Meghan Markle’s Hollywood Hustle: After Years of Denouncing Tinseltown’s “Shallow” Grind, She’s Back Selling Jam in the VIP ShadowsFor years, Meghan Markle has carefully curated an image of a woman who transcended the mercenary, transactional underbelly of Hollywood.
In interviews and her memoir-like Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, she repeatedly portrayed her departure from acting—and the industry’s relentless pursuit of commercial viability—as a liberation from a soul-crushing existence. “I was done with the transactional nature of it,” she declared in the series, framing her exit as a principled rejection of a world where success is measured in box-office returns and endorsement deals.
Yet, in a striking reversal that has left observers questioning the sincerity of her earlier disavowals, the Duchess of Sussex has been quietly reinserting herself into the very elite social circuits she once claimed to have left behind—hawking branded preserves at a members-only club in a manner that echoes the very bargain-bin hustling she purported to despise.
The improbable setting for this return is Soho House West Hollywood, the private, invitation-only club synonymous with the upper echelons of the entertainment industry. Once a frequent haunt during her days as an actress on the legal drama Suits, Soho House has long served as a discreet networking hub for A-listers, producers, and power brokers.
It is a place where deals are whispered over exclusive cocktails, not where bulk packages of fruit spreads are peddled from a table in the lobby. And yet, in recent months, Meghan has been repeatedly spotted at the club, presiding over a small promotional setup for her American Riviera Orchard brand: a table laden with jars of $14 strawberry preserves, flanked by promotional leaflets and branded merchandise.The optics are inescapable. Soho House is not a retail environment, nor is it a venue where the clientele—predominantly high-net-worth industry insiders—arrives with jam on their shopping lists.
Membership requires a significant financial commitment and a vetting process that favors established cultural influencers, not aspiring entrepreneurs launching grocery products. The sight of Meghan Markle, a former working royal and self-styled independent tastemaker, stationed amid jars of fruit preserves in such a space has struck many as an undignified regression to the promotional tactics she once publicly scorned.
This is not the triumphant homecoming of a mogul commanding boardrooms or securing multimillion-dollar distribution deals. Rather, it is a low-profile, hands-on sales effort reminiscent of a startup founder hawking wares at a farmers’ market. Reports from club insiders describe a deliberate, almost furtive presence: Meghan arriving with a small entourage, setting up a modest display in a peripheral area, and personally engaging select patrons.
Far from the glamour of product launch galas or partnerships with global retail conglomerates, the operation evokes the image of a vendor staking out a corner of a private club, hoping to drum up impulse buys among an audience more accustomed to purchasing vintage wines than supermarket staples.The dissonance between Meghan’s past rhetoric and her present activities is stark. Having spent years framing her departure from Hollywood as an escape from its “transactional” demands—where worth is perpetually proven through relentless self-promotion—she now finds herself immersed in the very essence of that world.
American Riviera Orchard, launched with considerable fanfare earlier this year, has so far produced little beyond a limited run of jam jars, distributed primarily through a selective mailing list rather than widespread commercial channels. The decision to promote these products within the insular confines of Soho House—a venue that explicitly prohibits overt commercial activity—underscores the precarious position of a brand that has yet to achieve the scale or recognition to justify traditional retail avenues.
Critics of the endeavor point to a fundamental mismatch between the brand’s aspirational branding and its execution. American Riviera Orchard is marketed as a lifestyle enterprise evoking the effortless elegance of Santa Barbara’s coastal aristocracy: a vision of artisanal preserves, olive oil, and tableware consumed in sprawling seaside estates.
Yet the reality of its promotion—a duchess circulating jars of jam in a private club—clashes violently with that image. Soho House, for all its exclusivity, is a space defined by its proximity to Hollywood’s deal-making machinery, where professional worth is measured in tangible outputs: scripts sold, films financed, endorsements secured. Positioning oneself as a purveyor of preserves within such an environment, without the backing of a major distributor or a robust retail footprint, risks reducing the enterprise to the level of a side hustle.
The contrast with Meghan’s earlier narrative is particularly acute. In her own words, she had “outgrown” a career defined by “the grind” of auditions, networking, and promotional obligations. Her post-acting pursuits—royal duties, media projects, and now lifestyle ventures—were presented as a deliberate shift toward authenticity and independence. Yet the current tableau of jam sales in a members-only club suggests a reversion to the very mechanisms she once rejected: the incremental, face-to-face commerce of building a personal brand through persistent, often unglamorous promotion.
This episode raises broader questions about the viability of Meghan’s entrepreneurial pivot. Despite an initial burst of media attention—bolstered by high-profile recipients such as Martha Stewart and Mindy Kaling displaying the jam jars on social media—American Riviera Orchard has failed to materialize into a substantive product line or distribution network. No major retailers have committed to stocking the brand, no comprehensive product catalog has been released, and the enterprise remains tethered to a single, narrowly distributed item.
The reliance on informal, club-based promotion within a cloistered social milieu only amplifies the perception of a venture trapped in developmental limbo: too small for the mass market, yet compelled to hustle within the elite enclaves where its founder retains residual access.Meghan Markle’s reemergence in the dimly lit corridors of Soho House, surrounded by crates of branded jam, encapsulates a humbling irony.
The woman who once positioned herself as having escaped Hollywood’s shallow, transactional vortex now occupies its fringes, peddling a single gourmet product in a venue where commercial ambition is customarily cloaked in discretion.
Far from the grand unveiling of a diversified lifestyle empire, the scene recalls the very promotional imperatives she claimed to have left behind: a solitary figure propping up a table of preserves, seeking validation and sales one jar at a time.
In a club where no one arrives hoping to purchase jam, the endeavor serves as a vivid reminder that escaping the grind of Hollywood may prove more aspirational than actual.
