Remember the girl boss? She burst in to the zeitgeist in the 2010s, riding the era’s nebulous wave of female empowerment and proving that women could become incredibly rich by helming capitalist empires – just like men. Branding-wise, she had some issues: beginning with that infantile moniker and peaking with a series of toxic workplace scandals. This – combined with the fact that celebrating corporate greed took on an even more nauseating hue post-pandemic – means we haven’t heard from her for quite a while.
Yet this new podcast from Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is alive with the spirit of the girl boss. Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan sees the royal quiz ladies on how they made their fortunes: starting with Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and CEO of the dating app Bumble, who was once the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Meghan has a vested interest in such success stories – hot on the heels of her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, the self-styled lifestyle guru is launching a business of her own. As ever sells preserves, teas and those dried flowers she sprinkled on a vegetable frittata in the TV show, much to her guest Mindy Kaling’s amusement. But As ever is more than a money-making scheme: it is, as our host puts it on this podcast, “an extension of my essence”.
Of course, one cannot extend one’s essence alone: Meghan – who, after that eye-watering “you know I’m Sussex now” retort to Kaling in her TV series, seems to be going fully mononymous – needs advice. She gets it from Wolfe Herd – one of her “closest friends” – who tells her not to sweat the small stuff (Meghan is very concerned about the packaging of her products) and that enormous amounts of money don’t make you happy.
More important than advice, however, is flattery – and Confessions of a Female Founder is jam-packed with compliments. As per Wolfe Herd, Meghan’s observations are “beautiful” and she’s “an amazing hostess” whose home is filled with “love and cosiness and yumminess”. Meghan is equally well versed in the art of sycophancy. The day Bumble’s stock hit an all-time low, Wolfe Herd wrote a letter to herself about all the things she was grateful for. “I think it’s a really good reminder to people that you have to take stock of how you measure your happiness,” she concludes. “It’s amazing how evolved you are,” replies Meghan. If the love-in doesn’t turn your stomach, one of the richest women in the world telling us there’s more to life than our net worth may well do.
The vibe is predictably fawning but, on a technical level, Meghan is a decent interviewer, especially compared with some celebrity podcasters: she keeps the conversation on track and is conscientious with her follow-up questions. Yet even when her guests do open up – here Wolfe Herd discusses the terrifying press attention that accompanied her decision to file a lawsuit against her former employer Tinder for sexual harassment – Meghan very rarely reciprocates. You can understand why she’s guarded – but the problem is that personal disclosure fuels parasocial relationships, which are podcasting’s primary draw.
While Meghan’s previous podcast, 2022’s Archetypes, was part-interview, part-explanatory lecture, there is far less narration here. This is a good thing, because it’s when Meghan starts addressing the listener directly that things get off-puttingly overwrought. Sentences tend to be laden with maximum emphasis. “Launching a business, it can be … so overwhelming. Even with the best of teams – hoo!” she loudly exhales in mock anxiety. “It will keep you up at night!” Maybe this really is Meghan’s natural speaking style, but it’s one that to British ears sounds just a tad disingenuous.
Sitting in a podcast studio talking to wealthy women who worship her is clearly far more Meghan’s scene than enduring the remorselessly vicious press and strange, alienating traditions of these shores. And who can blame her? Confessions of a Female Founder is far from a gladiatorial grilling and it’s hardly a manual of specific, constructive business advice; it’s simply an effusive chinwag between two like-minded pals that may as well have taken place behind a deluxe set of closed doors.
