Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast was number one on Spotify in its first 24 hours last week, overtaking usual U.S. frontrunner The Joe Rogan Experience.
The premiere episode featured Serena Williams, and it was announced that Markle will be joined on tomorrow’s show by Mariah Carey.
That’s a powerhouse guest list for a launch, and a cover story for The Cut today revealed more star power to come. Constance Wu, Issa Rae, Lisa Ling, Margaret Cho and Ziwe are among the upcoming guests the outlet lists. The piece also reveals more about the concept behind the show’s name and how it relates to many standard characterizations of women.
Per the Cut:
The rest of the episodes, she’ll dig into labels like Old Maid, Dragon Lady, Bimbo, Crazy, Angry Black Woman, Bitch (well, “B-word,” she clarifies and then squeals, “Oooooh! I don’t want to say that word. It makes me so uncomfortable!”), and Slut (Will Meghan say slut? “Oh my gosh. That makes me so uncomfortable.”)
The title of the Williams episode was “The Misconceptions of Ambition.”
Deadline reached out to Spotify and will add any comment received.
Produced by Archewell Audio in partnership with Spotify’s Gimlet Media, Archetypes arrived nearly two years after Markle and husband Prince Harry, under their Archewell Audio banner, signed an exclusive multiyear deal with Spotify.
Another arm of Markle’s mutimedia enterprise with her husband is Archwell Productions, which has a deal with Netflix.
As Deadline reported exclusively in May, her animated series Pearl was quietly dropped by Netflix as part of the wave of cutbacks going on at the streamer.
“There’s not much you can do when a company and a division changes their slate,” Markle said about the cancelation. “And there’s also not much you can do when, even if they think the project is great, the media will report it as though it was only my project.”