
gonna put treats in there as well. Oh my God,
if my mum did that to me and I was
a kid and I opened like day 1 December first,
and it's like, I pull out a note that just says,
I love you, you're my favorite daughter, I'd have been like,
how dare you? Yeah, you would have thrown that in
the fire. I assumed she was putting chocolate in, but
(09:28):
maybe not. Oh my God, did I just invent that
in my head because the reality was too I don't.
Do you think little Archie and little Lilibeth are opening
their advent calendar every day and, and she was writing
little notes like I love you cos you're smart, I
love you cos you're brave. That's really nice, but I
also feel like if Meghan Markle's your mum, you're probably
hearing that all the time. She seems like she'd be
a really sweet mum who says that all the time.
I just feel like, I mean if my mum gave
(09:49):
me that now, I'd be like so grateful. I'd be
like this is so nice, but also are you OK? Yeah,
but also where's my chocolate, also where's my chocolate na
na na.
The one thing, sorry I'm jumping all over the place,
that's fine, there's no plot to follow, Emily, you go
where you want. The one thing I love about this
that I am gonna try this year, are you gonna
try something from Meghan Markle's special? Yes, wow, because I
(10:11):
am notoriously so bad at doing this one thing that,
Everyone else in my family is great at, yeah, wrapping gifts. OK,
I'm so glad we're talking about this because, as you know,
I was looking forward to the wrapping segment, when the
trailer for this came out, you and I watched it
and we were very excited for wrapping for many reasons.
One of them is like, so you're a bad rapper
(10:32):
you're saying, horrible rapper. Yeah, me too. So like the
paper becomes so loose that my like, even if I'm
wrapping something that's like, say like a board game, like
a perfect rectangle, it just you can't do a rectangle, OK,
not that I can judge.
My wrapping is so bad that when I was working
at Kmart as a teenager, I really wanted to get
on the Christmas wrapping table, so people would buy their gifts,
(10:52):
they'd come over and we'd wrap them because that was
the plum gig. You didn't have to stand at the
checkouts all day, you didn't have to go pick up
shoes or you didn't have to go clean like the
gardening area, or I'm like 15 and a man's like,
what lawnmower should I buy? And I'm like, I don't know,
I'm 15, never touched a lawnmower. Yeah, and so everyone
wanted to be on the Christmas wrapping table, and one
year I got on it cause I'd been at Kmart
for 3 years already and I was so excited. I
like did my hair nice that day cause I'm like
(11:13):
gonna be public facing.
And I got there and I was there for about
1 hour until my manager came and tapped me on
the shoulder. I was about 17, she's like, oh well,
we're just gonna take you off, cause my wrapping was
so bad. I was, I was trying so hard and
I've been really scarred since then and even now like
when my family see the big pile of presents under
the Christmas tree, cause I wrap so many presents at
(11:35):
Christmas time for my nieces and nephews and my sisters
and my mum, they always laugh at them and I
have to pretend to laugh, but inside I'm not laughing.
It really sucks and I always say yeah, oh my God,
I'm like yeah Andrew, I did it in a rush,
but I didn't do it in a rush, Emily, and
it really like I really feel it cos I also
feel like being like an adult woman who is single
and you're bringing presents to like an event, you, I,
(11:58):
in my head I'm like I should be the best
at this because I've had the most time to work
on this.
And that's always my oh my God, that's so true,
like we both swan into our family homes. Yeah, I'm
the only single one in my family. I've come from
the big city with my fancy job. I come from
the big city. I come from the big suburbia. I'm
(12:18):
Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home, Alabama, like coming home to
my little country town, and I should have the fancy gifts,
but instead they look like they've dropped off the back
of a tractor and then a bus has run over them.
It's so bad. I once saw my sister rewrap my presents.
To other people cause she was so embarrassed. So watching
Meghan Markle's Christmas special for us was not a game. No,
(12:38):
and can I say she's amazing at rapping. Oh, see,
I didn't find it that helpful. What did you find helpful?
Did you know she doesn't use any tape? Yeah, that
freaked me out. What the hell? I, I think she
went like 5 steps above where beginners like us should be,
and the worst part was.
Assumed we should be at a certain level, we're not
even on level one. She thought we've got the basics,
so she's like, oh these girls want real like artisanal,
(12:59):
like out of the box ways, yeah, where you're making
like a pattern, like origami with the wrapping paper, and
she's like, you could grab things around the house and
twist them in here and pull them in here, it's
an ancient Japanese style of, and I'm like, girl, I
don't have anything around my house. I have empty bottles
next to my vape maybe.
I have some old flowers in a vase, they're dead.
I've got a lot of lip gloss, I've got so
much hand sanitizer, nothing I can stick in a Christmas wrapping,
(13:21):
and then she's like, now I'm gonna help you with
the hardest thing to wrap that everyone struggles with, and
I was like, oh my God, thank God, it's gonna
be like a weird, even when.
You give like kids like the clothes still on coat
hangers and there's things sticking out weirdly or like you're
trying to wrap different items or something, I'm like, OK,
she's gonna do the hardest wrapping paper and I was
sitting there, it, I wasn't even watching for work, I
was watching for me. And then she pulls out a
(13:41):
bottle of wine, she goes, it's really hard to wrap
a bottle of wine. That's one of the easier things
to write, they come in their own bags.
You just go to Liquor Land and you'll be like,
I need a gift bag for this, sir. You just
pull the paper around it and wrap it around the
top and it like sits up like a little peacock thing.
I don't know, then that's when she started doing origami
around it and I was and then she pulled out
a handkerchief.
(14:01):
And she's like, you can find this at your like
local store for $1. I'm like, you do not, we
are going to a $15 scarf. Yeah, and also I'd
be giving that as the gift. That's the gift. She's
like I had this lying around, so already she's alienated
us when we needed her the most. Yeah, that's fair,
I did think about that with the bottle and when
she tried to do that, I mean she succeeded at, yeah,
(14:24):
she succeeded um bonbon like thing with the.
toy in the middle. Oh, OK, making the Christmas crackers.
So that was with our first guest, and again guys,
this is gonna be a very light, like factual episode,
so don't stress if you don't know who these guys are.
It's the holiday season. Yeah, it's the holidays, we're all
being merry. So one of the first guests was Will Gerro,
who's an American restaurateur. How do you become one of those,
(14:46):
a restaurateur, you have a lot of family money. No,
I'm sure I've said that and now it's everyone's like,
he worked up from his bootstraps, but do you just
go to a lot of?
Restaurants? No, no, no, you own restaurants. Sorry. Did you
think there was a job where you just hang out
at restaurants they were just like people who go to
restaurants and then post about them. No, that's a food critic,
got it, or a food blogger. A restaurateur is someone
who owns restaurants and runs them. I think we could
(15:08):
do that. We just said we can't use sticky tape. Why,
why do you think we'd be able to run a restaurant?
Once we've nailed wrapping, that's our next, that's it. Look
out world, it's over for the rest of you.
So Will comes in. What I thought was interesting is
because the same with the last two seasons of With
Love Megan, Meghan Markle does like a little pre-setup for
every guest. This is why I want to be friends
(15:29):
with her. I would love to arrive at one of
my friends' houses and have like a tailored cocktail, a
tailored snack, a tailored gift, all made with my personality
traits in mind. None of my friends do that, and
also I don't do it for them, so that's fair enough,
but she's like, oh, Will really loves Cachoe Pepe.
I she says with a little pepe pepe, but then
she's like, well, I'm not gonna make him a whole
(15:50):
bowl of pasta cos that would be excessive. And I
was like, what the, why the hell not? I was like, Megan,
I wanna know how you make cas pepper. Also this
whole show has been excessive. What do you mean? You
had someone come stay for one night and you custom
made them bath salts and wrapped them up in like
handwritten notes next to their bed with all of these
other handmade treats, and now she's like, oh no, making pasta.
I don't wanna be crazy. I actually got really sad.
(16:11):
That point, she was like he loves Caccio Pepe. I'm like, yes,
something I can make. I'm in the kitchen, tools ready,
this is an easy pasta, I know how to do it.
I wanna know how Meghan Markle does it. And she's like,
so I'm making Caccio Pepe gruyere, and I'm like, what
the hell is that? I still don't know what a
gruyere is, I feel like she's said it about 15 times.
And then she uses 5 appliances that I don't own,
didn't even know existed, and she's like, this is just
(16:33):
really fun and quick for when you have people come over.
I'm like, girl, that blender thing you're using looks.
Like a spaceship, yeah, and why are you wearing a
white jumper? Oh, well she can, she never spills. It's wild.
She's and her hair's so perfect and I don't think
anyone's like that, to be honest. There's a handful of people,
it's like her and Nigella that just wafted about a
kitchen like a little fairy looking beautiful, never, never stressed.
(16:57):
Guy sleeping, guy. Oh, OK, do you wanna talk about that?
Do you wanna do a little ode to your favorite dog?
Guy's still in Guy's still here guys.
Tell, tell people who Guy is because Emily, people have
real lives and jobs and they they don't know this.
So Guy is Meghan Markle's rescue beagle that she's had
for a very, very long time that she's in love with,
as you should be with your pet dog. He passed
(17:18):
away a long time.
Time ago now, but because the dog, but because they
filmed this back to back, he passed away before season
one ended, and because they filmed a back to back
guy's in season one, he's in season 2, and he's
now in this holiday special, and I'm like, can we
just let this dog rest?
When he jumps up in the Christmas special, cos it's
all of a sudden like he's there and I was like,
(17:40):
oh my God, it's Guy, and I was like, wait,
he's dead. He's been dead for I was like oh
my God, is he a ghost of Christmas past? That's
because I weirdly didn't acknowledge him in this app. Yeah,
maybe there was more guy scenes they had to cut him.
I thought he was like a little ghost coming back
to like help her like that dog so much. And
also speaking about the guy in the room, yeah, I come.
(18:00):
From a family that owned beagles, like we had two
beagles growing up. I've never seen a where's Meghan Markle.
I've never seen a beagle like that ever in my life.
What do you mean? Like he is just the perfect dog.
Like he like wants to be carried when she carries him,
he just sleeps the whole time. Our dogs slept the
whole time, but they snored really loudly. You can hear
(18:21):
him snoring a little bit in season one in a
different room, they must have relocated him.
It got moved out, but like I've never seen a
beagle so well behaved, and if you've had beagles, you
know there's no way in hell you can even cook
in front of them. Really? That dog would like on
his deathbed, that dog would be running around circles cos
that's literally what my dogs did, like literally the day
(18:42):
before they passed away, they were like eating.
Everything, every crumb, every like, I don't know why she's
just got the perfect, that's what I mean, there's something
in her life that just makes everyone around her be perfect. Yeah, see,
that's why we should be friends with her because we
would just be, what do you think would we'd be
like if we were friends with her? Oh my God,
I just, I feel like I just have one of
those cutaways in like an old school sitcom where everyone
just like.
(19:04):
And all of a sudden it's me. I just imagine
myself like wearing like really beautiful like soft cashmere jumpers
and floral dresses. I think I'd be down to earth
and only wear Zara. Oh my God, OK, Zara is
not down to earth. That's what she said. I know
that's high and low, that's low. I feel like my
hair would never.
be frizzy, I feel like I would never have a
stress-related rosacea flare-up. I feel like oh my God, imagine
(19:26):
us with our rosacea disappeared. The moment we step into
her kitchen, it just goes away. My skin tone will
fully change color. You become white. I'm like, I'm a
white person really on the inside this whole rosacea.
I just think we'd be better versions of ourselves. We're
just be making origami gift wrapping and it'd be so beautiful.
A girl can dream. So moving on to what she
(19:48):
did with Will, we're literally, guys, we're, our producer told
us to move on. Guys, I can't stress enough how
much we're 10 minutes into the special, and it was
an hour long. There's so much to say. We're more
than we did for the whole seasons when we did.
The woman knows how to make a TV show, can
I just say.
It's a TV show that people will watch, but she
knows how to make a TV show that's just like
layered with different, you know, things that are happening and
(20:10):
also to give her credit, I know a lot of
people have rubbished her, but as I was watching it
I was like, it is hard to be like the
one who's hosting and speaking to the camera and explaining
everything and still coming across natural, like she does a
good job. She does a good job and a lot
of the guests for this special, like, I wanna talk
about Naomi Osaka in a bit, but she was meeting
for the,
First time, which is so hard, so hard, so you're
(20:32):
meeting this person for the first time, they're like super,
super famous, you have to impress them, you also have
to get them on board with doing the stuff that's
part of your show, which is stuff that like celebrities
just don't do, yeah, like you're making Naomi Osaka paint
a plate, why? Yeah, exactly, and you're also like Naomi Osaka,
like so, so famous but also not camera facing famous,
(20:53):
so you're also having to make them,
Comfortable in the environment with like these big production cameras
in your face. Yeah, and it's a hard job. Exactly,
so with people you haven't met, it's hard, with people
you're friends with it's hard. I mean we get a
little taste on the pod, like, I know you've had
the same thing where you've had to host with someone
for the first time you don't know and you're trying
to make it sound warm and bantering and that's hard,
but then it's also hard when we have like friends
from the office come in here on the pod cos
(21:14):
it's a weird thing of like, we're friends but we
can't be like that on the pod so we have
to act differently in front of the camera, so,
In some ways we are Meghan Markle, that's what I'm
trying to say. We're, we're like 1 step forward, we're
1 step forward, 10 steps back. So with Will, she
makes the Christmas crackers. You know what I'm, I thought
was interesting because as they're making these Christmas crackers, she
talks about living in the UK and she never says
(21:35):
anything about the royal family, but she alludes to one
of the very few times in the series where she
alludes to her life in the UK and the fact
that she was a duchess there and she gave birth,
A child there and she was married there and she's
part of their history and all that sort of stuff like,
and she speaks quite fondly of it. Yeah, she does.
I think that that's very deliberate in a way because
so much of this show it's like a love letter
(21:56):
to California, it's a love letter to Montecito, it's a
love letter to this, to where she grew up and
she talks about like I went to school here and
I used to go here to shop and I, I
love going here for lunch and it's, it's very much
like in her world, which is the point of the show,
but she never really talks about her time in the UK.
Fair enough, historically wasn't great for her, but she talks
about the fact that with Christmas crackers, she says in
the UK it was more of a joint thing instead
(22:17):
of like reaching across the table and just two people
pulling one that everyone joins hands around the table and
makes a chain and they all pull at the same time,
and we do that here too, don't we? I did
think that, but I'm like maybe we have a lot
of Americas they don't America's, Americans, they don't, because I
remember a scene.
From Bluey went viral in America, really, because in Bluey
(22:39):
they had the Christmas crackers on the Christmas lunch table
and someone took a screenshot and posted it onto Reddit
and going, what are these things on the table? Really?
And then everyone had to explain it's like a UK
tradition because we were obviously colonized by the UK so
we have it as well, where we pull Christmas crackers
together and they were like, oh, wow, wow, Bluey has
blown minds across the world, honestly.
(23:00):
And now and now Meghan Markle has done the same thing,
and yeah, she talked about it being this really lovely
thing and people laugh and joke and there's riddles inside
and all that sort of stuff, and when I saw
that scene I was like, oh, everyone's gonna pull this
out and do all these crazy headlines around like Meghan
Markle references royal family in the UK and her special
and and I thought that would work even though she didn't.
And I actually haven't seen anyone do that yet, so
(23:22):
well done everyone, it's probably coming. It's like in the
copy but it's not in the headlines.
Yeah, exactly, no-one's trying to be salacious about it, which
I like. What I do wanna say about those Christmas
crackers is that they were packing heats. OK, I've never
had such a good Christmas cracker because they were making
them stuffing them cos they were personalized Christmas crackers. And
again she's like, you can buy these, but it's nicer
to make them at home with things you are lying around.
(23:43):
I'm like, again, Megan, I don't have stuff lying around,
everything in my apartment is for me and I need it.
Yeah I've got nothing lying around to give someone out
with a candle.
No, there's just like so much stuff in there that
I'm like, when those kids pull those apart, one of
them's losing an eye. Yeah, especially when the guy who
she's helping will be handy in there. Yeah, there's full
hard toys in there because he was like, oh, my
(24:04):
son would like a car, and she's like, we don't
have a car, she's like, can we get a car
to the face.
And then next minute the crew comes rushing back with
these cars to put in the bonbon and Meghan Markle
looks at the camera in terms just driving around California's like,
I need toy cars immediately, and then Meghan looks at
the camera and she goes, ah, the magic of television,
(24:25):
and it's all cute and stuff, but I've actually now
that you say that, I wonder if you know how
they keep saying that people keep leaving her company, if
like one of her assistants had to go find a
little plastic car within like 10 minutes or they were fired,
do we think that that's led here.
Do you think it's led to some of the people
who left her company? Maybe, Megan's like, you either find
the car or you're out there churning jam. It's like
(24:45):
Miranda Priestley in Devil Wears Prada. You have to pick,
if you're working for Meghan, you have to pick two roles, either,
The car person or the jam person, ah, neither of
those are plum jobs at the end of every season,
including the special, she does this big party for the
cast and crew. Can you imagine all her staff who
are churning jam outside watching this happen, watching that they're
not getting a party, they're not going to a party, mm,
not out of the jam factory. na na na. Alright,
(25:08):
do you wanna talk about Naomi since that's your, part
of the show that you most resonated or were horrified by?
I think I was just very uncomfortable with the situation
at hand. So firstly she like,
I assumed she was gonna bring on Serena Williams. Serena
wasn't ever gonna do that, but they're such close friends. No,
they are close friends, and she supports Meghan in other ways,
(25:29):
and I think Meghan is all about going to her
events and stuff. I just think Serena was like, oh no.
She's like, I've been in the, I get publicly scrutinized
as well. I'm running my empire with my fancy hot husband,
and she's got, she's got stuff going on. And the
way she was like teasing the,
Audience on who was coming, I was like, oh it's
so clearly Serena, and she was like, it's Naomi Osaka,
and I was like, 00, also love. I was gonna
(25:50):
say yeah, no-one would be let down by Osaka was
not let down by Naomi Osaka. It's, I think like
with all the guests who come on the show, you can,
it's so obvious that they're not filming during the holiday
season by their immediate reaction of walking into that kitchen
because they're all just like, 00, it's so Christmassy, so
jolly slaps you in the face.
Naomi comes across as very like scared. Oh, did you
(26:13):
get that? Did you not? Maybe, I was just like
maybe that's what she's like in it because she's scares
the wrong word. I think it's more bemused. Yeah, I
think she probably, cause you've gotta think, you arrive at
this mansion, there's 10 crew trucks out, like we don't
she's never met Megan. Yeah, so you have that meeting
someone you don't know, that's a set she's arrived at,
like they make it look like a cozy house, this
house they've rented for Meghan Markle to fill.
(26:34):
But it would be a set, sets are crazy. And
on the outside there'd be like 10 trucks and then
you've gotta have like porta potties outside, then you've gotta
have all the tech stuff, and then you've gotta have
craft services outside cause no one's eating in the kitchen,
they would eat at plastic tables outside. And then you
go in and you have all the different like set
up studio camera areas. I think there's about 10 people
on that filming crew at least cause sometimes they turn
(26:54):
the camera and you see everyone, all the producers because
they're eating all the food. Yeah.
And then they had to get her in there and
she's been mic'd up, so she's had a weird, we've
both had this many times, you have a weird guy's
hands and your boobs and your bra and your pants,
and sometimes in your hair, which is a hard one
for me. They always go, your hair's so thin. I'm like,
why would you bring that up? So we don't know
what's happened to my my my go to is always like,
(27:15):
Do you really need to wear those glasses, and I
was like, yes sir, I can't see. He's like, alright. Yeah,
no one talks about getting mic'd up. It's it's quite
a vulnerable experience. It's such a vulnerable experience. They point
out all your insecurities. They're like, oh no, that bra
strap's a bit thick, I won't be able to put
it on there. I'm like, oh my God.
So that's why do they do that? No, they're just like,
(27:37):
cos I guess they're like, we're colleagues, we're trying to
work out this mic, and you're like, oh my God,
you've just insulted my face, my hair, my eyesight, my
bra size. I once, sorry, tangent, I once got, oh,
your dress is a zipper, it would have been better
if they were buttons. OK, OK, I guess I'll just
go message the designer. Yeah, sorry about my cheap zipper dress,
sorry about my H& H&M dress. Jesus.
(27:58):
So what we're trying to say is, cause there is
a point to that, what we're trying to say is
Naomi came in already frazzled from all of our because
she would have had to be mic'd up to go
on there and she was probably like, this never happens
in tennis. I don't have to get mic'd up. They
just pass her the mic, a handheld mic when they're
finished playing the match. So she's frazzled, she's frazzled, she
comes in, Megan makes her a snack, and then they're straight.
(28:22):
To the craft making, yeah, and they're making plates, not
making plates, like painting plates, yeah, that looked quite fun,
but I think Meghan was a bit, she gave nervous
energy during this. Oh, do you think so? I think
it's every season she kind of has the one guest
that's a bit of like the really well-known, the celebrity guests,
so like obviously the first season Mindy Kaling, second season
I would say Chrissy Teigen, obviously there's lots of other
(28:43):
people on that have huge followings, but there's always one.
A-lister like actors, celebrities there's always one who's a bit
more like mainstreamy and I think Naomi Osaka was the
mainstream person and Naomi Osaka was not helping her out
at all. And I think Megan did the thing which
I think all interviewers do where you have to put
yourself down to make the other person look really good
(29:04):
and feel comfortable, and she did that by telling Naomi
that she really sucks at tennis.
And then I think that's literally when Naomi opened up
and she's like I have to see this, and Megan's
like no, and I was like, OK girls, we got there,
we got there, we made Naomi smile, that's all we wanted.
And then she had this thing where like she was
really frustrated with the way she was painting a plate,
which looked beautiful. Yeah, wow, this is the most like favorable.
(29:27):
You've bearded this whole show. Yeah, cos she tried to
do the little Holly and she's like that's not how
you do Holly, and I was like that looked like
Holly to me. Yeah, yeah, well we're the bars low
and then she went back to the calligraphy cos that's
what she knew. Yeah. But I just found that whole
interaction like as someone whose job is to constantly talk
to people who you don't know and pretend that you
already have that comaderie, like I felt that for her.
The heavy lift, yeah, the heavy lift and Naomi.
(29:51):
There was one part where Megan was like, and the
holidays are meant to be like relaxing, like you're with
your family, and Naomi's like yes, and then she just
mentioned how like the only like little stressful part is
that she constantly has to run after her daughter and
then Megan's like, but that's so nice. And He's just like,
like it jumped cut to her reaction and then straight
away cut back to Megan cos her face was literally like,
is it? She's probably like, no, it's it's exhausting exhausting
(30:13):
I'm really tired. But yeah, what a friendship, I hope
they stay friends.
Something tells me no. Something tells me no. No, I
feel like she was kind of, I mean, the thing is,
it just sounds like Naomi Osaka's kind of busy and
she doesn't really wanna hang out doing homewares. She looked
amazing though. She always wears great clothes. Oh, everyone in
the show, not the men because I wasn't really looking
at them, all the ladies looked fab. I liked when
Meghan had her friends over and they had the little
(30:34):
pajama party. That was fun. Yeah, you know what I
really liked about them, how they made the Christmas wreath. Oh,
and Meghan was like.
I'm excited to see how different all of us look. OK,
I did wanna talk to you about this cos this
is the only time where I saw like, what I
kind of think might be the real Meghan Markle come
through because it was so funny cos they were, at
first it was all fun, like they were all in
(30:54):
pajamas and she's making little treats for them and they
arrived and I'm like, again like this is why I
wanna be friends with you, because I would love to
go to a pajama party and make cocktails, and they
were just having the best time and then she was like,
we're gonna make Christmas wreaths. And then as she's laying
out all,
The materials and do anything and she goes, we're all
gonna make them, and it's not a competition, but the
way she said it, it was so a competition and
(31:15):
then it was, it felt like quite there was some
like tension in the room. No, I think there was,
you know what it was like the two of them
were like bantering together and she was off in a
corner by herself. No, she was making the best wreath.
She was not messing around. No way she was not
making the best wreath, like it was, there was no way.
Any kind of yeah fun when someone's like, oh it's
just for fun, don't worry about it, no.
That was a deathly serious game of wreath making, you
(31:36):
know what it reminds me of when she and Chrissy
Teigen were making the flower jewelry in season two, do
you remember that? How it started all like cutesy and
they're making the flowers and then Chrissy forgot the names
of her kids and when they were born. Just classic.
When were they born? What are their names, how many
are there? Fair enough, she's got a lot of kids.
And then they started making the flower jewelry, and it's
that thing of like you have with a friend where
(31:56):
you're like, oh, I'm gonna show you, it's OK if
you do it badly, and all of a sudden they
start doing it really good, and you're like, 00, and
so that's when Meghan Markle saw Chrissy Teigen's jewelry, she
was a bit like, oh, and it was quite good,
and she kind of was a bit like, it was
very subtle, but she was like, cut that part, cut
that part. Yeah, she was floundering. And I think with
the Christmas wreeves too, she was like, it's.
(32:16):
Totally fine as long as mine's the best. Yeah, oh that, yeah,
that was fun. Competitive Christmas wreath making. I know we
saw the same thing, the first time we saw it
was I think it was season one, season one when
they did the flower arrangements. Oh my god, yes, I
forgot about that. Oh, so it's it's been an ongoing
arc in every season. Oh Megan, love you. Well, if
you're meant to be the expert, yeah, you can't have
(32:38):
someone come on and make a better flower wreath than you.
She did make something crazy though. What? When she invited
Tom Collocchio over.
He's like the Top Chef judge, and she had that
snack arrangement to make it look like a wreath, and
I'm like these are all just raw vegetables and a
dip at the end. I know, but you get like
he's such a renowned chef, like are you going to
make something that he's gonna love, like shouldn't you just
(32:59):
go for something that looks good on TV? So you
give him like raw vegetables? Yeah, I mean I'm sure
wasn't there a dip or something, I don't know. I
feel like she was quite starstruck around him, maybe she
was just nervous, and she told him, she's like, I
love you, yeah, and I believed her.
You know how sometimes you just meet someone who you're
just like, I'm weirdly obsessed with you. Nothing I say
is gonna make it OK. So he's in the last
bit and so they're making the gumbo, right? Yeah, her
(33:21):
mum's gumbo, yeah, which looked freaking amazing. Oh my God,
have you been to New Orleans? No, but it's top
of my travel list. You have to go because gumbo
is like insane. I know, I wanna have the beignets.
I wanna have beignets gumbo and I wanna go look
for all the, you know, the vampire myths started there.
There's like a whole history of vampires. Do you know that, right? OK,
(33:43):
well I'm going for the beignets, I'm going for the gumbo,
I'm going for the vampires and the ghosties. you'll find them.
I know they'll all be there. I never come back.
And then we see H. Yeah, so this is so
important because at the end of every Meghan Markle specials,
this is our third one now, at the end of
every one, a bewildered Prince Harry wanders into frame, and
that's when you know, you know, like in the old,
(34:04):
like back when when you were a kid, I don't
know if you had this like.
Like at the end of like the kids' programming for
the night, like 7 o'clock, a little like animal would
come on and be like, it's time to go to bed.
That's what I think when I see Prince Harry coming on,
he's like it's the end of the special. Prince Harry's
here you think someone announced him before he walked into
the room, like they announced her? Yeah, probably, like from
(34:24):
that viral article where they announced Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,
oh God, last minute after all the reviews of season
one and season two, she had to be like, they
had to cut that.
So Harry wanders in, bewildered, a little nervous. The weird
thing is, and probably one of the reasons it was
so smart that he married her, apart from the fact
that I do think that they're like desperately in love,
but just from a logistics point of view, is that
(34:46):
like he seems weirdly, maybe it's just when he's on
TV but he's been raised to be in the spotlight.
He's been raised to talk to people he doesn't know,
his whole life was being in the public eye. So
you think he would be really good at that, and
he is sometimes, but not compared to Meghan Markle.
She's just so good at stuff like that. I think
you could, she could walk into a room of 30
people that she doesn't know who are all awkward, and
(35:07):
they would say to her, host a 1 hour special
with each of these people, and she could do it.
Like she's so good at it. If I needed someone
to be like a live presenter or someone or someone
to host an event and just be like make everyone
feel comfortable and happy and stuff, like she's your go
to girl. His job is to be the down to
earth chill guy because that's all he's. Well, he chills
so much he barely, he like sinks into the background.
(35:28):
I liked how he came in and he just straight
away started bad mouthing her jumbo and saying that it's
not as good as your mum's. Yeah, well he's trying
to get points for I paraphrased.
That's essentially what happens. Meghan, Markle, and Harry are fighting. Yeah, yeah,
he likes her mum's gumbo better than hers, and you know, well,
it's her mum has perfected the recipe, so it's probably fair.
Can I tell you what I thought? He's a picky eater.
(35:48):
Oh my God, OK, yes, I need to get to this.
He gave me the biggest dick ever. OK, how's she
dating this man? Well, they're not dating, they're married. They're
married with two children. You're like, it doesn't matter, stop
dating him. Longest situation I've ever seen. You can be married,
but you can't date him anymore.
OK, here's the fun thing about this, is that everyone
thinks that Prince Harry's biggest enemy is his brother Prince
(36:10):
William and by default Princess Catherine, or maybe they think
his enemy his biggest enemy in the world is the
British press, like there's all these things.
Prince Harry's real biggest enemy in the whole world is
a salad, the salad that had the audacity to come
onto this show. Yeah, he hated everything in that salad.
That salad, I felt like he was gonna like leave
(36:31):
that salad sounded like my wet dream. Yeah, do you
remember what was in it? It was like, yes, it
was like beetroots, olives, I think pickles, definitely anchovies. I
think that was it. So Tom, the acclaimed chef who,
Meghan Markle is fawning over, has made this salad, Prince
Harry wanders in, hi, I'm Harry, nice to see you,
kind of vibes, and then Meghan makes a crack about
(36:52):
the fact that he would hate everything on that salad,
and they, as they list all those ingredients, Prince Harry's
just getting like sicker looking and sicker looking, he's like,
I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't
like that. He's like, he hated that salad. He was
traumatized by the salad, he was victimized by the salad
so picky that like even when they were talking about
her mum's gumbo, he's like, I love.
Her mum's gumbo before the fish goes in, yeah, and
(37:13):
then she's like, oh yeah, my mum always saves a
little portion for H before she puts the rest of
the ingredients in sausage. Yeah, and then she's like, yeah,
cos this gives it a real kick, you know what,
I think like, and you know what, this is actually
pissing me off. This is a man who grew up
with everything at like his fingertips, like he could eat
whatever he wants, anything he wanted, he could have, and
as someone who literally eats everything and loves all food,
(37:36):
I am mad.
He doesn't, he doesn't deserve that. Well, I wonder if
I deserve to be a prince. I eat everything. You
should have been Prince Harry. Uh, like that actually made
me so sad. It was, and also he's married to
this incredible cook, and he has all these incredible cooks
and chefs coming in and out of the house, and
you know what, I think he realized he was coming
across badly because he comes into the room, he's been
(37:57):
there for 5 minutes. He doesn't like the salad, he
doesn't like the gumbo, he doesn't like fish, he doesn't
like sausage, it's like, sorry sir, what do you wanna eat, sand?
And then he was like, oh, I'm not a picky eater.
I eat everything. And I was like, thou doth protest
too much, sir, because you just didn't eat like 50
things in this room. Oh my God, what a liar.
What a liar. I remember him saying. Why is someone
talking about the lies of Prince Harry? Yeah, he, he
(38:17):
didn't put that in spare. I can tell you that
right now. Maybe he's saving for his next book, the
real me. The next book, maybe it's a cooking book,
it's like.
His ingredients is like he's like flour, water, eggs, don't
eat anything else. Oh my god. So I, yeah, I
got the bit, I think I got the ick too
from him being a picky eater. He's a grown man
and grow up, grow up. Eat an olive. Try it,
(38:40):
you might like it. I bet he hates caviar, he's
one of those rich people who hates caviar. Oh my God,
you hate cos you love caviar. Oh my god, don't
tell them.
Someone send us caviar cause when we go to events
and M sees a little bump of caviar, I don't
see her for the rest of the night, she's across
the room. Don't tell them that. No, I'm telling her
that they send us caviar. It's OK if we can't
afford caviar. Yeah, that's like we can't afford it, so
(39:01):
when I get it, I don't eat it exactly, and
I would love Megan's spicy gumbo, so like the whole
family can't eat the proper spicy gumbo, they've gotta make him.
A little special I literally, everything she's made in that show,
I would literally gobble, except those weird reindeer droppings. What
was that about? What did she say these are called
pet food? Yeah, pet, but, no, she said pet food
(39:22):
I think. I didn't. She's like these are called pet food,
but for this moment in time we'll call them reindeer food.
It reindeer and I was like, I was like, Megan,
neither of those sounds great. No, and it was for
his wife. Imagine coming home from Meghan Markle's house and
that's what you get. Jesus.
I know there's a lot, there's a lot of hidden
dramas here that no-one's talking about. So then they have
all the cast and crew come in for like their
normal end of year thing, shaming the people in the shed,
(39:45):
churning jam. Yeah, everyone else is eating all the beautiful
gumbo in the food. Harry's in the corner eating a
stale white piece of bread cause all he could stomach
with his delicate stomach. Should have left a Caccio Pepe
rue for him. He probably couldn't handle the.
I just, yeah, I just feel like Prince Harry has
not come out of this looking great. No, sorry, Harry. Well,
I guess that is the end of our Meghan Markle
brutally honest review. Can I just say we have watched
(40:07):
my favorite one. This one, it was such a fun,
simple time, wasn't it? I like the length of it.
One hour. We do love Meghan, we stand in solidarity
with her and her picky eater of her husband. We wish.
She just gave more relatable gift wrapping tips, but maybe
that's an us thing. Yeah, we needed a beginner's lesson
before we went the rest of the world, yeah, maybe
the rest of the world has mastered sticky tape. So,
(40:28):
but anyway, if you would love to, even though I
maybe haven't given it the best review and we've spoiled
all the fun parts, with Love, Megan Holiday special is
now streaming on Netflix. If you would like to watch it,
Christmas inspo.
Thank you so much for listening to the spill today.
If you're enjoying what you're hearing, please leave us a
5 star rating and review. It will take you 1 2nd,
(40:49):
and it is the single best way to help us.
Plus our morning dose of entertainment news, morning tea, drops
right here in this feed on Monday morning. Just hit
follow so you don't miss a thing. The spill is
produced by Meetia Warran with sound production by Scott Stronick.
We will see you next week. Bye, bye. na.
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