Meghan Markle has tried to land an A-lister like Beyonce and Taylor Swift for her female empowerment podcast, which is already in crisis after just three episodes, it was claimed today.
‘No one’s picking up the phone’, one source close to the production has claimed, adding: ‘The show is not landing’.
‘There’s no Taylor Swift. No Beyoncé. Not even a Hailey Bieber. And when you’re pitching female empowerment, that’s a problem. It speaks volumes for her pulling power. She’s not happy about her lack of appeal’, they added.
Meghan interviewed Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd on the debut episode of the Duchess of Sussex’s new Lemonada podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder.
Her second instalment was with Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, and today’s episode was with her friend, hair colourist Kadi Lee, whose company the former Suits star has also invested in.
A source close to the making of the show has claimed that Ms Markle and her team ‘dialled all the big names’ to join her for ‘honest conversations with women who’ve built from the ground up, faced challenges and kept going.’
But these calls have been quietly ignored, Radar has said.
So instead of household names or cultural icons, Meghan is now expected to speak to more friends, influencers and startup entrepreneurs, as she tries to get her own As Ever brand off the ground.
One source said that fans can probably forget ‘red-carpet royalty’ on Confessions of a Female Founder.
‘This is a show crying out for relevance, and it’s just not landing’, the source said.
A source has claimed that Meghan and her team wanted A-listers like Beyonce (pictured with the Sussexes and Jay-Z in 2019) and Taylor Swift to appear on her podcast
The Duchess of Sussex reportedly attended Taylor Swift’s LA concert in 2023
The Duchess of Sussex launched her ‘Confessions Of A Female Founder’ podcast last month
Confessions of a Female Founder is Meghan’s follow-up to Archetypes, which failed to land and led to Spotify not renewing the Sussexes’ $25million contract in 2023.
Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation then called Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, ‘grifters’ in the aftermath.
But she has returned to podcasting, to further mixed reviews.
In episode one of Confessions of a Female Founder, Meghan revealed she had a ‘huge medical scare’ after giving birth and posted a series of unseen throwback photos on Instagram of her childhood.
She also had a thinly-veiled dig at the royal family and Britain as she joked about wanting to be in a ‘cocoon’ after she paraded Archie after his birth with her husband Harry.
‘It appears to be in crisis. You can expect much more of the same if Meghan can’t convince any A-listers to come on her pod’, one insider told MailOnline.
Today the Duchess of Sussex used her new podcast to admit the original name for lifestyle brand As Ever became a ‘word salad’.
Meghan Markle originally introduced her latest business venture selling products such as raspberry spread as American Riviera Orchard in March last year.
Meghan Markle with Kadi Lee at a Highbrow Hippie event in Venice, California, last November. Kadi was on episode 3 of Meghan’s new podcast
The Duchess of Sussex , 43, spoke with her friend and Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani (pictured) on her new podcast Confessions of a Female Founder on the second episode
Meghan spoke with Whitney Wolfe Herd, who founded the female-focused dating app Bumble, on episode one
But she faced trademarking setbacks and switched the name to As Ever in February, just weeks before the launch – with Netflix now a new partner in the business.
The Duchess spoke about the name in the third episode of her podcast Confessions Of A Female Founder, in which she interviewed her friend, hair colourist Kadi Lee.
She said: ‘I had secured As Ever as a name in 2022, and then as everything started to evolve last year, and bringing in a partner the size that it was, and it was just so interesting.
‘Because you remember, I said, ‘I like American Riviera as an umbrella,’ and then be able to have verticals beneath it. And maybe have the ‘Orchard’ really small. But when that’s not feasible… suddenly it became this word salad. I didn’t love that so much.’
‘I was like, ‘OK, well let’s go back to the thing that I’ve always loved. Let’s use the name that I protected for a reason that had been sort of under wraps’.
‘And then we were able to focus in the quiet and put our heads down and build on something that no one was sniffing around to even see about.
‘It was just really, really helpful to have that quiet period which you would know after spending so many years working on something, building it and the pivots that you had to take with it.’
Meghan’s guest Lee runs the Highbrow Hippie salon in the Los Angeles area of Venice, with her clients including Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Sigourney Weaver.
Meghan released throwback photos of herself as a child on Instagram to launch the show
The Duchess revealed last November that she had invested in the company, telling InStyle at the time that she was ‘so proud to invest in her as a friend and as a female founder’.
Meghan also attended a launch event for the brand in Venice and posed for photos with Lee and celebrity hairstylist Serge Normant, who styled her hair for her wedding to Prince Harry in Windsor in 2018.
And the Duchess said of Lee in the podcast: ‘Look at you now, I mean the name Highbrow Hippie is no longer just a blog and a hair salon, it’s a product line too.
‘You have a hair supplement and hair serum that you just launched last year, and it’s already been named best hair serum by Oprah Daily.’
The Duchess described Lee in the podcast as a ‘dear friend’ and said people ‘can’t get enough’ of Lee’s products.
Lee also said they first met in 2020, which was the year Meghan stepped down as a senior royal with Harry and moved her family to California.
Meghan and Lee met through Normant, and Lee styled Meghan’s hair last year for the Los Angeles children’s hospital gala in October, the ESPN Espy Awards in July and the Invictus Games One Year to Go event in February.
Lee – who previously worked at the Aveda Institute in New York – and her friend Myka Harris founded their hair salon in 2019 following the success of a shared blog.
Their brand also promotes ‘conscious living’ and sells smokeless incense, California olive oil, Mason Pearson hairbrushes and magnesium food supplements.
In 2020, the pair attended a Black Lives Matter march and highlighted how they were the only black-owned business on their street.
In May 2023, the salon revealed that Meghan had booked in for a hair colouring session with Lee ahead of the Women of Vision awards in New York.
Their conversation is the latest instalment from Meghan’s new eight-part podcast with Lemonada Media, which promised ‘girl talk’ and advice on how to create ‘billion-dollar businesses’.
It follows the Duchess’s Netflix lifestyle series With Love, Meghan coming out last month and the launch As Ever, which is selling flower sprinkles and herbal tea.
The latest episode of Meghan’s podcast comes after she spoke about ‘juggling it all’ and nursing a poorly Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet at home in episode two last week.
Meghan revealed how, at the time of recording, one of her children had RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) – a common cause of coughs and colds – and the other influenza A – a form of flu.
The Duchess, talking about the challenge of being a working mother, said: ‘With that comes the woman who is juggling it all and doing it all from home, being confident enough to tell the truth about what’s going on, because you can’t give grace to someone in the same way if you just have no sense of it.’
The Duchess faced trademarking setbacks and switched the name to As Ever in February
Speaking to Reshma Saujani, founder of the not-for-profit Girls Who Code, she also touched on her experience of miscarriage and having to ‘let something go that you plan to love for a long time’.
Meghan had a miscarriage in July 2020, when her eldest child Archie was one, revealing her heartbreak in an article for The New York Times later that year.
In the first episode of the podcast, released a fortnight ago, Meghan said she suffered medical complications after childbirth, and had to cope with the ‘world’ not knowing.
The Duchess she had been diagnosed with post-partum pre-eclampsia following the birth of one of her children. Describing the condition, Meghan said: ‘It’s so rare. And its so scary.’
‘You’re still trying to juggle all these things and the world doesn’t know what is happening, quietly and in the quiet you are still trying to show up for people.
‘You’re still trying to show up, mostly for your children. But those things are huge medical scares.’
Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of dating platform Bumble and the first guest on Meghan’s podcast, added: ‘They’re life or death, truly.’
The fourth episode of Confessions of a Female Founder will be released on April 29.