Meghan Markle Podcast Could Be "More Damaging" Than Oprah: Expert

(Image credit: CBS)

Meghan Markle's long-awaited podcast, Archetypes, premiered last week, with an episode featuring Serena Williams and reframing the word "ambition" as applied to women in our society.

In it, the Duchess of Sussex revealed a previously unheard story of Archie's nursery catching fire during his parents' tour of South Africa in 2019, and how the Firm didn't allow the Sussexes time to recoup after the shock they received before attending their next official engagement. It was clearly an instance of the duchess criticizing the Royal Family, and for royal expert Duncan Larcombe, it was only the beginning.

"This was the opening salvo in Meghan’s 12-week war," Larcombe declared in to The Daily Beast.

"It has the potential to be even more damaging than the Oprah interview because it is Meghan, in her own words, on her own show, doing exactly what she wants, and the fact is she took the first opportunity to plunge the knife in."

Indeed, in a promo video for the episode, the duchess explained, "People should expect the real me in this, and probably the me that they've never gotten to know. Certainly not in the past few years, where everything is through the lens of the media, as opposed to, 'Hey, it's me.' I'm just excited to be myself and talk and be unfiltered and, yeah, it's fun."

For Larcombe, the streaming platform will be delighted to have gotten some headline-generating content out of Markle.

"This will have come as a great relief to the executives on the other side of the glass at Spotify, who paid millions of dollars for her," he continued.

"It’s a huge hit, of course, but the fact that she was interviewing Serena Williams is almost completely irrelevant to the listening figures. Meghan has star power and this was all about Meghan being Meghan."

Well, I, for one, can't wait to hear what else she has to say over the coming weeks. More tomorrow!

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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.