Another day, another controversy involving Meghan Markle. Since the premiere of With Love, Meghan on the 2025 TV schedule, people have not stopped talking about it — whether it’s the viral clip of her correcting Mindy Kaling on her name, the cookware she’s using or her recipe for one-pot pasta. The latest drama, however, revolves around the animated series Pearl — already canceled from the Netflix schedule — as British author Mel Elliot says the project bore “striking similarities” to her own Pearl Power series.
In July 2021, Meghan Markle announced the upcoming animated series Pearl, which would center on a little girl learning “to step into her power” through conversations with influential women in history. Mel Elliot revealed last week (per the Daily Mail) that she took action back then due to the resemblance of the series to her own, saying:
Meghan is a feminist who sticks up for other women, so I was disappointed and confused to see how similar Netflix's proposed show Pearl was to my own Pearl Power who had been created seven years earlier. Of course, I can't know if anyone on her team had seen it and been inspired by it, but the similarities were too great for me to ignore.
The author released three Pearl Power books from 2014 to 2016 and turned the character — inspired by her own daughter Pearl — into an animated series in 2019, two years before Meghan Markle announced her Netflix Pearl series.
Mel Elliot’s lawyer sent a legal letter to the Duchess of Sussex through her production company Archewell that reportedly said:
The similarities between your proposed animation series and my client's work appear to be too many and too striking to be mere coincidence. It also appears that there is a risk that your proposed series may infringe intellectual property rights belonging to my client and/or may give rise to a claim in passing off (or in the US, some form of unfair competition.)
She then followed up with two personal letters to Archewell and Netflix in October 2021 and February 2022 asking for updates, the author said, but never heard back. Meghan Markle’s project was canceled soon after, in May 2022, with all references to it reportedly removed from the Archewell website.
Two other children's shows were axed at the same time by Netflix, which cited falling subscriber numbers as the cause, but Mel Elliot said she couldn’t help but wonder if her letters had something to do with it. She said:
What saddened me most is that, having brought the similarities between my Pearl and Meghan's Pearl to the attention of Netflix and Archewell, my objection was never acknowledged - neither Netflix nor Archewell responded to me when I would have loved to have contributed and collaborated.
Meghan Markle’s proposed 2021 series saw Pearl meeting women in history, with her first encounter to be with Billie Jean King, who the Daily Mail said publicly supported the duchess’ project championing female empowerment and equality.
While Mel Elliot’s books did not include historical women, that was part of her 2019 pitch for spinning the character off into an animated series. She wanted each episode to start with Pearl presenting a project about a famous woman to her class, kicking off an adventure with that person. The first test animation reportedly featured Billie Jean King and was allegedly available to view on Elliot’s website and social media.
However, according to the Daily Telegraph, Meghan Markle was in conversation with Netflix about Pearl before she and Prince Harry even stepped away from their royal duties, as early as 2018, which would have pre-dated Elliot’s series.
We’ll have to see if any other news comes from this. With Meghan Markle’s Pearl series being dropped several years ago, I wouldn’t expect her to comment on these new accusations. Although she did break her silence regarding the criticism of her Netflix show, so who knows?
In the meantime, you can stream With Love, Meghan on Netflix.
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