Duchess of Despair and Endless Grievance rebrands: MAUREEN CALLAHAN

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: The Duchess of Despair and Endless Grievance rebrands! Meghan Markle is the phoenix rising — from the ashes of the Molotov cocktails she keeps throwing

We are never, ever going to escape Meghan Markle, are we?

Right on the heels of her disastrous profile in New York Magazine’s The Cut — in which she compared herself, never forget, to Nelson Mandela — Meghan’s back with yet another cover story, this one for Variety.

And guess what? We’re in for a rebrand.

The Duchess of Despair and Endless Grievance now wants to be known as FUN! And SILLY! But also very, very smart. Most assuredly not a bimbo — not at all like her most recent podcast guest Paris Hilton, who Meghan said she had judged for being . . . a bimbo.

Hey, we’re all just women trying to lift up other women here, am I right?

Our Meghan is nothing if not a phoenix rising from the ashes — even if said ashes result from all those Molotov cocktails she keeps tossing. The Queen’s funeral, replete with the sidelining of Harry and Meghan, is firmly in the rearview. And despite Meghan’s actions to the contrary — you know, that Oprah interview in which she said a senior royal was racist and that the palace didn’t care that she was suicidal and pregnant — Meghan really loved the Queen.

‘Certainly, in terms of female leadership, she is the most shining example of what that looks like,’ Meghan told Variety. ‘I feel deep gratitude to have been able to spend time with her and get to know her . . . And I continue to be proud to have had a nice warmth with the matriarch of the family.’

Hmmm. You’d never know that Harry reportedly rebuffed two invitations from the Queen to visit shortly before her death, or that his brother reportedly remains incensed with Harry and Meghan’s repeated betrayals, or that King Charles is holding the titles of prince and princess for H & M’s children in abeyance, possibly until the damage from Harry’s forthcoming memoir and the couple’s Netflix docuseries becomes clearer.

The Duchess of Despair and Endless Grievance now wants to be known as FUN! And SILLY! But also very, very smart.

Oh, and about that Netflix deal, one this couple has been trying to defang since Her Majesty’s funeral? Wouldn’t you know, Meghan Markle — avatar of kindness, authenticity, love, goodness and ‘meaningful change’ — is already backpedaling.

She and Harry really have no control over their own show, you see. Actually, apart from starring in it, they have almost nothing to do with it.

‘It’s nice to be able to trust someone with our story,’ Meghan says of Liz Garbus, the Oscar-nominated director of her docu-series, ‘ . . . even if it means it may not be the way we would have told it. But that’s not why we’re telling it.’

It’s not? Netflix gave Harry and Meghan a reported $100 million production deal, yet these two have produced almost nothing since signing back in 2020. Their requisite pound of flesh is long overdue. Meghan’s establishing plausible deniability here. She just thinks we’re all too stupid to see it.

‘We’re trusting our story to someone else,’ she goes on, ‘and that means it will go through their lens.’

Yes, Meghan. That’s how these things work.

Today’s Meghan Markle is all about joy and she wants you to understand that. It’s all she spreads. Love and light, people, love and light.

She has notes for any actress who might play her in the future — not that she’s saying for ‘The Crown,’ but you know, maybe ‘The Crown.’

‘I hope that in preparing for the role, she finds the softness and the playfulness and the laughter. The silliness . . . I just hope she finds the dimensions.’

Seriously, who speaks of themselves this way?

Our Meghan is nothing if not a phoenix rising from the ashes — even if said ashes result from all those Molotov cocktails she keeps tossing.

Her lack of self-awareness, after all this time, remains staggering.

The problem with this rebrand is that, like everything Meghan Markle has to say, it’s meaningless. We’re still left with the same old Meghan and Harry – self-obsessed and completely and totally out-of-touch.

Case in point: While the days of comparing herself to Mandela are long gone, now we’re keeping company with Gloria Steinem — whom Meghan cringingly calls ‘Glo’ — and reminding us that she quoted Eleanor Roosevelt in her high school yearbook.

Meghan, you see, is intelligent. Mensa material. According to her self-report, she’s good at ‘Jeopardy!’ She plays Wordle and Scrabble — with a timer. She was once fluent in French. She doesn’t watch TV for mere entertainment, as the rest of us, the great unwashed, do; no, she’s in search of ‘watching great storytelling.’

In short, Meghan’s as insufferable as ever. She speaks of her and Harry’s packed workdays — doing exactly what, she cannot say — Zooming and whatnot from their vulgar $14 million, 16-bathroom Montecito mansion while lecturing us on eco-warrior-hood.

Here she is, our bimbo emeritus, frolicking in her garden, barefoot in designer dresses, flicking her Cartier-adorned wrist just so, posing with that typical Markle expression of beatitude, our own latter-day saint parting the clouds and descending to save us.

It’s all so unoriginal, so Angelina Jolie circa 2008.

Navel-gazing chattery aside, Meghan’s here to promote her poorly-reviewed podcast Archetypes, which is about as fun to listen to as her boardroom pitch: ‘It’s really about dissecting and unboxing these labels, these tropes that try to hold women back and define women as one-note,’ she says. ‘It’s important and okay and perfectly normal to be a multifaceted human being.’

Heads are surely rolling at Spotify, which paid these two a reported $25 million back in, yes, 2020. Two years on and they have four formless, content-free, dated, hectoring, joyless episodes to show for it.

Today’s Meghan Markle is all about joy and she wants you to understand that. It’s all she spreads. Love and light, people, love and light. 

Meghan Markle is the epitome of failing upward. She has convinced herself that the world cares what she has to say because she’s just such an original thinker, a groundbreaker on par with the Elon Musks of the world — not some D-list actress who lucked into marrying a world-famous royal, preaching from a platform that’s wholly unearned.

Her lack of self-awareness, after all this time, remains staggering. A true legend in her own mind, Meghan Markle remains our number one try-hard, a woman who burns all the bridges she purports to build, an incessant cheerleader of vagaries that have zero practical applications.

To wit: The purpose of her podcast, she says, is to ‘open the door for really meaningful conversation, because I think once you turn meaningful conversation into action — gamechanger.’

Meghan Markle has had a global platform for nearly seven years now. In that time, her accomplishments — best I can tell — are down to writing inspirational words for sex workers on bananas; grossly and callously inserting herself into the Uvalde, Texas tragedy; and successfully isolating her husband from his family while lobbing all kinds of vile accusations, claiming total disgust with the royals while clinging to those titles for dear life.

But, hey — gamechanger.

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