Meghan Markle Accused Of Copying Children’s Author For Netflix Show!

Meghan Markle’s animated series for Netflix never moved forward… And one English author couldn’t be happier.

Back in 2020, Meghan and Prince Harry signed a massive multi-year deal with the streaming giant agreeing to produce all sorts of content — documentaries, films, scripted and unscripted projects, and even children’s content. What children’s content?? The Duchess was working on a cartoon. But plans quickly derailed after plagiarism accusations were hurled the Suits alum’s way.

In July 2021, Meghan announced she would be bringing a new *original* animated children’s show to the streaming platform called Pearl. It was intended to follow a little girl “as she learns to step into her power and finds inspiration from influential women throughout history.”

Sounds great, right? Except for maybe it wasn’t so original after all…

Soon after catching wind of the project, UK-based author Mel Elliot couldn’t help but notice similarities to her own children’s book series, Pearl Power, which she debuted in 2014. Any guesses what it’s about? A young girl named Pearl who finds her inner strength. It features strong themes of both female empowerment and gender equality, and guess what? Mel intended to bring the story to life with an animated series of her own in 2019.

Last chance to RT to win a signed copy of PEARL POWER. I'll pick 5 at random tomorrow 🙂http://t.co/EzxlXs7xlV pic.twitter.com/jeYE75ddN8

— MEL ELLIOTT (@Mellyelliott) August 30, 2015

In an interview with DailyMail.com over the weekend, Mel revealed that early ideas for the show would have featured Pearl presenting a project about different female historical figures in each episode, with test animations being done including Billie Jean King — which are available online. After that, Mel had plans to include the likes of Maya Angelou, Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall, Madonna, and more.

What was Meghan’s proposed animated Netflix show about again? Oh yeah, a young girl named Pearl “step[ping] into her power and finds inspiration from influential women throughout history.”

Sooo, once Mel heard of the project her team reached out to the Duchess of Sussex informing them of “similarities between [her] proposed animation series and [Elliott’s] work,” according to a letter obtained by the outlet. It continues:

“It also appears that there is a risk that your proposed series may infringe intellectual property rights belonging to my client and/or may give rise to a claim in passing off (or in the US, some form of unfair competition.)”

Mel claims she didn’t get a response back from Meghan’s team, so they fired off another letter in October 2021. Again, no response. So in February 2022, they sent a third letter — which also didn’t receive a response. But this time, less than three months later, Meghan’s project was officially canceled. To this day, Mel claims she’s never heard a peep from Meghan OR Netflix. But she continues to be shocked by the situation. She told the outlet:

“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.”

She’s not explicitly saying Meghan was ripping her off. But that is the takeaway from those letters, right??

Mel also noted she would have happily collaborated with Meghan to bring the project to the animation space… but never received such an offer. She added: