Meghan Markle’s daughter Lilibet featured alongside her in launch of new brand
Lukas Schulze/Getty Images for Invictus Games Düsseldorf 2023
Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is sharing new details about her lifestyle brand, including a new name, and debuting it alongside a photo with her daughter, Lilibet.
Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry, shared in an Instagram video Monday that her still-to-be-launched brand is now named As Ever, a change from the brand’s previous name of American Riviera Orchard.
“‘As ever’ means ‘as it’s always been’ or some even say ‘in the same way as always’. If you’ve followed along since my days of creating The Tig, you’ll know this couldn’t be truer for me,” Meghan wrote on Instagram, referring to the blog she ran before marrying Harry in 2018. “This new chapter is an extension of what has always been my love language, beautifully weaving together everything I cherish — food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy in the everyday.”
Meghan has not yet revealed when products from her As Ever brand will be available for sale.
A new website for the brand invites people to subscribe by email, saying, “Save your seat at the table.”
The only image on the website so far is a photo of Meghan running in an open field alongside her daughter, Lilibet, who will turn 4 in June.
Harry and Meghan are also the parents of a 5-year-old son, Archie.
Harry appears to make an offscreen appearance in Meghan’s Instagram video, handing her the phone as he tells her, “It’s recording.”
From there, Meghan says with a smile about her new project, “The cat’s out of the bag.”
Describing her decision to rename her brand As Ever, Meghan said she felt the name American Riviera Orchard — a nickname for the area of Santa Barbara, California, where she and Harry and their two children live — “limited” what she could do with the brand.
“It limited me to things that were just manufactured and grown in this area,” Meghan said of the name, which she previously launched with its own Instagram account last March.
Along with announcing the new name As Ever, Meghan also revealed Monday that Netflix — the home of her upcoming lifestyle show — will partner with her on the brand.
“Then Netflix came on, not just as my partner in the show, but as my partner in my business. which was huge,” she said. “So I thought about it, and I’ve been waiting for a moment to share a name that I had secured in 2022, and this is the moment, and it’s called As Ever.”
The final season of The Handmaid’s Tale officially has a premiere date and a new teaser.
Fans got a new look at Elisabeth Moss in a teaser for the show’s sixth season, released by Hulu on Wednesday. The new season will be out with its first three episodes on April 8, followed by weekly episodes until its finale on May 27.
In the teaser, Moss’ character June describes her fight against Gilead and says the red color of the cloaks donned by handmaids in the dystopian society has come to symbolize “the color of rage.”
“In the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, June’s unyielding spirit and determination pull her back into the fight to take down Gilead,” a synopsis for the upcoming season reads.
“Luke and Moira join the resistance. Serena tries to reform Gilead while Commander Lawrence and Aunt Lydia reckon with what they have wrought, and Nick faces challenging tests of character. This final chapter of June’s journey highlights the importance of hope, courage, solidarity, and resilience in the pursuit of justice and freedom,” the synopsis continues.
The upcoming season will star Moss alongside Yvonne Strahovski, Bradley Whitford, Max Minghella, Ann Dowd and more.
The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale premieres April 8 on Hulu.
Hulu is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Justin Baldoni has filed a new civil lawsuit against Blake Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane’s public relations company, Vision PR, for, among other things, extortion and defamation.
Baldoni, who directed and starred in the film It Ends With Us with Lively, is accusing Lively of having “robbed” Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios LLC of control of the film, as well as destroying Baldoni’s “personal and professional reputations and livelihood.”
The suit lists Baldoni, Wayfarer and Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel as plaintiffs, as well as Melissa Nathan, a crisis PR specialist hired by Wayfarer Studios, and Jamey Heath, Baldoni’s friend and podcast co-host. They are currently seeking $400 million in damages.
“Lively stole Wayfarer’s movie, hijacked Wayfarer’s premiere, destroyed Plaintiffs’ personal and professional reputations and livelihood, and aimed to drive Plaintiffs out of business entirely,” the suit reads.
The suit claims Lively pushed a “false and damaging narrative” against Baldoni that was “rife with lies and doctored ‘evidence'” in accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends with Us.
Lively first raised allegations of sexual harassment against Baldoni and accused him and his publicity team of trying to destroy her reputation in a complaint she filed in December with the California Civil Rights Department, which included numerous text messages and communications she claimed were part of a campaign to attack her public image. The New York Times was the first to report Lively’s legal complaint.
Lively then formally filed a lawsuit in New York against Baldoni and other defendants, again alleging sexual harassment.
Bryan Freedman, the attorney for Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, denied all allegations.
Baldoni’s suit accuses Sloane of having gone “so far as to propagate malicious stories portraying Baldoni as a sexual predator” and Reynolds of using the term to describe Baldoni in a call with Baldoni’s agent. The suit claims Reynolds told Baldoni’s rep to “drop” him as a client.
Baldoni also accused Reynolds of launching into an “aggressive tirade, berating Baldoni in what Baldoni later described as a ‘traumatic’ encounter” at the couple’s home during the film’s production.
The suit claims Baldoni and the other plaintiffs were “the targets of a calculated and vitriolic smear campaign” lodged by the defendants and that Lively, leveraging her and her husband’s star power, took control of the film — including Lively having her own cut of it.
Freedman said in a statement, “This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media.”
“It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret,” Freedman continued.
Freedman ended his statement by saying, “We know the truth, and now the public does too. Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”
ABC News has reached out to Lively, Reynolds, Sloane and Vision PR for a comment in response to Baldoni’s suit against them, but has not yet received a response.
Baldoni’s latest action in his legal battle against Lively comes after he had filed a lawsuit against The New York Times on Dec. 31 for libel and false light invasion of privacy, after it published the story “We Can Bury Anyone” on Dec. 22, which included reporting on Lively’s complaint. That same day, Lively formally filed her lawsuit in New York against Baldoni and other defendants.
Baldoni was reportedly dropped from his talent agency after the story was published.
In his complaint against The New York Times, Baldoni accused the newspaper of relying on “cherry-picked” and altered communications, with details “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced” to “mislead.”
In a statement to ABC News, The New York Times denied Baldoni’s accusations and said their original story was “meticulously and responsibly reported,” and that their report was “based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article.”
Lively’s attorney issued a statement amid the ongoing feud.
“Ms. Lively’s federal litigation before the Southern District of New York involves serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation, backed by concrete facts. This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation. As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set,” the statement read in part.
In recent days, both Baldoni and Lively’s attorney have issued statements on the ongoing legal feud.
House of David, Prime Video’s series about the life of the biblical King David, debuts Thursday with three episodes. It depicts how shepherd boy David is anointed king of Israel while another king, Saul, is on the throne. In that way, show creator Jon Erwin says it’s similar to another epic series about the struggle for power.
“I think it is a bit like Game of Thrones,” Erwin says. “The drama of a boy chosen to be king by this prophet, in a nation that had a king. … That is instant dramatic tension. And it is a battle over this throne, and who is man’s choice? Who is God’s choice? So it does have some of those same story drivers.”
Erwin also feels that House of David tells a story that’s a blueprint for all those that followed.
“Whether it’s Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, Frodo … the classic hero’s journey, in many ways … has its roots, at least somewhat, in the life of David 3,000 years ago,” he notes.
Newcomer Michael Iskander, who plays David, says he went straight to the source to prepare to portray such a historical figure.
“I always found myself going to … the Bible, and just really delving into who David was as a person,” he says. “What is his character? What is he ultimately seeking in life? And what are the things that got him to where he was?”
Iskander’s background in Broadway musicals, and his family background, also helped prepare him to play David, who’s also a musician.
“I knew that whoever would play David would have to sing the Psalms in Hebrew because it has to be in the original language. It has to be on a lyre. It has to be with that Eastern ornamentation,” he says. “I had a bit of experience in that. I grew up in Egypt. I know what that music sounds like.”
