Meghan Markle Is Showing “She Can Still Stand on Her Own Two Feet as a Businesswoman,” Former Royal Butler Says
Her new lifestyle brand, As Ever, is a return to her roots with her former lifestyle blog The Tig.
Leaning into the lifestyle space isn’t anything new for Meghan Markle—even before she met Prince Harry in 2016, she was already a lifestyle blogger after launching The Tig two years prior.
The blog ran from 2014 until 2017, when she shuttered it months before her engagement to Harry that November. Now, with the recently relaunched As Ever lifestyle brand—the brand formerly known as American Riviera Orchard—and Meghan’s forthcoming Netflix show With Love, Meghan, former royal butler Grand Harrold said the Duchess of Sussex is going back to her roots.
“She will be going back to going what she was before meeting Harry, from a business point of view,” Harrold said via JeffBet.
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“I think ‘As Ever’ is very much referring to her career before joining the royal family,” he added. Before marrying into the royal family in 2018, Meghan was an actress—most notably playing Rachel Zane on Suits from 2011 to 2018—and an entrepreneur, through The Tig and other business ventures that spun off from the blog.
Harry and Meghan were working royals together from their royal wedding in May 2018 until they stepped back from the role in January 2020. Since then, they have inked deals with Netflix, Spotify, Penguin Random House, and Lemonada, where Meghan’s forthcoming podcast will be housed. Meghan confirmed that her new Netflix lifestyle show and her new lifestyle brand will be released in tandem; the show’s release date is March 4, so it can be inferred that As Ever products will, at least in part, be available for purchase around that time. Meghan called Netflix partnering with her in business “huge” in an Instagram video shared on February 18.
“If you’ve followed me since 2014 with The Tig, you know I’ve always loved cooking and crafting and gardening—this is what I do,” Meghan said. “And I haven’t been able to share it with you in the same way for the past few years, but now I can, so as things are starting to trickle out there, I wanted you to hear it from me first.”
Calling her brand offerings “products that I just love,” Meghan added, “I just can’t wait for you to see it.”
“This new chapter is an extension of what has always been my love language, beautifully weaving together everything I cherish—food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy in the everyday,” Meghan continued on the Instagram caption for the video shared Tuesday.
Courtesy of As Ever
When Harry and Meghan first stepped back from their roles as working royals, the two worked basically in tandem on all of their projects, like 2022’s Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, for example. Now, it seems the two are doing their own projects professionally, and Harrold said of the As Ever lifestyle brand, “I doubt Harry will be massively involved.”
“It comes across as very much her project and business,” he added. “I think she may be trying to show that she can still stand on her own two feet as a businesswoman like she used to.”
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