It’s been coming up to three years since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped down from their roles as senior royals to focus on a new life out of the royal glare, and in that time the couple have welcomed a second child, set up the Archwell Foundation and Meghan has spoken to a string of high profile and influential women on her podcast Archetypes, which aims to deconstruct the labels holding women back.
Now, on her twelfth and final episode of the season (nothing is confirmed as of yet for a season two, but Meghan did promise she was ‘working on other ways to keep the conversation going’, so watch this space) she’s sat down with three equally influential men as she ‘broadens the conversation’, on the advice of her husband.
'It was important to us that women have a space to share their authentic and complicated, complex and dynamic experiences. To be heard, and to be understood,’ she said in the introduction to the episode, called, ‘Man-ifesting A Cultural Shift’, with Trevor Noah, Andy Cohen and Judd Apatow.
‘But through that process, it also occurred to me ― and truth be told at the suggestion of my husband ― that if we really want to shift how we think about gender and the limiting labels that we separate people into, then we have to broaden the conversation.’
Comedian and writer Trevor, TV and radio personality Andy and producer and writer Judd all contributed to a thought-provoking conversation about how men could play their part in evening the playing field ‘through their roles in the media, and, for some, as husbands and fathers’.
Speaking of her book The Bench, which she says was inspired by Harry’s relationship with their son Archie, Meghan explained, ‘I wrote a children's book that came out a year ago or a couple of years ago and is basically about this softer side of masculinity, and how I've seen my husband as a dad and the example of that, that's the person that the young boy can look to and say, “Oh, this is what it means to be a man. This is the example of that, that's the person that I can go to when I'm crying and that's the person that will sit with me. That's the person that can put the Band-Aid on my knee.”
‘And that that level of being nurtured can come from a male figure in, in your life just as much as it can from a female figure, but also for those male figures that it feels really good. To be able to provide that and to be able to show that part of your personality, that it doesn't make you less of a man in doing so.’
In speaking to women likeSerena Williams, activist Shohreh Aghdashloo and Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell, Meghan says that ‘now men see our experience differently now, too. They see us. They see us more clearly.’
She closed her final podcast episode, ‘The guests I've had join me have been so generous with their time and vulnerable in sharing their stories. And I found that in listening, really listening, I learned so much – about them, of course, but also about myself. Finding common ground and discovering that people that come from different worlds and have different life experiences still share so many of the same feelings. I learned how much more similar we are than different.’