Cringe and confused: Meghan Markle’s launched a podcast

Perhaps the most telling line in Meghan Markle’s inaugural hour-long podcast for Spotify was the one comment from Prince Harry.

A fleeting background presence at the start, his wife allows him to say “hi” to her guest, Serena Williams, and he mutters an open-ended “come and see us”. It’s one of those non-invitation invitations reserved for your shallowest acquaintances, not at all the kind of thing you’d say to your best friend in the whole world or even your partner’s best friend.

Meghan made such a big deal about her relationship with the tennis star, or “my girl” as she (patronisingly to British ears) put it, that it began to sound fake. Real pals don’t gush like that, or maybe they do in Los Angeles, where both women were brought up.

The reviews of Archetype, as the podcast is called, have not been kind to Meghan Markle, skewering her self-indulgence; her bleating about her hardships, and her moaning about the in-laws again.

Several critics picked up on her confusion over the word “archetype”, taken to mean the same as “stereotype”. At one point she says: “There’s something that happens in being archetyped that’s really dehumanising.”

Such a slip-up suggests she dispensed with an editor. Though one is credited at the end of the “show” (her too grand description of this recording), one feels Meghan herself was completely in charge of the content and how it was presented. Pity.

Meghan, or the Duchess of Sussex as she likes to remind us, enjoys the spotlight — she is an actress after all — but even the best actors (and in her current role, maligned royal bride, she is doing some of her finest work) need scriptwriters. 

The more Meghan talks, the more she loses her audience, in Britain at least, as her Oprah spectacular proved. But if she doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny, why does she keep exposing herself?

The answer in the case of the podcast could be the multi-million dollar deal she and Harry have struck with Spotify.

More curious is why Serena agreed to participate. She plays along with it gamely enough, even though she is clearly in a supporting part. “Serena Williams needs no introduction,” said Meghan, so she introduced herself instead, for the first ten minutes.

Bette Midler’s “but enough about me, let’s talk about you… what do you think of me?” quip came to mind several times during the course of their exchanges in “The Misconception of Ambition”, as this episode (of 12) was billed.

Potentially compelling Serena anecdotes — about how she felt she was treated differently to male players if she challenged umpire decisions — were matched with cringey California speak that belittled the tennis great.

Even discussing Serena’s decision to step away from professional tennis at 40 — she will bow out at the US Open — was more about being a “mom” which, while undoubtedly relevant, is not all there is to it.

Athletes, like dancers, retire when they know their best days are behind them. Instead of delving for insights into the sporting star’s psyche, Meghan fished for compliments — OMG you made pregnancy so sexy, OMG you are so fearless — as she tried to align her achievements and trajectory with Serena’s.

But for all Meghan’s fame, her only real achievement to date has been bagging a prince; Serena has won 23 grand slams and “blown three generations’ worth of players off the court”, as Andrew Lawrence wrote in the Guardian recently.

Meghan may be a retired royal, but Serena is a tennis queen and this was a missed opportunity to explore the mind behind a sporting legend.

For a true understanding of how a girl from rundown Compton rose to become a champ, Serena fans are better off watching King Richard, the 2021 biopic that charts her story.

The treatment of female ambition is a serious subject and there were some attempts to address it seriously, particularly by Serena, musing on how women are perceived, and how aggression in a male player is seen as a passion but in a woman, it’s a “meltdown”.

But any message of feminine empowerment was undermined by the girly fawning of the host over her guest, a device constantly deployed to bring the chat back to her own territory.

So, a thread about Serena showing up on court through the trials of early motherhood segued into a tale about Meghan’s tour of South Africa with Harry, and how upset she was over a faulty heater in her baby’s room — that didn’t do him any harm because he wasn’t there — and how unfair it was that she was made to continue with her public engagements.

This was probably the only scoop to emerge from the podcast, but it sounded like a belated excuse by Meghan for her behaviour during that trip — her ill-judged “no one asks how I am” whinge amid South Africa’s poverty.

The poor little me narrative has become Meghan’s hallmark and she tries, in this new outlet, to shoehorn the mighty Serena into that space with her. But the difference is that while Meghan feels hard done by, Serena is gracious and grateful, thanking all the people who have supported her in her stellar career.

Next week, it’s Mariah Carey’s turn. Meghan certainly has access to the big stars. But this is about her, Meghan Markle, and one fears that 12 podcasts will not be enough for all she wants to say about herself.