Meghan Markle reveals Archie's nursery once caught fire: 'He was supposed to be sleeping in there'

Meghan Markle has shared a shocking story about being required to continue with official royal engagements after being "shaken" by a fire in her son's nursery.

The Duchess of Sussex on Tuesday debuted the first episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes, in which she chats with tennis star Serena Williams. During the conversation, she reveals that her son Archie's nursery caught on fire in 2019 while she and Prince Harry were on their tour of South Africa.

After finishing an engagement, Meghan describes being told "there's been a fire in the baby's room" at the housing unit where they were staying. According to Meghan, their nanny, Lauren, was "supposed to put Archie down for his nap" but decided to get a snack downstairs, bringing the baby with her.

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"In that amount of time that she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire." Meghan said. "There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there."

Meghan recalled that everyone was "in tears" and "shaken" by the incident. But she says that she and Prince Harry had another official engagement scheduled for that day, and they weren't able to cancel it. "Optically, the focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels," she said, adding, "We had to leave our baby."

Archetypes is Meghan's first podcast under a deal with Spotify signed in 2020. She shared the South Africa story during a conversation with Williams about people not "having any sense" of what someone is going through "behind the scenes."