When Meghan Markle announced her intention to invite fans into the kitchen with a Netflix cooking show to burnish her newly launched lifestyle brand she never said whose kitchen it would be.
Now, DailyMail.com can reveal, viewers can indeed look forward to an ‘at home with Meghan Markle’ experience as they learn about everything American Riviera Orchard.
Just don’t expect the home to be hers.
Instead, as seen in these exclusive DailyMail.com pictures, the Duchess of domesticity has set up her stall in a sprawling property two miles from the Montecito mansion she and Prince Harry, 39, share with children Archie, 4, and Lilibet, 2, and their revolving cast of staff.
Just days after she meticulously numbered one-through-fifty pots of homemade strawberry jam and sent them to dozens of her closest influencers, filming for 42-year-old Meghan’s latest venture has begun in earnest.
Meghan Markle is filming a new Netflix cooking show to share the ‘joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship’
Production trucks and tents lined the driveway of a $5million property set in eight acres of avocado and lemon groves in a gated community in Montecito for filming of ‘interior and exterior dialogue scenes’
DailyMail.com can reveal Meghan is not using her own Montecito mansion, but instead using the kitchen of philanthropists Tom and Sherrie Cipolla. Production trucks and tents are seen at the property
The homeowners have hosted fundraisers for the center at the same home in which Meghan is currently playing house
Exclusive photos show several SUVs arriving at the property as production begun
A film permit application exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com shows filming is taking place in two separate locations.
On Tuesday Meghan, who recently teased the launch of American Riviera Orchard with soft-focus footage of herself arranging pink flowers and stirring something in a bowl, spent the day surrounded by the blooms of Florabundance, a florist 10-minutes drive from Montecito in the coastal California town of Carpinteria.
On Wednesday production trucks lined the driveway of a $5million property set in eight acres of avocado trees and lemon groves in a gated community in Montecito for filming of ‘interior and exterior dialogue scenes,’ that began on Sunday and is slated to continue until late June.
Tom and Sherrie Cipolla have lent their home to Meghan for her cooking show. The couple are fixtures on the bougie Montecito society scene and generous donors to several good causes locally
Security vehicles guarded both of the 4,500 square feet home’s entrances.
The property is the home of Tom and Sherrie Cipolla – both fixtures on the bougie Montecito society scene and generous donors to several good causes locally including the Storyteller Center – a therapeutic preschool for children facing adversities.
They have hosted fundraisers for the center at the same home in which Meghan is currently playing house.
Tom, 75, and wife Sherrie, 69, parents to two adult children, have a property portfolio worth more than $20million, encompassing two dozen buildings in Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara. The couple also runs a physical therapy practice that last year boasted sales in excess of $1.3million.
When approached by DailyMail.com Sherrie Cipolla declined to comment on the purpose of the film crew currently camped out in her home.
The family room and kitchen with its French doors opening to a patio, lawn and mountains, Caesartone countertops and 48-inch Thermador range are, appropriately enough, the center piece of the Montecito property in which the Duchess of Sussex will hone her carefully curated image of domestic goddess.
Here, from the comfort of somebody else’s home, she will share ‘the joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship,’ – as well as chasing ratings.
Meghan announced her new business venture, American Riviera Orchard, with a clip which showed the Duchess cooking in a kitchen with copper pans hanging over her head as she whisked