The Duke of Sussex reportedly pitched a podcast to Spotify that would have seen him interviewing figures such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their “childhood trauma”.
Prince Harry spoke to a number of producers and production houses to come up with a potential podcast series for the audio streaming platform, according to Bloomberg.
It comes after Spotify and Archewell Audio, Harry and Meghan Markle’s production company, announced they had “mutually agreed to part ways”.
The royal couple had signed a three-year deal with Spotify in 2020, worth US$20m (£15.6m). Under the partnership, they produced one 12-part series, Archetypes, hosted by Meghan.
However, the couple were expected to “produce and host podcasts”, with a first complete series to debut in 2021. Archetypes debuted in 2022 and neither Harry nor Meghan have hosted another podcast series since then.
According to Bloomberg’s Soundbite newsletter, penned by journalist Ashley Carman, Harry came up with the concept of interviewing “controversial guests”, including Putin, Trump and Mark Zuckerberg “about their early formative years and how those experiences resulted in the adults they are today”.
Another idea that the duke floated was a show about fatherhood, which he hoped to interview Pope Francis – who does not have any children – for.
Given no podcast hosted by Harry has been released, it appears his ideas were vetoed. Both Spotify and Archewell Audio declined to comment.
Additionally, it was claimed this week that Meghan did not conduct her own interviews on Archetypes. The duchess was defended against the rumours by Andy Cohen, who called them “insane”.
“Her podcast is conversations with people. How would she not have [conducted her interviews], of course she did,” he told Us Weekly. Cohen described the duchess’ podcast as “quite well-researched”, “well-informed” and “thoughtful”.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Harry and Meghan’s deal came to an end because they did not “[meet] the productivity benchmarks required to receive the full payout from the deal”.
The pair were also criticised by leading Spotify executive Bill Simmons after it was reported that their partnership had been axed.
On his own podcast, The Ringer, Simmons branded Harry and Meghan “f***ing grifters”, adding: “That’s the podcast we shoulda launched with them.
The couple appeared at an online event for Spotify to plug their Archewell Audio podcast— (Instagram/_duchess_of_sussex)
“I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.”
It has also been reported that Spotify executives were “horrified” by Harry after he told Oprah Winfrey in 2021 that he signed multi-million-pound deals with the platform and Netflix so that he could “afford” to pay for security for his family.
He told Winfrey at the time that signing such deals was “never part of the plan”, adding: “That was suggested by somebody else by the point of where my family literally cut me off financially and I had to afford security for us.”
The Daily Mail’s diary editor Richard Eden claimed that Harry’s admission left Spotify bosses “reeling”, adding: “It takes an awful lot of work. It’s serious work, it’s planning. You can’t just turn up and, ‘Oh, what shall we do today?’”
Harry and Meghan stepped down from the royal family in 2021 and currently live in Montecito, California, with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
Since then, they have released a Netflix docuseries titled Harry and Meghan, as well as Harry’s memoir Spare. Harry’s last involvement in a royal event was attending his father King Charles III’s coronation on 6 May, which he left immediately after it ended and returned to the US.
