New victory for Meghan Markle as her latest career venture nabs instant success

Meghan Markle has had instant success with her latest career venture, heading straight to the top of the Spotify charts with her new podcast, Archetypes. 

• In the first episode of Meghan Markle's podcast, she discussed the struggles she has faced for being an 'ambitious' woman with guest Serena Williams.
• The Duchess' big new project is proving successful, having gained a place at the top of the podcast charts.
• In other royal news, Prince Harry and Meghan's rumored vow renewal is set to be 'cringeworthy' for the royals, according to an expert.

The Duchess of Sussex knocked Joe Rogan's show, The Joe Rogan Experience, out of the number one spot on Spotify's most-listened to chart on Thursday, just two days after the release of her highly-anticipated Archetypes podcast.

The 57-minute episode was listened to by millions of people across the globe and quickly climbed to the top position in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

In the episode, Meghan discussed her time as a senior member of The Firm, claiming she 'had' to go on a royal engagement during a tour of Africa after her and Harry's son Archie's nursery caught fire when he was four months old.

Recalling the incident, Meghan, 41, said, "I was like, 'Can you just tell people what happened?' And so much, I think, optically. The focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels."

She added, "And part of the humanizing and the breaking through of these labels and these archetypes and these boxes that we're put into is having some understanding on the human moments behind the scenes that people might not have any awareness of and to give each other a break. Because we did. We had to leave our baby.

"And even though we were being moved to another place afterwards, we still had to leave him and go do another official engagement."

Her guest Serena Williams then replied, "I couldn't have done that. I would have said, 'Uh-uh.'."

Meghan and Joe - whose podcast she's just knocked off the top spot - have a rocky history. In a February 2021 episode of his podcast, he came under fire when he called Meghan 'little American hussy.' Soon after, all 113 of his episodes were mysteriously removed from the platform, but returned one week later and issued an apology. 

Meghan and Harry reportedly signed an $18 million, three-year podcast deal with Spotify for their new show. But they actually signed the contract back in December 2020, meaning it has taken the couple almost two years to produce the first episode.