A fateful call. Meghan Markle recalled a scary Archie memory on her new podcast. The Duchess of Sussex just launched Archetypes, a new podcast that features various celebrities talking about topics close to them.
The first episode is called “The Misconception of Ambition” which features tennis player Serena Williams and Dr. Laura Kay where they talk about motherhood. Meghan told a story about how her son, Archie, 3, was supposed to take a nap when a fire broke out in their room. “When we went on our tour to South Africa, we landed with Archie,” she began. “Archie was what, four and a half months old. And the moment we landed, we had to drop him off at this housing unit that they had had us staying in.” The activist continued, “He was going to get ready to go down for his nap. We immediately went to an official engagement in this township called Nyanga, and there was this moment where I’m standing on a tree stump and I’m giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say, ‘There’s been a fire at the residence.’ What? ‘There’s been a fire in the baby’s room.’ What?”
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Meghan then praised her nanny Lauren for taking care of her child by calling her “amazing.” “She was supposed to put Archie down for his nap, and she just said, ‘You know what? Let me just go get a snack downstairs.’ And she was from Zimbabwe, and we loved that she would always tie him on her, her back with a mud cloth, and her instinct was like, ‘Let me just bring him with me before I put him down.’ In that amount of time that she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire. There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway went in, fire extinguished,” she added, “He was supposed to be sleeping in there.”
She then added that everyone was in “tears” after the accident. “I was like, Can you just tell people what happened? And so much, I think, optically. The focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels,” she said. “And part of the humanizing and the breaking through of these labels and these archetypes and these boxes that we’re put into is having some understanding on the human moments behind the scenes that people might not have any awareness of and to give each other a break. Because we did — we had to leave our baby.” She then said that she had to continue on with their duties. “And even though we were being moved to another place afterwards, we still had to leave him and go do another official engagement.” Serena reacted to the story and the constant movement, “I couldn’t have done that. I would have said, ‘Uh-uh.’”
In a recent UN speech, Prince Harry recalled the precious moments in Africa with his wife. “For most of my life, it has been my lifeline, a place where I found peace and healing time and time again. It’s where I felt closest to my mother and sought solace after she died, and where I knew I had found a soulmate in my wife,” he said about the continent on Nelson Mandela Day at the United Nations. “I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana. We camped out with each other under the stars. She came and joined me for five days out there, which was absolutely fantastic. So then we were really by ourselves, which was crucial to me to make sure that we had a chance to know each other.”
Image: Courtesy of Dey Street Books.
For more about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s time in the British royal family, read Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s New York Times bestseller, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family. The book tells all on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s relationship, from how they met to their wedding to the birth of their son, Archie. Finding Freedom also dives into the “true story” of why Harry and Meghan left the royals at the end of 2019 and moved to the United States amid their secret drama with their family. Consisting of interviews and accounts with Harry and Meghan’s closest confidants, Finding Freedom is a must-read for any royal follower.
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