Well, that’s a wrap, then. Or is that the wrong terminology to use when talking about podcasts, rather than movies? I’m afraid I’m not an expert on podcasting. Neither, it seems, are Harry and Meghan. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as the pair still insist on being called, have parted ways with Spotify in questionable circumstances.
A quick recap: in 2020, Archewell Audio, the Sussexes’ podcast production company, signed an exclusive, $20m deal with Spotify to produce “uplifting” audio projects. Spotify made a lot of noise at the time about how proud it was to partner with the pair and how wonderful and inspiring they were.
Now, less than a year after the launch of Meghan’s debut podcast, Archetypes, the partnership is over. The official line is that it was by mutual agreement and everyone is terribly proud of what they have achieved. And, to be fair, Archetypes – which featured Meghan interviewing famous women – was top of the podcast charts in a lot of markets.
But while it didn’t bomb, there may have been room for improvement. Various anonymous sources have suggested the deal ended prematurely because the former royals were spectacularly unproductive – it took them two years to release just 12 episodes. (Again, the podcast wasn’t in-depth reportage: it was Meghan going through her address book and interviewing her contacts.) That said, another anonymous source has suggested to Variety that rumours of the Sussexes being deathly lazy are greatly exaggerated. According to this source, the couple wanted to move away from exclusive Spotify distribution and on to more lucrative things.
Thankfully, not everyone is keeping their views on the matter anonymous. “I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation,” said Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation, on his eponymous podcast. “‘The Fucking Grifters’. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them. I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories … Fuck them. The grifters.”
Look, it’s important to enjoy alcohol responsibly, but, please, Mr Simmons, get drunk. Get drunk and spill the tea! I’m begging you. Although, honestly, it doesn’t seem as if he needs much encouragement. Simmons clearly isn’t Team Sussex. In a January 2022 episode of his podcast, Simmons said of the pair: “You live in fucking Montecito and … nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family.”
It’s hard to argue with that. I’m not saying Harry and Megan are dullards with nothing interesting to talk about outside their dysfunctional family dynamics; it’s just that when you are in the 0.0001%, it’s probably tough to come up with a regular stream of content that is relatable to the masses. Take Ivanka Trump, for example. At the beginning of the pandemic, she suggested people amuse themselves during lockdown by “making shadow puppets from Henry Bursill’s recently unearthed 1860s book of engraving”.
I know schadenfreude is unbecoming, but I’ll admit I felt a little twinge of satisfaction about Harry and Meghan’s podcasting career seemingly imploding. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for normal people to make a sustainable living in creative careers: a recent report found professional authors in the UK earn a median of just £7,000 a year. Every week, there seems to be a new round of redundancies in the media.
It’s difficult, in this context, not to get annoyed when you see celebrities nonchalantly wade into content creation as if anyone could do it. Pretty much every celebrity seems to be writing children’s books (another Harry and Meghan production), podcasting or getting commissions from magazines to interview other celebrities. So it’s refreshing when you see some of these celebrities realise that coming up with ideas consistently can be a royal pain.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
