On the debut episode of Meghan Markle’s new podcast, Archetypes, the 41-year-old actress/member of the Royal family, sat down with her close friend (and tennis legend) Serena Williams.
During their conversation, Markle revealed that during her visit to Africa with Prince Harry in 2019, a fire broke out in the nursery where their son, Archie, was staying.
Archie was what, four and a half months old. And the moment we landed, we had to drop him off at this housing unit that they had had us staying in. He was going to get ready to go down for his nap. We immediately went to an official engagement in this township called Nyanga, and there was this moment where I’m standing on a tree stump and I’m giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say, ‘There’s been a fire at the residence.’ What? ‘There’s been a fire in the baby’s room.’ What?
She raced back to the residence and their nanny, Lauren, was flooded with tears. She told Markle and Harry that she was going to put Archie down for his nap in the room, but decided she wanted to grab a snack downstairs first, so she brought Archie with her.
In that amount of time that she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire. There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there.
This was obviously a traumatic event for everyone involved. Markle wanted nothing more than to just be with her baby, but the Royal parade had to continue on.
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.
Serena replied in shock, “I couldn’t have done that. I would have said, ‘Uh-uh.'” but of course we all know it’s not as simple as saying no when it comes to your Royal duties.
We can certainly understand why she wanted out of that machine. When they start putting their “engagements” above you and your family, that’s when you know it’s time to get out.
