The second episode of Meghan Markle’s new podcast Archetypes is here and this week she’s been discussing the ‘Duality of Diva’ with pop’s ultimate diva Mariah Carey.
Last week, Megan spoke about how she’d been demonised for her ambition with tennis superstar Serena Williams in a series which aims to debunk damaging archetypes which are often weaponised against women in particular.
Meghan explained that when she first decided on the theme for her second episode, she knew straight away that it was Mariah she wanted to speak to.
‘This is part of why when I was putting this conversation together I had to talk to you,’ she said. ‘Of course I had to talk to you. You were so formative for me. Representation matters so much.’
The two women both come from mixed raced families, and bonded on the podcast over their shared experience of struggling to fit in to white and Black communities, particularly with Meghan’s white in laws, who she’s previously alluded to racist behaviour from.
‘I mean if there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband,’ she said about marrying into the British Royal Family in 2018.
‘Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a black woman, because up until then I had been treated like a mixed woman and things really shifted.’
But despite having this part of their identities in common, one similarity Meghan did not expect to be drawn was their ‘diva’ behaviours.
Speaking close to the beginning of the episode, Mariah jokingly suggested Meghan ‘gives us diva moments sometimes’ – but the comparison didn’t go down well with the Duchess.
‘You couldn’t see me, obviously, but I started to sweat a little bit. I started squirming in my chair in this quiet revolt, like, wait, wait, no, what? How? But? How could you? That’s not true, that’s not… Why would you say that?’ she explained. ‘My mind genuinely was just spinning with what nonsense she must have read or clicked on to make her say that. I just kept thinking, in that moment, was my girl crush coming to a quick demise? Does she actually not see me?’
She continued, ‘“When she said diva, she was talking about the way that I dress, the posture, the clothing, the quote unquote, fabulousness as she sees it,” she said.
‘She meant diva as a compliment. But I heard it as a dig. I heard it as the word diva, as I think of it. But, in that moment, as she explained to me, she meant it as chic, as aspirational. And how one very charged word can mean something different for each of us, it’s mind blowing to me.
'It actually made me realise that in these episodes, as I've opened the door for conversation surrounding the archetypes, that try to hold us back, that for some reclaiming the words is what will propel us forward.'