Meghan Markle Faces Plagiarism Claims Over Canceled Netflix Show

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Meghan Markle Faces Plagiarism Claims Over Canceled Netflix Show

A British children’s author has come forward with plagiarism claims against Meghan Markle’s canceled Netflix animated show, Pearl, saying that it had strong resemblances to her own book series. Reportedly, it had been in development for years before Meghan Markle’s project was announced.

Here are all the details.

British author accuses Meghan Markle of plagiarism

Mel Elliott, the writer behind the Pearl Power book series, has accused Meghan Markle of plagiarism, stating that the Duchess of Sussex’s now-cancelled Netflix show shared too many similarities with her work to be a mere coincidence.

The animated show Pearl was first revealed in July 2021 as part of the multi-million dollar deal between Netflix and Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Archewell Productions. Markle was set to co-produce the series alongside David Furnish. The storyline followed a young girl who discovers her inner strength by learning about influential women throughout history — a theme that strongly echoes Elliott’s literary universe.

Elliott, who began developing Pearl Power into an animated series as early as 2018, said the overlap in content was “too great for me to ignore.” While her original books didn’t initially spotlight historical figures, the underlying message focused on female empowerment and gender equality, similar to Meghan Markle’s pitch.

“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 revealed that her legal team contacted Meghan Markle’s team. In addition, she personally followed up with letters to both Archewell and Netflix in the following months, yet received no response. Although Meghan’s Pearl show was later canceled by Netflix in May 2022 as part of a broader cutback in children’s animation. However, Elliott believes it would have been great “for it to have gone ahead, and for me to have been acknowledged or invited to work as a collaborator on the series.”