So far, three episodes have been released from the Duchess of Sussex’s Confessions of a Female Founder podcast. In each episode, she has a conversation with a female founder, and we’ve heard from Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble), Reshma Saujani (Girls Who Code) and Kadi Lee (Highbrow Hippie). All of the conversations have been great – this podcast is, in my opinion, so much better than Archetypes because it’s more personal and because the concept is very easy to grasp. Oh, it’s just conversations with female founders! Archetypes was always trying to explain itself and it was just too high-concept with too many detours.

COAFF shows a much more confident Meghan, and the conversations about business are fascinating. I’ve found these women so inspiring, and the larger point of the pod is that women are held to different standards in business, but it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to change course, it’s okay to start over and it’s important to believe in yourself. But to the British media and their unnamed sources, COAFF sucks because Meghan can’t book Beyonce or Taylor Swift?

Meghan Markle has tried to land an A-lister like Beyonce and Taylor Swift for her female empowerment podcast, which is already in crisis after just three episodes, it was claimed today.

‘No one’s picking up the phone’, one source close to the production has claimed, adding: ‘The show is not landing…There’s no Taylor Swift. No Beyoncé. Not even a Hailey Bieber. And when you’re pitching female empowerment, that’s a problem. It speaks volumes for her pulling power. She’s not happy about her lack of appeal’, they added.

A source close to the making of the show has claimed that Ms Markle and her team ‘dialled all the big names’ to join her for ‘honest conversations with women who’ve built from the ground up, faced challenges and kept going.’

But these calls have been quietly ignored, Radar has said.

So instead of household names or cultural icons, Meghan is now expected to speak to more friends, influencers and startup entrepreneurs, as she tries to get her own As Ever brand off the ground. One source said that fans can probably forget ‘red-carpet royalty’ on Confessions of a Female Founder.

‘This is a show crying out for relevance, and it’s just not landing’, the source said.

[From The Daily Mail]

This made me go down a detour of my own… do we consider Taylor Swift a female founder? Taylor is an incredibly smart businesswoman and a brilliant marketer, and she’s become a billionaire based on her hard work, musical talent and business acumen. But again, do we consider her a female founder? Anyway, I remember when they said that Meghan approached Taylor to appear on Archetypes too, only Taylor allegedly said no then. I have no idea if any of that is true, but it looks like Taylor mostly avoids podcasts in general, not specifically Meghan’s pods. Same for Beyonce – please, Beyonce has given like two interviews in the past decade, she’s not going on a podcast whatsoever (Beyonce’s mom Tina should go on COAFF though!!). The thing about the “Taylor and Beyonce said NO” thing is that even if it was true (and again, I have no idea), it’s a non-story – it never hurts to ask, and so what if Meghan got turned down? Basically, I think people are mad that Meghan has turned in a polished, confident, accessible podcast which is actually informative and interesting to a lot of women.

Poster courtesy of Lemonada Media, photos courtesy of Meghan’s IG and Cover Images.