Another one bites the dust.
Meghan Markle’s new podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder,” is already struggling to reach the numbers her previous podcast “Archetypes” had generated.
The Duchess of Sussex, 43, last week dropped the first episode of the podcast, which featured her longtime friend, Bumble dating app founder Whitney Wolfe Herd.
But the podcast had failed to secure the top spot since its hotly awaited release.
As of Monday, the “Suits” alum’s podcast was ranked number 10 on Spotify’s general Top Podcasts chart in the US — a striking contrast to “Archetypes,” which was ranked number 1 following its release in 2022.
Indeed, the critic reviews of Markle’s new venture were equally as disappointing — as one reviewer called the podcast “stomach-turning.”
Others insisted that Markle failed to ask the hard-hitting questions listeners wanted to hear and instead redirected conversations “towards her own experiences.”
In its scathing, one-star review, titled “Meghan’s vapid lessons in self-love,” the Times of London‘s columnist James Marriott was “seized by an urge to beat my head against the wall” after listening to the episode.
Elsewhere, the Telegraph‘s TV critic Chris Bennion gave Markle’s podcast two stars, describing it as having an “inane stream of mindless aphorisms” with “no confessions or secrets.”
In its two-star review, the Guardian said the “sycophantic interview podcast is stomach-turning.”
Previously, Markle’s now-defunct 12-episode podcast “Archetypes” enjoyed a brief reign at the top spot — before she ultimately parted ways with Spotify in 2023 following a lucrative $20 million deal.
In the wake of the breakup, Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head of global sports strategy, called the ex-royals “f – – king grifters” and “lazy.”
“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Megan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation,” Simmons, the founder of The Ringer and the head of Spotify’s global sports strategy, said in 2023.
“That’s a podcast we should’ve launched with them. I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of this Zoom I had with Harry to try to help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.”
The frosty reception to Markle’s “Confessions of a Female Founder” podcast debut comes just weeks after her Netflix series, “With Love, Meghan,” was also mercilessly dragged by critics following its release in early March.
