Meghan Markle reveals how Prince Harry helped shaped her podcast, Archetypes

In the season finale of her podcast, Archetypes (opens in new tab), Meghan Markle (opens in new tab) revealed how Prince Harry (opens in new tab) helped to shape the series and also detailed how she is affected privately by royal drama.

• The season finale of Meghan Markle's podcast, Archetypes', saw the royal change up her usual female interviewees in favour of an episode with all male guests.
• Meghan revealed during the episode that the decision was made at the suggestion of her husband, Prince Harry.
• In other royal news (opens in new tab), did you spot the hidden detail in Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix trailer? (opens in new tab)

Throughout her podcast series Archetypes, Meghan Markle has made a point to shine a spotlight on successful and complicated women as she aims to tackle hard-hitting subjects in depth. But in her final episode, she changed her tried and tested formula to get a different perspective.

Archetypes' season finale episode saw Meghan speak to exclusively male guests. At the beginning of the episode she revealed that her husband, Prince Harry, was the reason for this change. 

She said, “Now, if you’ve been listening to the past 11 episodes, you may have noticed that you haven’t heard many men’s voices… In fact, until now, outside a pop-in from my husband in the first episode, this show has featured exclusively women’s voices.

“And that’s by design. It was important to us that women have a space to share their authentic and complicated, complex, and dynamic experiences. To be heard. And to be understood. But through that process it also occurred to me, and truth be told, at the suggestion of my husband – that if we really want to shift how we think about gender and the limiting labels that we separate people into, then we have to broaden the conversation… and we have to actively include men in that conversation, and certainly in that effort. So today, we are doing just that.”

Meghan invited three guests onto the episode; Andy Cohen, most famously known as the executive producer for The Real Housewives reality show,  Judd Apatow, a noted comedy director and screenwriter, and Trevor Noah, a South African comedian. Introducing her guests, Meghan described them as, “Men who have been behind some of the most successful movies and TV shows but also who are part of cultural conversion in such an impactful way.”

Speaking with Andy Cohen, Meghan revealed she had been a fan of his reality show franchise, but shared that her appetite for it changed as her own life became a type of reality show for the British tabloids.

She said, “Well, I will tell you the truth. I stopped watching The Housewives when my life had its own level of drama that I stopped craving–”

“Other people's,” Cohen finished.

Striking up conversation with Trevor Noah, Meghan asked the comedian how he believes men can change conversations about gender stereotypes. He shared, “I think first and foremost, as men, we have to grow comfortable in our vulnerability.

“If we exist in a space where we are perpetually portraying the stoic idea of what a man is, I think it’s limiting… and it means that we then hold only on to aggression and anger and strength and violence and we forget the balance that is needed.”

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