Meghan Markle’s Netflix TV Project ‘Pearl’ Hit With Infringement Accusation
Nearly three years after Netflix put the brakes on an animated TV series from Meghan Markle, a British author says she and her lawyers sent letters to the duchess and her Archewell Productions company to point out possible infringement.
Mel Elliott tells the Daily Mail she found “striking similarities” between the TV project, Pearl, and her own Pearl Power book series.
Elliott’s Pearl Power picture books follow a little girl as she learns about equality. An animated TV show Elliott started working on in 2019 would have seen the character interacting with Billie Jean King, Maya Angelou, Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall, Madonna, and other notable women from history.
Then, in 2021, Netflix announced development of Pearl under the streamer’s multi-year deal with Markle and Prince Harry. Pearl would have been a series that follows a 12-year-old girl as she “learns to step into her power and finds inspiration from influential women throughout history,” according to its logline.
“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,” Elliott told the Daily Mail.
She added: “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 world[s] of arts and media are very competitive, and I’m afraid it’s quite common for powerful to people to rip off the work of less well-known creatives — although I’m not saying that’s what happened here.”
Elliott’s lawyers sent a letter to Archewell in July 2021, warning the company that its Pearl project “may infringe intellectual property rights” belonging to Elliott, per the Daily Mail. The author herself sent letters to Archewell and Netflix in October 2021 and February 2022, and all the outreaches went unanswered, the outlet adds.
“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,” Elliott said.
Then, In May 2022, Netflix axed the Pearl project amid a series of cutbacks at the streamer.
“I am glad that Meghan’s Pearl show was dropped, and I hope that I had something to do with it,” Elliott said. “But what I really wanted was for it to have gone ahead, and for me to have been acknowledged or invited to work as a collaborator on the series. Pearl was my dream project and now, annoyingly, if I reprise my own creation, it’s going to look like I have copied the idea from someone else.”
Elliott said she initially didn’t go public with her complaints because she feared the wrath of Markle’s fans. But now she’s speaking out after a series of copycat complaints against Markle, including viewers’ observations that the duchess’ TV show With Love, Meghan seems to mimic Pamela Anderson’s Cooking with Love. Additionally, the mayor of the Spanish village of Porreres accused Markle of copying its coat of arms for the logo of her lifestyle brand, As Ever, and Markle’s new podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, shares its name with a preexisting YouTube series.
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