Netflix CEO Defends ‘Underestimated’ Meghan After Backlash
Ted Sarandos isn’t giving up on the former royal quite yet.
Jake Rosenberg/Netflix
Netflix boss Ted Sarandos defended his most controversial signing, Meghan Markle in a new interview, days after the launch of her much-mocked home and lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan.
The series generated uniformly negative reviews and one segment, where she was seen assembling a care package for her longtime friend, makeup artist Daniel Martin by taking a bumper bag of supermarket pretzels, and decanting them into a smaller, cuter one to which she affixed a home made label, was even mocked by Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show this week.
As far as Sarandos is concerned, it seems all publicity is good publicity.
In an interview with Variety (which called the show a “forced march”) the streaming boss said, “I think Meghan is underestimated in terms of her influence on culture. When we dropped the trailer for the Harry & Meghan doc series [in 2022], everything on-screen was dissected in the press for days. The shoes she was wearing sold out all over the world. The Hermès blanket that was on the chair behind her sold out everywhere in the world. People are fascinated with Meghan Markle. She and Harry are overly dismissed.”
Asked about the Netflix-Meghan collaboration for her brand As Ever, Sarandos replied: “We’re a passive partner in Meghan’s company, and it’s a big discovery model for us right now.” He went on to add that getting into products was good for “marketing and branding” and enabling “expressions of fandom.”
Sarandos said that he preferred “the Topgolf model versus the Disneyland model, where people go more frequently through the year and you come back to check things out,” adding: “And I’m not shitting on Disneyland.”
With Love, Meghan snuck into 10th position in its first full week on Netflix’s charts, with stats showing the eight-part series clocked 12.6M viewer hours over that period.
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Other than their eponymous documentary, the couple’s production company Archewell have only generated bona fide ratings turkeys for Netflix: Live To Lead, Heart of Invictus, and Polo all failed to make the Top 10 at all, meaning Netflix never released their numbers.
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