Martha Stewart Reverse Seared Meghan Markle’s Cooking Show

On Tuesday, Martha Stewart, queen of daytime television, thirst traps, and big-ass cakes, turned 85. To celebrate, she served face in a hot tub and graced the cover of People magazine, where she may have stirred the pot, for lack of better words, with a fellow cooking show frontwoman, Meghan Markle.

Markle already hasn’t had the best year: In January, Netflix announced it would not be renewing her cooking show, With Love, Meghan, for a third season, in turn severing its partnership with Markle’s lifestyle brand, As Ever. The duchess then launched into the next phase of post-Royal life, including keynoting at her intimate luxury women’s retreat, and such. Her cooking show dreams were DOA. Then came the birthday girl with the final twist of the knife.

In Stewart’s cover story for People, she—unprompted, I’ll add—brought up seeing Markle at a dinner party “the other night.”

“I had dinner with Meghan Markle the other night. We were both guests at a dinner party in California. And she had just gotten back from the palace,” she said. In July, Markle and co. took a trip over the pond for the first time in the four years since resigning from the royal family. “I didn’t talk to her really more than to say a couple words, but I know she was talking about it,” Stewart added. Then the interviewer bites: “What do you think about her stepping into your space with her own cooking show?”

“If you’re an actress, it’s hard to then transition to a princess and then from a princess into a homemaking guru on a television show,” Stewart said. “It doesn’t sort of follow. So go from there.” So go from there is so c*nty, to steal internet speak. I guess at 85, there’s no reason to sugarcoat anymore. She also straight up calls her ex-husband a jerk in the next paragraph, which you have to respect. 

This is not the first time Stewart has gone on the record about the Markle. Last year, Stewart remarked that she hoped Markle, “knows what she’s talking about,” and that “authenticity, to me, is everything, and to be authentic and knowledgeable about your subject matter is extremely important,” which Page Six qualified as surpassing the necessary threshold of shade.

To Stewart’s credit, we were also having trouble following what Markle was trying to accomplish with With Love, Meghan. But leave it to poor Meghan Markle to catch strays in a Martha Stewart birthday feature. Hasn’t the woman been through enough? And if I recall, Stewart herself once “transitioned” from homemaking guru to convicted felon and was just fine. (That’s what we in the industry call a burn. Feel free to use, Meghan.)

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