Earlier this month, Meghan Markle‘s Netflix series With Love, Meghan — wherein the rich and famous Markle will host and cook food for her rich and famous friends — was delayed from Jan. 15 to March 4 because of the Los Angeles wildfires. Hardly the most prominent tragedy of the month, but at least the Markle addicts of the world still had her new podcast episodes to look forward to.
Except, according to Hello!, it looks like the fires in Los Angeles have also pushed the podcast back. In other words, we’re doomed.
Some background: back in June 2023, Markle mutually parted ways with Spotify, who originally hosted her podcast Archetypes, in which Markle engaged in conversation with famous women (sans Trevor Noah, Andy Cohen, and Judd Apatow) from varying professions. Here, they spoke about stereotypes that have and continue to be leveled against women throughout history.
About a year ago, Archetypes found a new home in Lemonada Media, who have since redistributed the first season of Archetypes on various podcast platforms. Then, earlier this month on Jan. 6, Lemonada’s official Instagram made a hype post teasing new episodes for a number of the distributor’s shows, and among them was Markle’s Archetypes.
This, of course, led everyone to believe that Archetypes would soon be coming back for a second season, but we know now that it’s been delayed. It should be noted that, assuming a second season of Archetypes was on the docket (and that’s a pretty sturdy assumption), we didn’t actually have a release date for it before the news of its delay That’s to say that Markle and Lemonada could have internally delayed the podcast without telling anyone, and her fanbase would have been none the wiser. The public, after all, tends to get awfully snappy at the word “delay” when it comes to their favorite media.
But then again, perhaps this is a result of Markle heeding the marketing wisdom ed on to her the other day. Speaking publicly, PR expert Riley Gardiner recently advised Markle to make consistent posts on social media to keep her audiences engaged in the weeks leading up to With Love, Meghan. “Silence is more of a brand killer than a strategy,” he said, before suggesting weekly social posts that are “authentic, but not too self-indulgent,” because we all know that authenticity is the cornerstone of PR, of course.
Anyway, perhaps calling attention to the podcast’s delay was part of the “anything but silence” approach that Gardiner alluded to. Alternatively, maybe this is just step one of Lemonada Media phasing Markle out of their podcast functions, assuming their experience with her has been anything like what Spotify’s employees reported.
Indeed, according to a recent Vanity Fair cover story centered on Harry and Meghan’s business ventures, sources from within Spotify had none-too-kind words to describe the experience. “Really awful” and “very painful” stood out, while others reported needing months of therapy to recover, taking extended leaves to avoid working with Markle, or leaving Spotify entirely. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is proof that silence actually could be beneficial to your brand in some cases.
Published: Jan 28, 2025 08:21 am