Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, officially launched her new podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, on Tuesday.
The eight-part series, produced by Lemonada Media, marks her return to podcasting following Archetypes, her 2022 Spotify series that explored the stereotypes and labels placed on women. It was canceled after one season.
Now introducing herself simply as “Meghan,” she is shifting her focus from media narratives to the real-life challenges of entrepreneurship.
The debut of Confessions of a Female Founder comes after the launch of Meghan’s new lifestyle brand, As Ever, which on April 2 released its first line of goods, including raspberry jam, edible flower sprinkles and specialty teas. The products sold out in less than an hour.
In the premier episode, Meghan sat down with Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd for a candid conversation about postpartum health, motherhood and the pursuit of work-life balance.
Here’s what we learned from Episode One.
Just call her Meghan
The duchess is now going simply by “Meghan.” In the podcast description, she’s identified as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
She also dropped her last name in the promotional materials for the series, with one photo featuring the title followed by “with Meghan.”
A voice-over at the end of the episode says, “Confessions of a Female Founder is a production of Lemonada Media, created and hosted by Meghan.”
As she explained on her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, she, Archie and Lilibet use “Sussex” as their legal last name. At one point in the series, the duchess corrected actress Mindy Kaling when Kaling referred to her as “Meghan Markle.”
“It’s so funny too that you keep saying Meghan Markle. You know I’m Sussex now,” she told Kaling, according to People. “You have kids and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children,’” she added. “I didn’t know how meaningful that would be to me, but it just means so much to go, ‘This is our family name, our little family name.’”
A ‘scary’ postpartum health crisis
Meghan opened up about experiencing postpartum preeclampsia — a rare condition marked by “high blood pressure and excess protein in your urine soon after childbirth,” according to the Mayo Clinic. It can cause seizures and other serious complications when left untreated.
“We both had very similar experiences, though we didn’t know each other at the time,” Meghan told Wolfe Herd. “We both had preeclampsia. Postpartum preeclampsia,” she said, describing the condition as “so rare” and “so scary.”
Meghan didn’t clarify whether she experienced it after the birth of her son, Archie, 5, or her daughter, Lilibet, 3. Wolfe Herd, who described the experience as “life or death,” is a mother of two sons.
Reflecting on the pressure to maintain public appearances while managing a serious health issue, Meghan said, “You’re still trying to juggle all of these things, and the world doesn’t know what’s happening quietly.”
“In the quiet, you’re still trying to show up for people,” she continued. “And in the quiet, you’re still just trying to show up, mostly for your children. But those things are huge medical scares.”
Wolfe Herd recalled the royal photo call when Meghan and Prince Harry introduced Archie to the world in May 2019.
“I’ll never forget the image of you after you delivered Archie, and the whole world was waiting for his debut,” Wolfe Herd said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, how is this woman doing this? How is this woman putting on heels and going and debuting a child … ?’”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with their newborn son, Archie, in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle on May 8, 2019. (Dominic Lipinski/AP)
Added Wolfe Herd, “I could barely face a doorbell delivery for takeout food in a robe.”
Addressing media scrutiny
Wolfe Herd, who sued Tinder for sexual harassment before launching Bumble in 2014, said she could sympathize with what she called Meghan’s “brutalizing” time in the public eye, which included relentless tabloid coverage, public scrutiny and online vitriol.
“When I see the way that you know you’ve been treated in the media, which is a magnitude I’ll never understand, but my heart breaks for you,” Wolfe Herd said. “I’m like, it’s not fair.”
“Maybe because you understand it in whatever degree, you know how to show up for me,” Meghan responded.
“That’s really important for people to hear, no matter what scale they’re at,” she said. “There’s going to be a point where you’re gonna take a hit and there’s gonna be a point where you’re going to have to decide if you’re going to cower, or if you’re going to conquer, or if you’re going to rise above it.”
Balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship
Meghan and Wolfe Herd bonded over becoming mothers during the pandemic, which redefined how they view work-life balance.
“We became moms in the pandemic, post-pandemic culture too, where there’s so much more working from home,” Meghan said. “I don’t leave the house to go to an office; my office is here. So oftentimes, Lili still naps. She gets picked up early and she naps, and she only has a half day in preschool.”
She added: “If [Lilibet] wakes up and she wants to find me, she knows where to find me. Even if my door is closed to the office, she’ll be sitting there on my lap during one of these meetings with a grid of all the executives.”
As for the overlap between parenting and professional life, Meghan wouldn’t change a thing.
“I don’t want to miss those moments,” she said. “I don’t want to miss pickup if I don’t have to. I don’t want to miss drop-off, and I think what I do love the most about having young kids in this chapter while I’m building is the perspective that it brings, because you’re building something while your child’s going through potty training.”
Building a brand and letting go of perfection
As Meghan continues to grow As Ever, she wants the brand to align with who she is at her core.
At the top of the episode, she confessed that even the unboxing experience had been keeping her up at night: “I’m sitting there, I’m like, does any of this actually matter? Of course it matters. It matters at the beginning, but how much does it matter?”
Wolfe Herd chimed in with her own mental check-in to avoid spiraling over details.
“Will this matter in five minutes?” she asked. “Is it going to matter in five hours? Yes or no? Is it going to matter in five days? Yes or no? If it’s not going to matter in five years, throw it out the window. Who cares?”
“I try to compartmentalize it and say, ‘OK, all I can control is this extension of my essence and my aesthetic and what I want to share with people,’” Meghan said. “I think in that focus on the details, at what point can you release some of the attachment to it, right? To be completely attached to the process and attached to the intention, but in some ways detached from the outcome.”
Cover thumbnail photo: Lisa O’Conner/AFP via Getty Images
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