Prince Harry and Meghan had a lot of eyes on them when they attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth. Yet despite the rift between the couple and the rest and the Royal Family, they were all able to respect the late monarch, setting aside differences to present a united front.
Harry and Meghan left the UK shortly after the funeral, and their life is now returning to normal. For Meghan, that means continuing with her podcast, Archetypes, which she put on hold due to the Queen’s passing.
In any case, she has a new show on Spotify, and in her latest podcast episode, Meghan dropped some serious bombshells…
The entire Royal Family – and indeed the nation as a whole – has mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth. Now, though, the official mourning period is over.
For senior family members, that means returning to work and fulfilling their royal duties. But, of course, for Harry and Meghan Markle, that’s no longer the case.
Since the two cut ties with the royals in 2020, they no longer expected to undertake official duties for “The Firm.”
When the Queen passed away, Meghan and Harry were, by coincidence, both in the UK. The Prince traveled to Balmoral to reunite with his family as the Queen’s health deteriorated. Unfortunately, Meghan wasn’t there, but she was present for the State Funeral.
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Meghan Markle reportedly honored the Queen in a beautiful way during said funeral. She is said to have worn the pearl and diamond earrings the Queen gave her during their first joint engagement in 2018.
Since Queen Victoria’s time, it’s been a mourning tradition within the royal family to wear pearls.
In the infamous 2021 Oprah interview, Meghan spoke dearly about the Queen and how she had treated her during their first engagement together.
“The Queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me. I mean, we had one of our first joint engagements together,” Meghan said at the time.
“She asked me to join her, and I went on the train. And we had breakfast together that morning and she gave me a beautiful gift and I just really loved being in her company, and I know we were in the car—Yeah, she gave me some beautiful pearl earrings and a matching necklace—and we were in the car going between engagements.”
Meghan added: “And she has a blanket that sits across her, her knees, for warmth and it was chilly and she was like, Meghan, come on, and put it over my knees as well.”
As per reports, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle both followed royal protocol with their clothing for the Queen’s funeral. However, many royal fans reacted to the fact that Meghan seemed to break from a particular royal tradition. It’s long been tradition – though not mandatory – that the royal women wear a mourning veil when attending royal funerals. Kate, Camilla, Queen Consort, and Princess Sophie were among several women sporting a veil, along with the traditional black hat.
King Charles fought back tears as his mother’s coffin was lowered into the Royal Vault – but he wasn’t the only one crying during the day. Meghan Markle was also seen wiping tears from her face after the State Funeral, with makeup visibly seen on one of her black gloves.
She was pictured standing with William and Kate’s two children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte while waiting for their car after the state funeral.
At one point, Charlotte turned around and met Meghan’s glance. Meghan looked down and gave the young princess a warm, comforting smile in return.
As mentioned, several Royal Family members cried as they bade farewell to Queen Elizabeth. Apparently, though, Meghan’s tears had one television personality quite upset.
Today’s funeral coverage of the Queen’s funeral was led by anchor Karl Stefanovic, who decided to poke fun at Meghan after pictures of her crying were published.
He said they were open to interpretation, implying that pictures of Meghan wiping the tears from her face were perhaps misleading.
“There’s been lots of photos around and interpretations of photos and reading into photos [meanings] that may or may not be true,” Stefanovic said.
“‘There’s a couple of Meghan, um, with a tear running down her face – apparently – and also even one of Princess Charlotte that everyone was saying she was crying, and we don’t know if it was true or not.”
Not long after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, Harry and Meghan headed back home to their house in Montecito, California. Though tensions between the couple and the Royal Family have been high over the last years, this time, there was a simple reason behind their swift departure.
Harry and Meghan’s two children, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, stayed in the US while their parents were in Britain. It should go without saying that the couple greatly missed their kids.
“Meghan and Harry are preparing to return to Montecito almost immediately after the funeral [on Monday], where they’ll be reunited with Archie and Lilibet after being separated for over two weeks,” a source told US Weekly.
“[It’s] the longest amount of time they’ve been apart from their children.”
“They’ve missed the kids like crazy and have been FaceTiming them every day, but can’t wait to see and hold them again after a poignant few weeks,” the source added.
As for now, it’s safe to assume that Harry and Meghan are getting their lives back on track.
For Meghan, that includes releasing episodes of her new podcast, Archetypes. Back in 2020, Harry and Meghan revealed that they had signed a deal with Spotify.
The idea was to produce content for the audio streaming giant, though Meghan only did one podcast for the platform, a holiday special produced by Archewell Audio and Spotify’s Gimlet in 2020.
In August 2022, however, Meghan returned with her new podcast “Archetypes”, described as “a podcast where we investigate, dissect, and subvert the labels that try to hold women back.”
The Duchess posted the first show of her new weekly program just recently, though she decided to postpone some episodes to honor the official mourning period for Her Majesty.
Now, though, it’s out for the public to hear.
It should come as little surprise, then, that Meghan finds herself back as a big talking point, this time due to her criticism of the representation of Asian women in Hollywood productions.
On her podcast, Meghan, alongside guest journalist Lisa Lind and comedian Margaret Cho, spoke about the stereotype known as the “Dragon Lady,” wherein female members from the Asian community are shown as “sexually” cold and threatening towards masculinity.
As reported by Express, the term was first mentioned in the 1930s, used to describe Asian women who were “strong, sexual, deceitful and domineering.”
Meghan took a swing at Hollywood actor Mike Myers – famous for the Austin Powers films – and director Quentin Tarantino, especially over his portrayal of Asian women in his movie Kill Bill. She said they portrayed Asian women in a very stereotypical way, presenting caricatures of women of Asian descent.
“Movies like Austin Powers and Kill Bill presented these characters of Asian women as oftentimes over-sexualized or aggressive,” Markle said on her podcast.
“‘The Dragon Lady, the East Asian temptress whose mysterious foreign allure is scripted as both tantalizing and deadly This has seeped into a lot of our entertainment. But this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.”
Meghan’s podcast guest, Margaret Cho, elaborated more on the subject, saying that she – as well as many others – has identified with the stereotype.
“‘Dragon Lady’ really comes from this fantasy of orientalism. It’s actually a character that is similar to the femme fatale. In that, a woman who is beautiful and deadly. Because we can’t just be beautiful, it has to come at a cost,” Cho said.
“And it’s kind of like the evil Queen adjacent but it’s also so pinned to this idea that Asiannessis an inherent threat that our foreignness is somehow [going] to get [you]. Mystery and exoticism are part of it and unfortunately, that trope has stuck to film but also to Asian American women or Asian women.”
Moreover, Meghan recalled one day when she was young, spending weekends visiting the Little Tokyo district. She and her mother, Doria Ragland, spent time in a Korean spa – but it wasn’t all joyful.
“It’s a very humbling experience for a girl going through puberty because you enter a room with women from ages nine to maybe 90, all walking around naked and waiting to get a body scrub on one of these tables that are all lined up in a row,” Meghan said on her podcast.
“All I wanted was a bathing suit. Once I was over that adolescent embarrassment, my mom and I, we would go upstairs we would sit in a room and we would have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles.”