Meghan Markle is back in the film‑festival mix thanks to Cookie Queens, a Girl Scouts documentary she and Prince Harry executive produced through Archewell Productions. The couple made a surprise appearance at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend, introducing the film at screenings in Salt Lake City and Park City and meeting the four Girl Scouts whose cookie‑season hustle anchors the story. On the red carpet, Meghan talked about the project as a way to take “something that is rooted in nostalgia” and reframe it as a modern look at the “girlhood experience” and all its layers.
In coverage from outlets like People, she also leaned into her own backstory, reminding reporters that she was a Girl Scout growing up in California and that her mom, Doria Ragland, served as her troop leader. Meghan called the film “probably the cutest at the festival” but also “one of the most powerful and meaningful depictions of an American tradition,” praising director Alysa Nahmias’ “incredible filmmaking” and saying she thinks people are going to love it. Deadline and Fox report that Cookie Queens received one of the longest standing ovations at Sundance’s Family Matinee section, which is geared toward all‑ages indies.
Onstage, Meghan introduced Nahmias and framed the doc as a story about leadership as much as cookies, telling the crowd the girls are “layered, beautiful girls who are about to become very strong leaders and young women.” She also shouted out the team’s “hundreds of hours of trusted fly‑on‑the‑wall material” with families who let cameras in during hectic cookie season, calling the finished edit “pretty outstanding.” Harry mostly hung back, joining group photos and greeting the Scouts featured in the film, underscoring the sense that this is very much Meghan’s passion project.
The doc fits neatly into the slate Archewell has been building: activist‑leaning, youth‑focused stories that sit at the intersection of nostalgia and social issues. It also gives Meghan a way to reintroduce herself to audiences not as a royal lightning rod but as a producer championing girls’ stories and American traditions she grew up with. With Sundance buzz already in place, the next question is where Cookie Queens lands for distribution and how it slots into the broader conversation about what Girl Scouts—and girlhood—look like in 2026.
