Meghan's podcast shows she can't let go of her royal past, writes Daniela Elser. Photo / Getty Images
Meghan's podcast shows she can't let go of her royal past, writes Daniela Elser. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Over the years, the royal family have attracted some pretty savage nicknames. Sarah, Duchess of York was labelled the Duchess of Pork (truly horrible stuff) by the press, while Kate, Princess of Wales got lumped with Waity Katie after she spent the better part of a decade dodging a career while Prince William got around to popping the question.
Prince Harry earned his Party Prince sobriquet for falling out of Mayfair nightclubs with impressive regularity while his grandfather Prince Philip was derisively dubbed Phil the Greek or The Refugee by establishment figures due to his relatively impoverished roots.
In 2018, Meghan, the newly-minted Duchess of Sussex, picked up her own far-from-flattering nickname - Duchess Difficult.
In the long and winding story of the Sussexes, this moment in history was a real fork in the road, the moment that things started to really sour publicly for the newbie member of the royal family. (Up until that point, a few clearly racist instances aside, Fleet Street Brits had been overjoyed with Harry’s choice of a wife, who was not some Alice band-loving gel named Araminta who loved horses).
So why oh why is Meghan this week talking about the “difficult” label, given her own personal history with this particular pejorative?
Overnight on Tuesday the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast was released, in which she discussed the “B word” with Starbucks chairwoman Meldoy Hobson.
The duchess said at the beginning of the episode: “What these people are implying when they use that very charged word, is that this woman: ‘Oh, she’s difficult’.
She also said: “Perhaps the truth is that labelling a woman as the ‘b-word’ or as ‘difficult’ is often a deflection.
“A way to hide some of her really awesome qualities, her persistence or strength or perseverance, her strong opinion, maybe even her resilience.”
Quick, call Miss Marple! Whoever could she be talking about here?
It's astonishing how often Meghan refers to her past life as a royal, writes Daniela Elser.
But let’s get back to the ‘why’ here.
Because it is amazing just how often she has brought up her life inside the palace gates since Archetypes launched back in August.
Across nine long episodes, the duchess has been staging a valiant if futile attempt to transform herself into a leading feminist voice for the oat milk generation, and time and again, audiences have been treated to her making comments about the life she was so keen to get away from.
During her debut episode which featured Serena Williams she said: “I don’t remember ever personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ‘ambitious’ until I started dating my now-husband.
Later she recounted to Williams how during the Sussexes’ 2019 tour of South Africa, a heater in their son Archie’s room had caught fire. While the tot thankfully wasn’t in the room at the time, the incident left the duchess shaken: “And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said, ‘this doesn’t make any sense’.”
In another episode, this time with actress Issa Rae, she said: “You’re allowed to set a boundary. You’re allowed to be clear. It does not make you demanding. It does not make you difficult. [It] makes you clear.”
During the same outing, on the subject of coffee, Meghan revealed she had given it up while in the UK but had started drinking it again, saying, “I guess because life started to come back.”
Meghan told The Cut in August, "I have a lot to say until I don’t”. Photo / The Cut
Then there is Wednesday’s fresh resuscitation of the “difficult” label.
Why do so many of her podcast episodes which are meant to be all about her bright future peppered with references to her palace past? Why, for someone so happy to see the back of the footmen so she could ‘find freedom’, is she so unwilling to stop talking about her experiences inside the Windsors’ midst?
(Don’t forget that in late August, the Duchess of Sussex told The Cut to promote Archetypes, “I have a lot to say until I don’t” and “It’s interesting, I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking.”)
There are two obvious options here. Like a jilted ex unceremoniously dumped via text is it that she is unable to let go and is still processing the trauma?
Or does her propensity to make allusions or comments about former life have much more to do with generating publicity?
This story is a case in point. I would not be writing about Meghan’s ‘B-word’ episode of Archetypes if it was not for the inferences about her Palace days.
On one purely pragmatic level, the latter would make sense. Meghan has proven herself to be a successful businessperson (she was and is the only self-made millionaire to have joined the royal family). Given that she and Harry signed a reported $38 million deal with Spotify back in 2020 they need to deliver and some headline-bait strewn about the place, either on purpose or not, must surely only help.
Whether consciously done or not, the Sussexes’ post-Palace brand is still firmly built on their status as part of the King’s family rather than their new and snazzy lives as self-appointed thought-leaders and vegan latte investors.
And that? That could prove very “difficult” for them to shift until they actually do something on their own worth talking about on its own merits.
