Meghan Markle Archetype podcast

[susan12345678]

Meghan's long-awaited podcast has launched. Sorry if there's a thread about this already. Has anyone listened to it yet? Thoughts?

And keep PH out of it. It makes her her look desperate to keep including him.

This was excruciating. I cringed myself inside out & had to take a breather

Leaving aside that Oprah is a lousy interviewer who just indulges her guests, you forget that Lucy is actually a Professor of History and therefore has something to say from knowledge. MM doesn’t.

I'd agree with your point about getting better as you go along because interviewing is a difficult skill to do well except for two things:

1 - She's had nearly two years since announcing the podcast deal to practice, train, do dummy runs, get feedback, practice some more and improve. She had the whole 2020/21 pandemic year where she could have studied the subject she wants to talk about and get remote degree/qualification in it so that she has a bit of substance to her interviewing... and

2 - It was a recorded and heavily edited interview, not a live one, with 28 people, including eight executive producers, six other producers, four senior engineers, two technical directors and a music supervisor! It wasn't Meghan giving a bit of interviewing a go on her own in a vacuum. What we got was either

a) exactly what Meghan and her producers wanted it to be (mostly about her and not her guest) or

b) it's the best few edited segments with as much of Serena talking as was usable.

Actually I was just commenting on her interview techniques and maybe lack of them. But we don't know where she stayed and I have read on a SA newspaper that they were pretty annoyed that she referred to both a housing unit and a Zimbabwean nanny using a mud blanket. They felt she was making them sound backward.
But I like to think I'm quite fair so, although housing unit sounds pretty basic, and I'm sure it can't have been for there to be rooms for them, the baby, the nanny, security and kitchens as well, maybe she'd been given instructions not to say where they were staying. I've read where the rumours say they were staying but there's never been any confirmation of anything. So maybe housing unit was a cover word Or maybe it felt a bit humbler than Windsor Castle where they were living? Or maybe she resents them for what could have happened, and she feels derogatory about it? I just can't say.
I wonder if Buckingham Palace is hatching an outing of the "Housing Unit". Or maybe just leaving it to everyone's imagination is more effective at undermining her credibility.

Maybe another technique she needs to learn when talking about her personal experiences is to be more circumspect. Or just not talk about herself at all.
So speak less and lock the door so Harry can't get in.

It’s anti-intellectualism

Meghan is telling us about ambition. Does she have any deep intellectual understanding of the topic - no - but she has her opinion, her truth, her feelings and a nice voice. She’s married to a price and that’s clearly what’s important

so instead of a intelligent discussion, we get banal comments, giggles and a cameo by PH

Its an insult to feminism, not a celebration of it.

As someone said, she’s not as smart as she think she is, and for all the people who ridicule Ivanka, Meghan is no better (and it really pains me to say that)

Leaving aside that Oprah is a lousy interviewer who just indulges her guests

Oprah is a veiled assassin.

i can’t think of a reason why someone as articulate and well spoken as Megan would say housing unit, is this to appear more humble and down to earth ? "We are on a mission to visit townships so stayed at a housing unit"
but then a part of me thinks that it’s quite mean and insulting to insinuate that South Africa is all housing units and townships.

I think it’s a disparaging term, implying they weren’t offered the sort of accommodation she expected. A bit of a theme really.

I think people should be much harsher on her !

You've got to look at the whole sentence 'this housing unit that they had us staying in'

Who is they? Royal family, her own staff, the mysterious men in grey, the SA hosts?

It feels like she didn't think the accommodation they were assigned was suitable and decided to have a little dig about it because it still bothers her, and she's mad with the 'they' that arranged that accommodation.

She had lots of other options -

"We dropped Archie off at our accommodation"
"where we were staying"
"Where we were hosted"
"The residence"

I used to think like you too, Malie. That Oprah gave them an easy ride. But I've come to realise that's her technique. I've seen her interviews with people where she's a kindly sister and then when they're lulled, she asks an awkward question and they've allowed themselves to get too relaxed to lie convincingly.
But with HAM I think she wanted them to give gossip. She wasn't interested in protecting the RF, or giving them both a hard time, or even finding out the truth. She wanted gossip and the best way to do that is just to sit and chat, ooo and ahhhing agreeably to their claims to encourage them to say more. I wonder if they did indeed give more away than they'd intended.

However, PH did a series with Oprah on mental health and at one point he started to open up and it looked like he was going to say interesting but private stuff. And Oprah interrupted and asked a relevant but innocuous question which broke his focus and she led him back to more neutral ground. She was really smooth.

I don't know why she did it, maybe saving her powder for the big interview, or maybe she didn't feel it was appropriate or maybe she thought he'd regret saying it so did it out of kindness. But she was in total control of everything that happened, she's been interviewing and moderating discussions for years and she definitely knows what shes doing. I loved her in her early days, went off her a bit later on, but I'm impressed that she's got exactly what she wanted from those two and very little blow back.

@wordler

😂😂😂 Good points. Maybe some people just take longer to learn than others?! Or maybe some people have to fail before they learn to succeed. 🤷

But surely if it was edited, Harry would have been removed. 😉 He went in accidentally, didn't he? He didn't deliberately interrupt his wife working. Are you insinuating his appearance was planned....? 😲

🤔😉

It was the British High Commissioner’s house . Hardly a one bedroom shack .
I do recall reading that M was unhappy with their accommodation in Australia ( Admiralty House ?) . Sounds like her standards are VERY high …

Very high for someone who only a couple of years before, was allegedly only living in rented accommodation.

For me it’s her presenting as an independent, left leaning female, social justice warrior which is just verbal drivel as her actions are dissonant and disingenuous by her becoming part of an exploitative undemocratic parasitic system in the RF.

It’s as incongruent as Angela Raynor marrying one of Donald Trumps sons…..zero credibility.

I do recall reading that M was unhappy with their accommodation in Australia ( Admiralty House ?) . Sounds like her standards are VERY high …

She had her eye on moving into Windsor Castle, didn't she, until the Queen said, er, no. Everything's a let down after that!

I loved Admiralty House. Such a fabulous position. Isn't she supposed to have complained that she wanted the whole house and not just a wing? In all honesty, I don't believe that. But at least she didn't call it a housing unit! Hehe.

Apparently wasn't a fan of Frogmore Cottage either.

Apparently wasn't a fan of Frogmore Cottage either.

I think she always felt she'd skimped on the £5,000 copper bath. Put her off the whole cottage. ☹

Its an insult to feminism, not a celebration of it.

Exactly.

I also strongly suspect that Markle considers herself to be more intelligent than she actually is.

It’s possible to think that Prince Philip was racist…
That some of the coverage of MM in the British press bordered on racism…
AND that she and Harry are somewhat vacuous and trying to live off their very brief foray as a couple into Royal life (and that the podcast is dire).

One of the reasons I like the Queen btw is that she hasn’t ever pretended to be one of ‘us.’ She has always been very conscious of not just who she is, but her role. Some of the younger generation (Will and Kate included) want to demonstrate that they are just like us. Which is absurd when you have 4 houses. This is ALSO true of Harry and Meghan.
Who would like us to believe they are ordinary folks but they are clearly not.

Which takes me back to my first point in an earlier post about what Americans think ‘service’ is. I think Meghan Markle living in her huge mansion, earning money from podcasts and a reality TV show, having married a Prince probably does think she is living a life of ‘service.’ Which is beyond absurd.

And I suspect this is why the nursery fire story jars with so many people. They were staying in an amazing house, on a Royal tour, as the guest of the High Commissioner of a country. There was a smoking appliance in a room on a different floor to which their baby was on. You then had to go to work, aka smile and shake hands in a nice dress for a few hours. You have to be very very very privileged to see this incident as a ‘crisis.’

Well said.

I think Meghan Markle living in her huge mansion, earning money from podcasts and a reality TV show, having married a Prince probably does think she is living a life of ‘service.’ Which is beyond absurd.

Grandiose and deluded!

Cringe-worthy.

Agree with this 100 per cent.
Also with PP that MM is not as intelligent or interesting as she believes herself to be.
She comes across as rather deluded in terms of how important she sees herself. She certainly is nowhere near as successful as Serena yet sees herself as her equal.

I was talking about her being No. 1, that's all. (also in Canada, Ireland, UK, Australia and NZ)

I once received a really useful piece of advice that has not failed me yet - 'Question everything because things are rarely as they seem'.