Quiet Meghan Markle podcast flop no one is talking about
It started with so much fanfare and cost tens of millions of dollars – but Meghan Markle’s project has been an abject failure.
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If Books Could Kill is a podcast about airport bestsellers by Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri. It has only released three episodes so far, yet at the time of writing was beating Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s podcast Archetypes on the Spotify charts.
Yesterday, the final episode of the actress-turned-HRH-turned-content-creator-and-chicken-owner series was released – titled, “Man-ifesting A Cultural Shift”.
And after its 12-week run, (with a break out respect for the passing of Queen Elizabeth) there just might be a few nervous executives at Spotify – you know, the ones who paid a reported $32 million to sign up Meghan and husband Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
Despite kicking off in late August amid much fanfare – including Times Square billboards and briefly taking out the number one podcast spot – the Archetypes launch bang has been reduced to a puttering whimper with the show currently down in the 31st most popular slot on the streaming platform, only just managing to beat 12 Hour Sound Machines (no loops or fades) which purports to be 12 hours of continuous noise you can sleep to.
#Archetypes by Meghan Markle on NYC Times Square 📠Los Angeles 📠Toronto 📠BILLBOARDS 🔥
— Selwa 🽠سلوى (@w_selwa) August 25, 2022
✨ SUCCESS ✨ pic.twitter.com/Q00eLCEeMS
Not a single one of Archetype’s dozen episodes is in the top 100 episode chart either.
It would take the most tenacious, rose-tinted communications executive in the world to somehow attempt to spin this all as representing some sort of success.
In fact, after a roster of A-list guests including Serena Williams, Mellody Hobson, Mariah Carey and Paris Hilton one thing is largely clear: Meghan might be a passionate advocate, has absorbed on a cellular level every Brene Brown Instagram quote tile ever shared, and have an address book that would make a People editor tear up – but a great (or even mediocre) podcaster, she is not.
Back in December 2020, Spotify followed in the footsteps of Netflix and announced to the world that it had secured the talents (stop scoffing back there) of the recently emancipated Duke and Duchess.
As that year drew to a close, after having started it by doing a royal runner, their future seemed clear. They would diligently churn out worthy TV shows and podcasts that would support their chosen causes. They would care on camera and microphone – and be paid handsomely for doing so.
What no one had quite figured on was that le grand tell-all interview of tell-all interviews would not be done for their streaming paymaster but instead on CBS with their pal Oprah Winfrey. And the podcast where Harry would accuse the royal family with “total neglect” would not be his own but rather actor Dax Shepherd’s.
(Who wants to bet that a few gluten-free kale salads collided with walls when certain Netflix and Spotify bosses found this all out?)
Nor did anyone predict that two years on, the sum total of Archewell Studios’ released content would be one podcast series that has had about all the impact of a new Matchbox 20 album.
The problem is, aside from a few revelations about Meghan’s former life of professional duchessing and her criticising the first TV show to really give her a break, Archetypes has been pretty forgettable.
It has not provoked or shifted the conversation around the issues of the stereotypes (archetypes are something different) and labels that women are still saddled with; it has not established Meghan as a leading, powerful voice on gender equality; and it has not proven that simply being a member of the House of Windsor will automatically equal audio gold.
Ask yourself, you a person who has taken the time to read a story about Meghan: What can you actually remember about the series? Maybe the fact that in her first episode with Serena Williams, Meghan told listeners about a heater in son Archie’s bedroom catching on fire while they were in South Africa in 2019? Or that Deal Or No Deal kerfuffle?
However, beyond that and a few headlines where the 41-year-old made what sounded like digs at The Firm, all the episodes have largely disappeared off into the ether of the billions of hours of content readily available. Archetypes promised to “subvert the labels that try to hold women back” but in reality it was about as subversive as a freshly ironed pair of jeans at an Iron Maiden concert.
Podcasting has not proven a particularly successful vehicle for the Duchess of Sussex and this series has not unlocked anyone’s potential aside from several critics’ willingness to consider a midmorning G&T.
One anonymous professional podcast producer, speaking to the Telegraph in early September, called it “sycophantic and cringe-worthy” and said: “My prediction is that for all the promo it’s had, the podcast will be a massive loss leader for Spotify.”
So far, there has not been a hint that there might be a second series in the works.
So what of Harry? Aside from co-hosting with Meghan a one-off special that came in December 2020 there has not been a single peep to suggest that he might have a series himself in the works.
All eyes, and likely a number of P&L sheets, are now focused on the reported release next week of Harry and Meghan’s under-wraps Netflix series, which is not, according to the Duchess herself, a reality show, but a documentary about the couple’s “love story”. (Anyone else feel a tad queasy at the thought?)
The series has not had an easy birth with Page Six reporting earlier this month that the couple parted ways with the first director hired for the project, Oscar-nominee Garrett Bradley, after “they had a falling out with her over the vision of the project”. (If the show had been just about Harry they could have called it The Frown.)
There is a hell of a lot riding on this mystery Netflix outing, not least that their deal with the billion-dollar company is reportedly their biggest cash cow. With all that freedom they got in 2020 came the freedom to pay their own bills – very large bills too given they live in a Kardashian-worthy mansion and don’t seem to have stinted on the finer things in life like diamonds, an Hermes blanket here and private jetting hither and yon.
(And art. Meghan revealed in one episode that there is a piece in their home that is
“not fancy, it’s kind of this rectangle shape, almost plaque-like, and it just says a few words, very simply across it: ‘Humankind: be both,’” which has the profundity of something slapped on a free water bottle.)
What this Netflix show (The Love Gloat?) really translates to is the most significant test yet of the level of public interest in the Sussexes after nearly three years of them taking up a huge amount of space in public consciousness and news feeds.
What will win out for the show? Viewers’ curiosity about spending a few hours getting up close and personal with people who have the King’s mobile number or fatigue after years of them popping up to regularly peddle their victim narrative?
Are we about to see a whole new side to the couple or will we be treated to more lines so dangerously eye-rolling that they are liable to cause injuries? (Like Meghan quoting Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos in her final Archetypes episode: “What didn’t you do to bury me? But you forgot that I was a seed.”)
Will we be treated to lots of smug, self-satisfied “Caring” (and yes, that should be a capital ‘C’) or a genuinely real, compelling look at two people whose lives have boasted more drama than a Bold And The Beautiful finale?
Will it all feel like a very expensive ploy for public sympathy set to an acoustic guitar soundtrack or will it tell a moving story we have never seen or heard before?
What the release of Montecito Is The new London (or so I’m guessing) next week constitutes is the first real stress test of their marketability and their brand post-Oprah, post-pandemic and with King Charles on the throne. Are they still the hot property they were several years ago or has the sizzle factor ebbed away after all the “woe-is-us” outings and their failure to, so far, achieve anything charitable of substantial note?
With Archetypes, the Sussexes’ have certainly planted a seed but … who knows exactly what it might grow into.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Quiet Meghan Markle podcast flop no one is talking about
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