Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, has been labelled the “most disappointing celebrity of 2025” in a year-end assessment published by Canada’s Toronto Star, a newspaper in the city where she lived for much of her acting career while filming the legal drama Suits.
The judgement, presented as an opinion column by Toronto Star television critic Patricia Treble, has been widely circulated online through social media posts linking to the piece, with the headline stating that Markle had been “poised for a huge year” but had instead become the publication’s pick for the year’s biggest celebrity disappointment. The article’s framing has drawn renewed attention to Markle’s long association with Toronto, her transition from entertainment to public life after marrying Prince Harry, and the continuing scrutiny surrounding her commercial and media projects.
Markle’s ties to Toronto date back to her years playing paralegal-turned-lawyer Rachel Zane on Suits, which ran from 2011 to 2019. Markle joined the cast in 2011 and remained on the show through 2017, with biographies noting she lived in Toronto for much of each year while filming. During that period, she became a visible figure in parts of the city’s cultural scene and was photographed at events and charities, while also maintaining a public profile through lifestyle writing and social media.
After her relationship with Prince Harry became public in 2016 and the pair later announced their engagement in 2017, Toronto also became the backdrop to early stages of their relationship, including public appearances during the Invictus Games held in the city. Markle moved out of her rented Toronto home after her work on the seventh season of Suits ended, with the neighbourhood where she lived later becoming part of the public lore of the couple’s early relationship.
In recent years, the Duchess of Sussex has pursued a high-profile media partnership with Netflix alongside Prince Harry, producing documentary content and lifestyle programming, while also building a commercial brand separate from royal duties. The Toronto Star column’s “most disappointing” label has been discussed online as a measure of the gap between expectations for her post-royal media output and the mixed public reception those projects have received during 2025, though much of the reaction has taken the form of commentary and debate rather than new factual claims.
One of the projects promoted by Netflix in 2025 is a festive lifestyle special titled With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. Netflix’s official description says: “’Tis the season! Meghan shares her favorite holiday traditions, seasonal crafts and family recipes with friends old and new in this festive special.” The platform lists the programme as a 2025 release in the food, travel and lifestyle categories and credits Markle as the star.
The Netflix listing, while promotional in nature, points to the style of content Markle has leaned into as she develops a public-facing identity centred on home, food and entertaining, a direction that differs from her earlier career in scripted television. It also reflects a broader strategy that has put Markle’s personal tastes and domestic routines at the centre of commercial storytelling, an approach that tends to attract both enthusiastic audiences and sharp criticism online.
The Toronto Star’s framing of disappointment is rooted in that same contrast: Markle’s global fame expanded dramatically after her marriage into the British royal family, and since the couple stepped back from frontline royal duties in 2020, their choices in media, charity work and commercial ventures have been watched closely in the UK, the US and Canada.
Markle’s time in Canada remains an important reference point in that story. Profiles have consistently described her Toronto years as a period when she could work steadily while maintaining a relatively normal day-to-day life compared with the level of attention she later faced. Retrospectives on her former Toronto home have repeatedly linked the city to her pre-royal independence and to the early, more private period of her relationship with Prince Harry.
That sense of contrast has been amplified by the way Markle’s current public image is shaped. Her supporters often argue that she has been subjected to relentless and disproportionate scrutiny since entering the royal orbit, while critics argue she has courted attention through commercial ventures that rely on her celebrity and royal connections. The Toronto Star column’s “most disappointing” label has been shared by those who see it as confirmation of their negative view, while others have pushed back, describing the framing as harsh or unfair.
Some of the discussion has centred on the idea of a “hometown” turning on Markle, a narrative hook that resonates because Toronto is one of the few places where she lived for an extended period in adulthood before moving to the UK and later to North America. Biographical accounts underline the importance of Toronto to her professional trajectory, noting that it was where she spent much of each year while building her best-known acting role.
The “most disappointing celebrity” designation itself, however, sits within the realm of opinion rather than verifiable fact, reflecting a critic’s view and an editorial choice rather than a measurable award or poll result. The column’s circulation online has nonetheless served as a fresh flashpoint in the broader debate about Markle’s public standing and the expectations that have followed her since she became a central figure in one of the world’s most famous royal families.
Markle’s trajectory remains unusual by any measure: she moved from American network television into a royal role with intense constitutional and cultural significance, then exited that role and returned to a celebrity-driven media environment where her name draws both lucrative interest and polarised responses. In that context, a Canadian newspaper’s sharply worded critique has become another data point in a continuing conversation about the sustainability of her brand, the reception of her on-screen projects, and the degree to which public expectations have shifted since her Toronto years.
For Toronto, the discussion has also revived memories of the period when Markle’s life appeared, at least from the outside, more grounded in an identifiable community and routine: commuting to sets, living in residential neighbourhoods, and engaging with the city without the full weight of global royal attention. The renewed focus on that chapter, prompted by the Toronto Star’s assessment, has underlined how sharply her public life has transformed and how much of the debate about her centres on the distance between who she was then and what she represents now.
