The podcasting world has just been graced with Black royalty — literally.
Meghan Markle officially launched her anticipated podcast, Archetypes, nearly two years after signing an exclusive podcast deal with Spotify. The show “investigates, dissects, and subverts the labels that try to hold women back” and it’s everything we’d hoped her show would be about.
“This feminist ideology trickled down into nearly every aspect of my education. It’s probably safe to say into every aspect of my life,” the Duchess of Sussex said in the podcast episode that premiered on Tuesday.
“This message to me and my classmates was clear: Our futures as young women were limitless. Ambition? That was the whole point. I don’t remember ever personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ‘ambitious’ until I started dating my now-husband. And apparently, ambition is a terrible, terrible thing for a woman that is — according to some.”
Tennis superstar Serena Williams, who announced her plans to step away from the sport earlier this month, helps kick off the debut episode. And what better conversation for the IRL close friend pair? Discussing the stigma surrounding “ambitious” women, of course.
“I’ve been trying to decide what to do, and I’ve been in and out and not really sure where to go, and that’s the worst place to be, is on the fence,” Williams said on her decision to “evolve” from tennis. “So, it’s like, make a decision. Either be in it or be out of it, and I was on the fence for a while because I love what I do, and like I said, I’ve been doing this my entire existence even before I was born. It was what I was meant to do and what I was supposed to do and what was chosen for me.”
During the hour-long podcast, the host recounted how she and Williams became “fast friends” after meeting at the 2014 Super Bowl. From there, the rest has been history.
The next episode of “Archetypes” will feature a conversation with Mariah Carey and is set to be released next week. The podcast is available for free, exclusively through Spotify.