Archetypes podcast: do we need more insights into Meghan Markle’s life?

The Duchess of Sussex has released the first episode of her long-awaited podcast series promising to “dissect, explore and subvert the labels that try to hold women back”.

Released exclusively through Spotify, the debut episode of Archetypes with Meghan is titled The Misconception of Ambition and features her chatting with close friend Serena Williams, who recently announced her retirement from tennis. Dr Laura Kray, a leading expert on gender in the workplace, is also a guest, and Prince Harry makes a surprise cameo too.

“You wanna come say hi?” the duchess asks her husband, before adding: “Look who just popped in.” She and Williams then jokingly greet the duke in faux British accents. But while Harry received a warm welcome, critics have been less receptive to the new podcast.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

‘Pure, narcissistic gibberish’

The nearly hour-long opening episode focuses on the double standards faced by women, including attitudes towards female ambition.

“I don’t remember ever personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ambitious until I started dating my now husband,” the duchess says. “Apparently ambition is, uh… a terrible, terrible thing, for a woman that is.”

While that complaint may win her sympathy from some listeners, the British press remain largely unconvinced. The Times’ James Marriott dismissed the “almost entirely preposterous” podcast as a “tastefully soundtracked parade of banalities, absurdities and self-aggrandising Californian platitudes”. The listener’s “overwhelming sense” is one of “futility and irritation”, he added.

Fellow Times columnist Hilary Rose also gave Archetypes the thumbs down. “I’ve listened to 57 minutes and 28 seconds of Meghan Markle’s syrupy California drawl while rocking back and forth and moaning softly under my breath,” she wrote. This podcast is “pure, narcissistic gibberish”, Rose concluded.

Celia Walden was equally as dismissive in The Telegraph. “If the rest of the season is anything like the premiere, what we’re really going to be listening into week after week is Meghan interviewing herself,” she said. Walden added that “every woman has had a girlfriend like Meghan: the one who turns every confidence back to them and hijacks every distressing anecdote with one of their own – only theirs is longer drawn-out, more distressing”.

The Spectator’s Steerpike agreed that Archetypes is nothing more than a vehicle for the duchess to “concentrate on talking about herself”.

“It’s hard to believe that it took 28 people, including eight executive producers, to make the episode,” added the anonymous gossip columnist.

‘Spotify execs will sigh with relief’

Although positive reviews of Archetypes have been few and far between, a personal anecdote by the duchess did “bring me some clarity” about why the Sussexes quit their royal duties and the UK, said The Independent’s Clémence Michallon.

In a brief story that “exemplifies the complete dysfunctionality of life as a royal”, according to Michallon, the Los Angeles-born duchess told how back in 2019, the nursery that son Archie was supposed to be sleeping in caught fire – and revealed that she and Harry were not told until they later returned from an official engagement.

“And of course, as a mother, you go, ‘Oh, my God, what?’ Everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken,” she said. “And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’ … I was like, ‘Can you just tell people what happened?’”

Many listeners may have related to her frustration at being told that a problem which “could easily be solved with a little bit of pragmatism” actually “can’t be for completely amorphous reasons (optics, stiff upper lip, ‘it’s not the way things are done around here’)”, wrote Michallon.

But regardless of whether listeners sympathised, odds are they will return to hear the duchess “air her old grievances”, said Bel Mooney in the Daily Mail. After all, episode one of Archetype provided “the kind of gossipy, headline-making stuff that will make the Spotify execs sigh with relief that their investment” in the Sussexes and their Archewell Audio production company “has delivered”.