Meghan Markle's long-awaited podcast Archetypes has finally been launched - and the first episode featured a very special guest.
Appearing on the podcast was 23-time tennis Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, who recently announced her retirement from tennis. Serena is known to be a long-standing friend of Meghan and even appears to have grown extremely close to Prince Harry. The tennis ace joined Harry for an online summit about mental health earlier this year, where Serena revealed her close bond with the prince saying he's like her life coach and that they "chat for hours". Here we take a look at the couple's bond with the tennis champ in more detail...
First meeting with Meghan
Meghan first met Serena in 2010 at the Super Bowl in Miami, Florida.
Speaking about their friendship on her former lifestyle blog The Tig, Meghan said she and the tennis ace bonded very quickly when playing a game of flag football, which is a variation of American football.
Meghan wrote: “We hit it off immediately.
“Taking pictures, laughing through the flag football game we were both playing in, and chatting not about tennis or acting, but about all the good old-fashioned girly stuff.”
Then-actress Meghan and Serena were also snapped together at the 2014 Super Bowl in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and again at the launch of Serena's clothing line during New York Fashion Week in 2016.
Wedding and baby shower guest
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As a seemingly close friend of Meghan, Serena was invited to Harry and Meghan's 2018 wedding at Windsor Castle.
She was given a prime seat near the front of St George's Chapel close to members of the Royal Family.
Then a year later while Meghan was pregnant with Archie, Serena was said to be one of the organisers of a lavish baby shower in New York City.
The shower, which saw guests including Amal Clooney and Abigail Spencer attend, took place in the Big Apple's Mark Hotel and Serena once commented how she had been determined to make the celebration "perfect".
Defending Meghan
Since Meghan and Harry stepped down as senior royals and gave their bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview, Serena has been a vocal defender of the couple.
She once described Meghan as the "strongest person she knows" and described her as having "poise and class".
She told the Shine Series podcast: "Meghan is a great person and I think the epitome of strength, the epitome of confidence, the epitome of just selflessness, and the epitome of everything is just her and everything that she's gone through,' the tennis player told the Shine series.
"You can see from the interview that it wasn't easy. But she had so much poise and she still had so much class.
'I just think that she is the strongest person I know. I don't know anyone else that could handle anything on such a global scale the way that she's had to handle things that are just untrue - minute after minute."
Podcast appearance
In the first episode of Meghan's podcast Archetypes, Meghan and Serena open up about their bond.
Serena tells Meghan: "We've been friends for so long. I'm super loyal, to a fault, you know that."
While Meghan said: "In our friendship when you have to see things that are mischaracterizing of me, but you experience behind closed doors the pain that I'm going through and vice versa. Right.
"But I think what's so interesting is even though that's on a world stage, I don't know if that feels much different for any woman. If you're in a small town and you see someone saying something about your best friend, that is just completely untrue, how that feels, you know.
Emotional chat with Prince Harry
In the same episode, Serena also opened up about her friendship with Prince Harry and how they spoke before she announced her retirement from tennis to the world.
Meghan, who had known about Serena's decision before it was publicly announced, said: "I mean, you and I were texting the other day and I told you I was like, 'Oh, my God, it's out. It's out. The world knows that. How does it feel?'"
Speaking about how she came to the decision, Serena said: "But you knew about it for a long time and I talked with Harry about it a lot as well."
Meghan replied: "I remember that day you were here at the house and I was like 'what are you two just chatting about' for.. it must have been like an hour.."
Serena said: "He was trying to knock some sense into me".
The Duchess responded: "I think both of us, or the three of us, really know that sometimes the right decision isn't the easiest decision.
"It takes a lot of thought and a lot of counsel and a lot of support to just make the choice."
