Meghan Markle’s new podcast is struggling to reach the success of the Duchess’s previous show Archetypes amid criticism of her interview style.
The Duchess of Sussex dropped the first episode of Confessions of a Female Founder on Tuesday, which sees her chat with women who successfully launched their own businesses and brands.
It comes after Meghan launched her own luxury food brand As Ever last month, which was accompanied by an eight-part Netflix cooking show titled With Love, Meghan.
As of Friday – three days after the release of Episode One – Meghan’s new podcast was number 19 on Spotify’s general Top Podcasts chart in the US.
Previously, at the height of its success in 2022, Archetypes ranked at Number One in the podcasts chart in the US.
In 2023, a top Spotify podcast executive called Harry and Meghan ‘f***ing grifters’ after they produced one 13-episode series of a podcast for the company and then split.
The end of the couple’s reported $20million deal was announced in June of that year, three years after it was signed.
Spotify and the Sussexes’s audio production company Archewell Audio released a joint statement saying they have ‘mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together’.
The Duchess of Sussex has launched a new podcast called ‘Confessions Of A Female Founder’
Meghan dropped the first episode of the new podcast on Tuesday, which sees her chat with women who successfully launched their own businesses and brands
Confessions of a Female Founder was given just one star in The Times after its columnist James Marriott was ‘seized by an urge to beat my head against the wall’
The Irish Times reviewer Laura Slattery condemned the ‘mutual love-in’ of a ‘multimillionaire and a duchess who want credit for daring to love themselves’ in her article on the podcast
In 2023 Bill Simmons, Head of Podcast Innovation and Monetization at Spotify, condemned Harry and Meghan in an episode of his own podcast, branding the pair ‘f***ing grifters’.
Confessions of a Female Founder hears Meghan receive advice and insights from a number of successful women who started their own companies.
This week, it suffered a plethora of critical reviews, condemning it for giving ‘vapid lessons in self-love’ and being an ‘ego-fluffing conversation’.
Confessions of a Female Founder was given just one star in The Times after its columnist James Marriott was ‘seized by an urge to beat my head against the wall’.
The Irish Times reviewer Laura Slattery condemned the ‘mutual love-in’ of a ‘multimillionaire and a duchess who want credit for daring to love themselves’.
And Natalie Oliveri, royal reporter for Australian women’s network 9Honey, joked there were ‘certain prerequisites it seems the Duchess must have before booking a guest – they need to be friends and the guest should praise Meghan where possible’.
Meghan launched her own luxury food brand As Ever last month, which was accompanied by an eight-part Netflix cooking show, titled With Love, Meghan
Telegraph TV critic Chris Bennion said the show had an ‘inane stream of mindless aphorisms’
In the Guardian, Rachel Aroesti said the ‘sycophantic interview podcast is stomach-turning’
Harry and Meghan with their baby son in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle on May 8, 2019
It comes after the Telegraph, Standard and Guardian all gave the Lemonada Media show two stars amid other withering write-ups in the Express and i Paper, which saw the podcast branded an ‘inane stream of mindless aphorisms’ and ‘stomach-turning’.
Speaking to PEOPLE Magazine last month, Meghan revealed how other female founders have inspired her entrepreneurial journey.
‘What’s been meaningful is being able to talk about my own entrepreneurial journey with other female founders who are either on their own trajectory of growth or have IPO’d, sold, or created high-impact brands and gone through all of the learning curves that we all do at the start,’ she said.
MailOnline has contacted Spotify and Meghan and Harry’s representatives for comment.
