00:00That was good. Yeah, that was a good one.
00:03When Megan Sussex released her latest offering last week,
00:06a podcast entitled Confessions of a Female Founder,
00:09in which she interviewed Bumble's CEO and BFF, Whitney Wolf Hurd,
00:14the reactions were predictably dire.
00:18The Guardian said,
00:19Megan's sycophantic interview podcast is stomach-turning,
00:23giving the podcast just two stars.
00:25The Telegraph also gave it two stars,
00:27saying Megan's podcast is an inane stream of mindless aphorisms.
00:32One British TV station even went so far as to call the podcast insane,
00:37which feels like an over-exaggeration
00:39for what was essentially 45 minutes of chit-chat between friends.
00:43Is the podcast particularly insightful?
00:46No.
00:47You know when your brain goes in a loop?
00:49Yeah.
00:49Those 3 a.m. loops and it's just like you can't stop overthinking the thing
00:53and how are you going to address that?
00:55And oh gosh, how are we going to pivot?
00:57And does it matter?
00:58But is Megan really deserving of all this vitriol?
01:02Also no.
01:03She's become the woman people love to hate,
01:05an easy target who really doesn't behave that differently from other celebrities.
01:10Some have called it the industry of hate,
01:12and Megan is the woman at the centre of it.
01:14But why?
01:15Until 2016, Megan Markle was just your everyday actress.
01:22She'd had a starring role in Suits,
01:25her own lifestyle blog, The Tig,
01:27and a host of famous friends.
01:29So far, so normal in Hollywood terms.
01:32So yeah, Megan and I were friends and we had a really nice friendship for a few years
01:36until she met Harry and then decided that it was time to maybe bump off some of her friends
01:40and carry on with the others.
01:42She was very altruistic, very confident.
01:46She was looking at opportunities to get modelling gigs.
01:48And she really loved sort of UK, sort of what we stood for.
01:53She loved England, she loved the countryside.
01:54So she felt very akin to that.
01:56But in 2016, after it was revealed she was dating Prince Harry,
02:00things were set to change.
02:02And almost overnight,
02:04she became one of the most talked about women on the planet.
02:08One great thing about Megan was that she was this huge breath of fresh air.
02:12And I think a lot of people identified with her.
02:14People who might not necessarily have even thought about the royal family suddenly did.
02:19Theirs was the romance that spawned a thousand think pieces.
02:21And many of them were not good.
02:26People dug into her relationships, her career,
02:29and the fact that she was once on Deal or No Deal.
02:32There is an air of,
02:36why couldn't Harry pick a nice English rose like William did?
02:40Definitely an undercurrent, an undertone of that.
02:45With anything that Megan, the Duchess of Sussex does,
02:48of course, she's always held to a higher standard.
02:51You know, glamorous, former actress,
02:54humanitarian, someone completely different,
02:58a biracial woman within the family.
03:00Everything has to be absolutely supremely fantastic.
03:04Anything that she does comes under the same level of savagery and scrutiny.
03:09And there is a whole industry built around disliking her.
03:14Like it's a job for some people.
03:17Megan is the greatest PR person in the world because she can generate, you know, views.
03:23And Netflix loves her for that and click-throughs and listens, etc.
03:26But also she's her own worst enemy.
03:28In many ways, her face is excessive of a brand and built it that way.
03:33One of the things that I see now with her and as ever in the brand that she has,
03:36that's what she wanted to do all those years ago.
03:39She was an influencer for her time.
03:41There is a certain American-ness to her and to a lot of Americans and not just her,
03:48that a lot of British people just doesn't really sit right with them.
03:51And that's absolutely fine.
03:53But then you've got this added level of vitriol, of hate for her.
03:59So where does the vitriol come from?
04:02And what does it say about modern British attitudes towards royalty and celebrity?
04:06Listen, celebrity is built on basically a deity.
04:09You know, they're seen as a bit of a god to people and people worship them.
04:13And that's why they have their fan mails.
04:15And that's why they have their Instagram followings.
04:17And you can tell like their followers, it's like Jesus, you know.
04:20And the fact of the matter is that's what they're like.
04:22There's this real sort of looking down your nose at an actress.
04:26It's someone who's divorced, it's someone who's American,
04:28that someone's a bit older than their spouse.
04:31You know, that is such a classist way of thinking as well,
04:34along with the racism and the misogyny,
04:36along with this kind of snobbery that we have.
04:39It might seem that we've reached peak saturation with our royal fixation,
04:42but really this is nothing new,
04:45particularly when it comes to women in the royal orbit.
04:48What you will find is women who marry into the royal family,
04:51if you look back in history, always get a hard time.
04:54The women in the royal family get a hard time,
04:57but women who marry into the royal family get a harder time.
05:00Sarah, Duchess of York, was written about her and her way.
05:04Princess Diana, all the things that were written about her.
05:07And then you've got obviously people like Wallace Simpson,
05:10you know, who again were being given all this amazing jewellery
05:13and was seen to be somebody who was made someone abdicate in the end.
05:17So, you know, all eyes have been on the royal family.
05:19They don't get away lightly.
05:21She's loved now, but Catherine, Princess of Wales,
05:24was once dubbed Waity Katie because of how long she waited for Prince William to propose.
05:29Princess Diana faced relentless backlash and scrutiny for breaking royal protocol,
05:34particularly after her Martin Bashir interview,
05:36which was seen to bring scandal on the royal family.
05:39Diana played her role as a superstar celebrity,
05:43not as a member of the royal family.
05:45Princess Anne plays it as a member of the royal family.
05:48She doesn't play it as a celebrity.
05:50And Meghan herself has always played it as a celebrity.
05:54Queen Camilla faced years of criticism and was even called too common
05:58to marry into the royal family.
06:02I mean, even Princess Beatrice's hat made headlines.
06:05But the sheer scale of the backlash towards Meghan is in a class of its own,
06:09especially because she's not even a royal anymore.
06:11The great British press have decided, mostly, have decided that Meghan Markle is the villain.
06:18She's the villain of the piece and the piece being the ever-arching narrative of the royal family.
06:24She is the villain of the piece.
06:26She will continue to be the villain of that piece.
06:29That absolutely suits their narrative.
06:31It's not going to be Prince William.
06:33It's not going to be the Princess of Wales or the King or Queen or even Prince Harry,
06:38although he does get his fair share of savagery in the press.
06:41It is Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.
06:44This kind of latent racism kicked in and a lot more bullying than we'd seen before.
06:51And that was a real shame on Meghan and Harry.
06:54And I can see that must have been so difficult for them to navigate.
06:57Things only got worse when she and Harry denounced their royal titles in 2020.
07:03It's the audacity of her to continue in spite of everything that has been written about her.
07:10That's what it is.
07:12So how dare she continue?
07:14How dare she not crumble under all this pressure, scrutiny and hatred that we have poured on her?
07:23So is there more at play here?
07:25Harry is fifth in line to the throne.
07:26It's unlikely he would ever become king.
07:29And even then, there's no guarantee he would want the role.
07:32So where does our fixation with him, and therefore the woman he's with, come into play?
07:37Everybody saw this young boy, you know, behind the coffin and they felt they wanted to adopt him.
07:42And when people have grown up with him and they've seen him with Chelsea Davey
07:46and they've seen him on various different dates, we feel that we've wanted to be there for him.
07:50Basically, the pair are damned if they do, damned if they don't.
07:53Who can forget the infamous Oprah interview where they try to share their side of the story?
07:57But I also am acutely aware of where my family stand and how scared they are of the tabloids turning on them.
08:08Because I'm sorry, I see right through it.
08:10It's complete nonsense.
08:11The hypocrisy is off the charts.
08:14You know, I look at her as the Katie Price with a Duchess title.
08:17She's similar to that in many ways.
08:19Katie Price is somebody who spent all her life basically monetising every single part of her existence.
08:25Whether that is about her tragedies, whether that's about her love life, whether that's about her brand.
08:30And that's really what Meghan's doing.
08:32She's utilising every single part of her existence and she's getting money from it.
08:37That's one of the biggest problems with Meghan Markle or Meghan Sussex is that she isn't genuine or people perceive her to be disingenuous.
08:46Recent YouGov polling shows that Meghan's popularity in the UK has plummeted,
08:51with only 4% of adults saying that they feel very positive about her.
08:55This drops even lower among boomers, unsurprisingly, where the number sits at a dismal 1%.
09:01We are, as a nation, as we know, stiff off her lip.
09:06So when you see her on a show like Oprah, talking about things that we kind of maybe not address ourselves in the UK,
09:12then we're like, okay, now you're p***ing us off.
09:15Now you're really annoying us.
09:17In America, it's very different.
09:18They love a confessional.
09:19They love to see this woman who's been wronged, part of the royal family, a fairy tale.
09:25Suddenly, actually, she's saying that she's in the ashes and now she's like a phoenix.
09:30So she's playing to two different demographics of people.
09:35When With Love, Meghan dropped on Netflix in March, she occupied even more airtime,
09:40with people criticising her for being...
09:43Oh my gosh, Meghan Markle is insufferable.
09:46This is despite the fact that it became a top 10 hit on Netflix in both the UK and the US.
09:51And it's already been commissioned for a second season, which will come out in the autumn.
09:55You've got all these people who will also make a business and make a thing out of hate listening.
10:01So I'm going to listen to it because I hate it.
10:04That, like, I think I could never.
10:06Like, I could literally never.
10:08It's like a psychosis.
10:09It doesn't make any sense.
10:11And is it because they want to say they've listened to it so they can hate it with knowledge?
10:16Okay, sure.
10:17Then you've got people who will just not even listen and then tell you it's trash.
10:22And that is just annoying.
10:25So yes, people love to hate Meghan, but she's the one having the last laugh.
10:30Her as-ever range sold out in just 30 minutes, including 20-pound jars of honey.
10:37And her podcast, however slated, made it into Apple's top 10, number six in the podcast charts,
10:43and was the number one business podcast within 24 hours of its launch.
10:48So why the outrage?
10:50I think that in the UK we have an attitude towards her.
10:55I think that it is pretty unconscious, but actually it's kind of conscious in many ways
11:00because people want to love to hate her.
11:02I'll be honest, I don't think unconscious bias exists, right?
11:06I don't believe in that term.
11:08I don't think it's a thing.
11:10It's about acknowledging a bias that you have and thinking about how you can undo that
11:15and regard yourself and other people better.
11:17People don't want to think that about themselves.
11:22They don't want to think that I'm racist or I'm misogynistic or I'm a snob or I'm classist.
11:29They don't want to accept that that is a thing in society.
11:33They don't want to accept that that might be something that they have perpetuated.
11:38And so there'll just be a complete denial and put the blame back on her.
11:42So whether you love her or hate her,
11:44you've really got to question whether being so obsessed with one woman is healthy.
11:49It's certainly not as healthy as these flower petals.
11:50It's todas las suces.
11:55So that's a great idea.
11:57You can'tbble up a little girl.
11:57So they don't want to maintain and then turn the chat out.
11:58You can tell me that you should plan on your channel.
11:59See if you can see how it works out.
12:01So let's take a little bit more out,
12:03the catap laser will cut the hat out.
12:04So let's take a little bit more out of this.
12:05So the right thing is that,
12:06we're not getting the catapjes.
12:09I don't know what it looks like ...
12:10I don't know what it looks like,
12:12and it's picked up on just because it turns out.
12:14We're out of this myself.
12:16Put this together then?
12:17So we can bend the makeup of this.
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