Meghan Markle has been thrown into a new copycat row this weekend after a British children’s author claimed she had sent her legal letters about the “striking similarities” between the duchess’s now dropped first children’s TV show and her own work. Pearl was an animated series announced by the Duchess of Sussex in 2021 for Netflix – as part of her and Prince Harry’s lucrative £80 million deal – focusing on a little girl “as she learns to step into her power and finds inspiration from influential women throughout history.”

Meghan was credited as its Executive Producer alongside Sir Elton John’s husband David Furnish, but it was dropped one year later, with the duchess’s Archewell Productions removing all references to it. Now, children’s author Mel Elliott has made new claims and said that she sent a legal letter to the duchess, followed by two personal letters, regarding “potential infringement of copyright in relation to her own creation – a little British girl called Pearl Power”, according to the Sunday Mail.

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.” Ms Elliot added: “I am glad that Meghan’s ‘Pearl’ show was dropped, and I hope that I had something to do with it. But what I really wanted was for it to have gone ahead, and for me to have been acknowledged or invited to work as a collaborator on the series. Pearl was my dream project and now, annoyingly, if I reprise my own creation, it’s going to look like I have copied the idea from someone else.” The Duchess of Sussex has been contacted for comment.

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