In a tiny variation of the origin story of America, another British empire has crumbled within a few years of attempting to set up shop on US soil. Archewell Audio, the brainchild of Meghan Markle and (the artist formerly known as) Prince Harry, is officially kaput on Spotify — as is the Sussexes’ $20-million deal to create podcasts on the platform. The CEO of a top Hollywood agency reportedly trashed the Duchess at Cannes: “Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent”. And Spotify executive Bill Simmons ripped into the Sussexes on his own podcast. “The Fucking Grifters: that’s the podcast we should have launched with them,” he said. “I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.”
I, for one, eagerly await the big reveal. But it’s hard to imagine that whatever Harry suggested could be worse than what Archewell ultimately produced. Apart from a 33-minute holiday special, released in December 2020, the couple’s sole Spotify output was Archetypes, which described itself as an effort to “investigate, dissect, and subvert the labels that hold women back”. Having listened to it, I can confirm: the above is less a mission statement than a strategy akin to the one employed by high-school students looking to pad the word count. (“Webster’s dictionary defines an archetype as ‘a very typical example of a certain person or thing.’ In this essay I will…”.) Meghan appears in conversation with women who, like her, have done extremely well for themselves — the first two episodes feature Mariah Carey and Serena Williams — but who, like Meghan, can still pluck a narrative about being held back by misogyny from even the most stratospheric level of success.
The Archetypes post-mortem has included damning allegations about Meghan’s lack of involvement, including that she pawned off the actual interviewing onto a producer and then recorded herself asking the questions later. Andy Cohen, host of The Real Housewives, who appeared in the final “binary breaking” episode (so-called because, unlike previous episodes, this one had men in it), has described this as “an insane rumor”; from the perspective of a famous person, like him, it is. It’s very clear, listening to the podcast, that Meghan did indeed interview her celebrity guests. It’s equally clear, however, that these are the only guests she talked to.
The academics, journalists, or even just less-famous celebrities whose voices are included on Archetypes were apparently pre-recorded with a producer, with Meghan’s reactions spliced in afterward — sometimes with unintentionally hilarious results. “I mean, isn’t that all so interesting?” Meghan coos, after a lengthy diatribe from the episode’s featured professor about “women and femmes and minoritised people” and “normative social constructs and normative social patterns”. (If by “interesting” you mean “indecipherable”, then yes, very.) And yet, the podcast needs these voices, not only to give it the gloss of a serious exploration of its subject matter, but to counteract the substanceless quality of Meghan’s interviews with fellow celebs.
Of course, Meghan is very busy and important and not obligated to talk to anyone she doesn’t want to; of course, she’s entitled to only speak with people as famous as she is, while leaving her producers to deal with the rabble. But this is undeniably at odds with the relatable image she’s been attempting to sell since Megxit, whether it’s one-on-one with Oprah or to millions of viewers on Netflix: the image of the royal princess turned humble truth-teller. Meghan (who, lest we forget, started out as an actor) is not so much an engaged host as playing the role of one, and hence Archetypes is not so much a podcast as an incredible simulation thereof. You know that saying about a stupid person’s idea of a smart person? This is like that, except it’s a narcissist’s idea of what it would be like to be curious about other people’s lives. When news broke this week that Harry’s own favourite (albeit sadly unrealised) podcast idea was to interview Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their childhood trauma, was anyone surprised? At the end of the day, the Sussexes invariably circle back to the only topic either of them are interested in: themselves.
Not that I blame them. This is, if nothing else, a solid business strategy: the relentless commitment to monetising one’s own life story is itself archetypal of the modern age, not to mention classically American. And despite the entertainment value of Bill Simmons describing the couple as “grifters”, this is not quite the right word for what Meghan is, nor for what she tried to do with her now-defunct podcast. Grifters are typically in it for the money, but the nature of the Spotify contract more or less meant that she could have farted into a microphone for an hour and still get paid, but Archteypes is what she made. She chose the podcast medium; she chose this particular format. Perhaps it is worth asking why.
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