Earlier this month, Spotify announced that the platform’s much-launched partnership with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s podcast production company, Archewell Audio, was terminated after just two years; this means that they were unable to keep their promises as part of their royal exile. The $20 million deal they signed in 2020.
What was supposed to be a multi-year alliance culminating in a series of “refreshing” audio projects ultimately spawned only one show: Markle’s feminist-leaning Archetypes, a podcast meant to “explore, dissect, and break down labels that try to keep women back.” Archetypes debuted in 2022 with mid-range reviews and only aired 12 episodes; where Markle did interviews with other extremely famous women that involved a lot of back patting on both sides.
The ESPN commentator has been harshly criticized since news of the Spotify deal’s termination emerged: “If Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex aren’t complaining about the royal family, I don’t know if anyone cares what they have to say.” Stephen A. Smith said on his eponymous podcast.
Worse still, a report claimed that some of the interviews about Archetypes were not done by Markle herself, but instead by employees on the show, and her questions were edited in post-production.
It’s safe to say that Markle’s ambition to become a leading celebrity podcaster has been resoundingly unsuccessful. But he’s far from the only celebrity who’s eager to join the podcast boom and abandon half-baked audio projects.
Take, for example, In Bed With Nick & Megan, hosted by beloved celebrity couple Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. On paper, considering many successful celebrity podcasts (think Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard or High Low with EmRata) it involves two or more famous people talking to each other in a room, thereby eliminating the increasingly hesitant many stars. It seemed like a no-brainer, considering it was removed. I feel about talking to journalists and igniting the cycle of digital anger.
There was a lot of this kind of talk on Bed’s episodes, but with so many famous podcasts filling the space with convoluted, boring excerpts about top-notch hobbies, you really had to hold on. Mullally and Offerman’s attempt was certainly inventive: “In some episodes, they’ll even kick the guest out of bed and go on a tape recorder, getting extra personal in what some have called the most scorching and crudely sexual conversations ever.” The podcast’s description reads. But at the end of the day, Boomer’s sex talk of a married couple wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear. After launching in late 2019, the show ended in a fiasco less than a year later.
“I’m sorry, but who asked for this?” It was Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen’s deeply frustrating but fortunately short-lived Renegades: Born in the USA, dropping eight episodes in February and March of 2021, leaving it there. The renegades mostly consisted of stereotypes about the American struggle, the nation’s “losing its innocence” and the “romanticism of the open road”. The appeal has gone so far, however.
Same for poor Alicia Silverstone. This uninformed The star will always be an icon for the power of this role, but the health podcast The Real Heal, in which she tackled fascinating topics such as intuitive eating and plant-based nutrition, was so boring that it started and ended without it. Much fanfare in 2022.
The list of failed shows goes on and on: Women of the Hour with Lena Dunham, Bunny Ears with Macaulay Culkin, Prinze and Kurt with Freddie Prinze Jr., and 3 Girls, 1 Keith by Amy Schumer.
And RIP to The Lohdown with Lindsay Lohan, who was born in April of 2022 and passed away that September after 12 episodes. “Unheard of,” wrote a reviewer on Apple Podcasts about LiLo’s show. weird eye and Salt-N-Pepa. “It needs to be compiled better,” another argued. “You could say that Lindsay has little or nothing in common with her guests, has inconsistent launches, and Lindsay isn’t very engaging… I thought that would be a little more candid.”
That’s the thing with podcasting: You have to either really invest in hearing what your guests have to say, or be interesting enough to carry the show on your own.
When the stakes are not high at all – for example, if you’re a bored celebrity looking for a chance to break into a new income stream, like the Smartless guys do – you’re much more likely to fail on the radio. The graveyard of abandoned famous podcasts also proves this.