Meghan Markle reveals how Prince Harry inspired season finale of her podcast

The Duchess of Sussex featured three males guests on her show for the first time.

Meghan Markle revealed how her husband, Prince Harry, inspired the season finale episode of her podcast Archetypes.

During the final episode of the season, which aired on 29 November, the 41-year-old reflected on the last ten episodes of her podcast. Before introducing her guests, Trevor Noah, Andy Cohen, and Judd Apatow, she acknowledged that this episode was her first time including men on the show.

“If you’ve been listening to the past eleven episodes,  you may have noticed that you haven’t heard many men’s voices,” she said. “In fact, until now, outside of a quick 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.”

Through the help of her spouse, Meghan said that she ultimately realised that in order to change people’s perspective on “gender,” men needed to be included in her podcast too.

“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,” she explained. “And we have to actively include men in that conversation and certainly in the effort.”

She said she “enlisted some very thoughtful men” to discuss the “labels and tropes that try to hold women back” before going on to praise Noah, Cohen, and Apatow for how they’ve used their voices.

“Men who’ve been behind some of the most successful movies and TV shows, but also who are part of cultural conversation in such an impactful way through their roles in media and also, for some of them, their roles as husbands and dads,” Meghan continued.

Elsewhere in the episode, Meghan spoke to Noah about another way that Harry shaped her career. She explained that when writing her children’s book, The Bench, which came out in June 2021, she was inspired by the type of father that her husband is. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex share two children, Archie, three, and Lilibet, one.

“It’s basically about this softer side of masculinity and how I’ve seen my husband as a dad and the example of that,” she said. “That’s the person that the young boy can look to and say: ‘Oh, this is what it means to be a man. This is the example of that. That’s the person that can put the Band-Aid on my knee.’”

Meghan went on to address how her husband’s behaviour defied societal stereotypes about women being more nurturing than men.

“That level of being nurtured can come from a male figure in your life just as much as it can from a female figure,” the royal added. “But also for those male figures that it feels really good to be able to provide that and to be able to show that part of your personality, that it doesn’t make you less of a man and doing so.”

Meghan has often spoken about her relationship with Harry and how he’s supported her. During another episode of Archetypes, which aired on 11 October, she reflected on her mental health struggles and how Harry helped her reach out to a professional when she was at her “worst”.

“I mean, I think at my worst point, being finally connected to someone that, you know, my husband had found a referral for me to call. And I called this woman, she didn’t even know I was calling her,” she explained.

“And she could hear the dire state that I was in,” Meghan continued, adding that it is important “for all of us to be really honest about what it is that you need and to not be afraid to make peace with that, to ask for it”.