If you enjoy podcasts in the victimless-crime genre, do take a few minutes to catch Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation calling Prince Harry and his wife Meghan “fucking grifters” . This chap Bill Simmons was speaking out shortly after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “parted ways” with Spotify, having made a single series as the result of a supposedly multi-year deal signed back in 2020, which was at the time valued at around $20m.
For whatever reason, Spotify and the Sussexes seem to have decided they simply couldn’t face another backbreaking day down the content mine together, which means we are left solely with Archetypes. Should you have yet to download it, this is a 12-parter – though feels longer – presented by Meghan, and centred on a series of stereotypical labels that are attached to women to hold them back. “Diva”, “singleton”, “ambitious” … that sort of thing. Incredible to break things off here, just when the perfect season two opener presents itself in the form of the label “fucking grifter”.
Anyway, let’s see it in action. “The Fucking Grifters, that’s the podcast we should have launched with them,” explained Simmons on his own podcast last week, cleaving dutifully to the law that a significant amount of most podcasts should involve talking about other podcasts. “I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try to help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.” In which case, do feel free to tell it now, sir! Alas, this is not the way of the podcaster, who must always intimate that the truly good stuff is yet to come, eternally deferred to some future episode when the real tea will be spilled. “Fuck them,” was all Simmons cared to disclose at this point. “The grifters.”
Having said that, it’s hard not to be entertained by Simmons’ decision to vent in this manner. For Spotify’s monetisation guy to suggest the company has been short-changed or rinsed by the Sussexes really feels like posting the firm’s Ls online. I mean, what did they expect? I’m sure we’re all devastated that the obviously doomed Meghan-and-Harry deal didn’t work out for a platform that pays music artists as little as a third of a cent per stream, and whose biggest podcast has become a cynically counterproductive haven for anti-vax bullshit and other misinformation. But somehow I find the tears struggling to come. No one could accuse the Sussexes of devoting the lion’s share of their time to enriching the world as opposed to themselves – but getting one over on Spotify is definitely one for the public service column.
As for what’s next, suggestions that the pair were about to be signed as faces of Dior have been dismissively shut down, with the fashion house reportedly “nonplussed” as to where the story came from. It’s not clear from Meghan and Harry’s brief departure statement from Spotify whether they seek to continue the podcast elsewhere, or to come up with something new. In fact, quite why Archetypes was settled on as a format in the first place has never been entirely explained. There seems to have been some vague handwaving towards synergies, given that Harry and Meghan’s company/foundation/whatever is called Archewell. So yes, perhaps they simply made Archetypes because it started with the same five letters. The series could easily have been about archery or arch-enemies.
Of course, if it had been about the couple’s arch-enemies – the royal family and the media – it would have done infinitely better. This is because, as predicted at the time of their departure as working royals, it was absolutely clear that Meghan and Harry are one-trick ponies. But don’t get me wrong – what a trick it is. Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, is the fastest-selling nonfiction book ever, while the couple’s Netflix documentary series topped the streamer’s charts and probably cost less than Wednesday, even if they never make anything else for the platform.
But both we and the Sussexes have to be realistic here: no one really cares about the children’s book about the bench, no one really cares about the curated documentaries about other people, and no one really cares about the corporate wellness company for which Prince Harry is, bizarrely, “chief impact officer”. Or at least, not anywhere near enough people care about these things. And when you need blockbuster returns to keep your unimaginably expensive lifestyle on the road, you can’t afford for those returns to be diminishing. Experience and ratings continue to reveal that where the Sussexes are concerned, people want to watch them complain about their lives and their treatment by the royal family. That is the sole genre in which Meghan and Harry truly pull in the eyeballs – which, considering they are literally the only people working in it, still feels like theirs to dominate.
Ultimately, though, that means not “moving on” from furrows they’ve ploughed before, despite moving on being a big part of their personal mental wellness brand. Can you really be about living healthily if the route to maintaining your lifestyle is dwelling unhealthily on the past? It’s an intriguing question. Though not, perhaps, intriguing enough to spin out over a lucrative #content series of one form or another – and that, fairly soon, is going to become a problem.
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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