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Prince Harry ‘wanted to interview Vladimir Putin about childhood trauma’ but…
Prince Harry came up with the concept of interviewing “controversial guests”, including Vladimir Putin.
Prince Harry reportedly pitched a podcast to Spotify that would have seen him interviewing Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their “childhood trauma”. The Duke of Sussex spoke to a number of producers and production houses to come up with a potential podcast series for Spotify, Bloomberg reported. This comes after Spotify and Archewell Audio, Harry and Meghan Markle’s production company, announced that they had “mutually agreed to part ways”.
The royal couple had signed a three-year deal with Spotify in 2020 worth US$20m. Under the partnership, they produced one 12-part series, Archetypes, hosted by Meghan Markle.
According to Bloomberg’s Soundbite newsletter, Prince Harry came up with the concept of interviewing “controversial guests”, including Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg “about their early formative years and how those experiences resulted in the adults they are today”. Another idea that he floated was a show about fatherhood in which he hoped to interview Pope Francis.
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As no podcast hosted by Prince Harry has been released, it appears his ideas were vetoed. Additionally, it was claimed this week that Meghan Markle did not conduct her own interviews on Archetypes.
“Her podcast is conversations with people. How would she not have [conducted her interviews], of course she did,” Andy Cohen told Us Weekly, describing the duchess’ podcast as “quite well-researched”, “well-informed” and “thoughtful”.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s deal came to an end because they did not “[meet] the productivity benchmarks required to receive the full payout from the deal”. The couple were also criticised by leading Spotify executive Bill Simmons after it was reported that their partnership had been axed.
Bill Simmons called Harry and Meghan “f***ing grifters”, saying, “That’s the podcast we shoulda launched with them. 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.”
