MEGHAN’S PODCAST
Archetypes, the duchess’ weekly podcast, which forms part of the $25-million (R455-m) deal she and Harry signed with Spotify, took a brief hiatus during the official royal mourning period for the queen.
And it might well have been a blessing in disguise for Meghan, who’d come in for flak following her previous broadcasts. The podcasts feature Meghan in conversation with powerful women, but the first one was widely slammed – including in SA, where the hashtag Voetsek Meghan was trending.
Chatting with tennis ace Serena Williams, Meghan revealed there’d been “a fire” in Archie’s room during her visit to SA in late 2019. Follow-up podcasts with Mariah Carey and actress Mindy Kaling had a lukewarm reaction. Still, the project has been successful.
In the first week of its release, it dethroned frontrunner Joe Rogan’s The Experience podcast to clinch the No 1 in the Spotify charts before falling to second place.
In the wake of the queen’s death, episodes will be subject to a strict screening process to avoid any more potential controversies, says royal commentator Neil Sean.
“They’re going through them all with a fine-tooth comb,” he says. “It’s her podcast and she’s allowed to say what she wants, but now there’s a lot of working going on behind the scenes.”
There seems to be truth in that. Archetypes was back on 4 October and Meghan was in conversation with broadcast journalist Lisa Ling and comedian Margaret Cho, discussing stereotypes Asian women face. Unlike other episodes, Meghan doesn’t share much about herself except to say that, growing up in Los Angeles, she “had a real love of getting to know other cultures”.
She also tells of a time she and her mom, Doria Ragland, went to a Korean spa. “We would go upstairs and have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles, and we’d look around at all these other women,” she says.
“These beautiful Korean women who had embraced the generational tradition of the jimjilbang [sex-segregated bathhouses in South Korea] and shared it with one another.”