There is a lot to analyze from the 50-minute premiere of Meghan Markle’s long-awaited podcast Archetypes, which recently launched on Spotify. In the first episode, Meghan and her close friend Serena Williams talked openly about the difficulties of being a public figure, becoming a mother, and the discrimination women get when they are deemed “ambitious.” During the podcast, Meghan criticized the royal protocol for making her attend an official engagement just hours later after recounting a terrifying ordeal she, Harry, and Archie went through while traveling in Africa.
Meghan outlined how Archie’s nursery fire quickly transformed a visit to South Africa into every parent’s worst nightmare.
Archie, who was four months old at the time, was at a housing complex with his babysitter while Harry and Meghan went to a royal engagement.
After the engagement is over, Meghan relates, “we get in the car and they tell us there was a fire at the property.”
In the baby’s room, there was a fire.
Meghan arrives at home in a hurry and finds her “wonderful nanny, Lauren, in rivers of tears.”
Archie was meant to take a nap, but Lauren decided to bring him downstairs at the last minute.
“She went downstairs in that period of time. Meghan explained that the heater in the nursery caught fire.
Meghan informed Serena, who was astonished, that they only discovered the fire when “someone happened to just smell smoke down the corridor” because there was “no smoke detector.”
An upset Meghan said, “He was supposed to be sleeping in there.”
After describing the harrowing incident, Meghan also threw a barely disguised jab at the Royal family and their rigid etiquette, which prompted her part ways with Archie and reluctantly return to their timetable.
“When you’re a mom, you think, Oh, my God, what? Everyone is in tears and is distraught. What must we do, then? proceed to a different official engagement?” Before adding that she told people there at the time that “this doesn’t make any sense,” Meghan stated to the audience.
Serena, who was stunned, nodded and questioned why Meghan couldn’t have brought Archie with her after the ordeal.While admitting that “the focus ends up being on how it appears instead of how it feels,” Meghan said she had encouraged others around her to “simply tell folks what happened.”
“Having some insight on the human moments behind the scenes that people might not be aware of and to give each other a break,” Meghan said to Serena. “Is part of the humanizing and the breaking through of these labels and these archetypes and these boxes that we’re put into.”
“Because we had to abandon our baby, that’s why. We had to say goodbye to him and travel to another official engagement even though we were later shifted to a different location.
Serena told Meghan, “I couldn’t have done that,” expressing her surprise and denial that she could have abandoned her child.
“Oh. “Okay,” Meghan said.
