bitchy | Duchess Meghan accused of plagiarism for her ‘Pearl’ series, which was never made

The Duchess of Sussex is being accused of plagiarism for a project she did not write, produce or make. This is where we are now. Several years ago, Meghan planned to produce an animated series called Pearl, all about a little girl who finds inspiration from influential women throughout history. At first, Meghan was going to do the series with Netflix, but then Netflix axed much of their animation division. There were rumors that Meghan would take the project somewhere else. And then the idea/project just disappeared and everyone moved on to other things. Now, years later, an author has come forward saying that Meghan plagiarized her book series, Pearl Power.

The Duchess of Sussex was plunged into a copycat row last night when a British author revealed she had sent a legal letter pointing out what she considered to be ‘striking similarities’ between Meghan’s first children’s TV show and her own work. ‘Pearl’, announced by the Duchess in July 2021, was an animated series about a little girl ‘as she learns to step into her power and finds inspiration from influential women throughout history’.

It was a key title in the $100m deal struck between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the streaming giant in 2020. Meghan was credited as Executive Producer alongside Sir Elton John’s husband David Furnish but the show was killed less than a year later, with Meghan swiftly removing all references to it from the website of her production company Archewell.

Now, globally published children’s writer Mel Elliott, 51, from Hastings, has disclosed that she sent a legal letter suggesting a potential infringement of copyright in relation to her own creation – a little British girl called Pearl Power. The author and illustrator then followed up with two further personal letters.

Last night Mel said: ‘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 world 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.’

‘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.’

By the time Meghan’s new show was announced, Mel had already written three Pearl Power books, published in 2014, 2015 and 2016. The third was a runaway success, translated into Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch as well as being published in the UK and America.

It’s very likely that if Meghan’s Pearl series ever went ahead, the British media had Mel Elliott locked and loaded for a months-long attack on Meghan. The letters Elliott sent to Meghan and Netflix were probably all of the heads-up needed for everyone to realize that this was a huge attack campaign just waiting to happen, and so that became one more reason why Meghan’s Pearl series was quietly shuffled off. In retrospect, this is also why the British media was making such a big deal about Meghan’s Pearl series getting canceled before it was even made – they had big plans to dine out on these “plagiarism” stories for months. As the crux of the argument… sure, I agree that Meghan’s series sounds similar to Elliott’s books. Maybe Meghan realized that too and that made it easier for her to drop it.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.