Meghan Markle’s new podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder,” has already been mercilessly dragged by critics — despite premiering some 24 hours ago.
The Duchess of Sussex, 43, on Tuesday dropped the first episode of the podcast, which featured Markle’s longtime friend and Bumble dating app founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd.
In the 50-minute episode, the “Suits” alum attempted to dissect Wolfe Herd’s rise to success. However, countless critics have since insisted that Markle failed to ask the hard-hitting questions listeners wanted to hear and instead redirected conversations “towards her own experiences.”
In its scathing one-star review, titled “Meghan’s vapid lessons in self-love,” The Times of London‘s columnist James Marriott was “seized by an urge to beat my head against the wall” after listening to the episode.
“Receiving business advice from a Californian multimillionaire who owes her fortune to marrying a prince is as illuminating as you would expect,” Marriott wrote.
“Predictably, she has nothing to say about real business issues such as logistics, management techniques or supply chain issues.”
“Equally predictably, there is lots of guff about how to love yourself and spread positive energy through the world,” Marriott continued. “I suspect that this is not the sort of thing most small business people spend much time fretting over.”
“But then Meghan’s business isn’t really a business. It’s a bit like the corporate equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s dairy farm — a pleasant game of make-believe for an idle rich woman,” he noted.
Marriott also took issue with the Tinder co-founder saying she’s been on a “journey of self-love and self-discovery.”
“I’m going to foundationally re-architect the way people date and the way people love,” Wolf Herd said during the episode.
“By this point I was seized by an urge to beat my head against the wall and foundationally re-architect my skull,” Marriott wrote in response.
Elsewhere, The Telegraph‘s TV critic Chris Bennion gave Markle’s podcast two stars, describing it as having an “inane stream of mindless aphorisms” with “no confessions or secrets.”
“There are plenty of self-care aphorisms, journeys of self-love and validation, discussions of bottling your essence, and great handfuls of mutual adoration,” Bennion wrote.
“The frustrating thing is that Wolfe Herd, who is just 35, presumably does have wisdom to impart, having been part of the team that created Tinder before she created Bumble.”
“Imagine the drive, the talent, the decisions and sheer bloody ruthlessness it must take to achieve what she has. We get none of it,” he added.
In its two-star review, The Guardian said the “sycophantic interview podcast is stomach-turning.”
“It’s hardly a manual of specific, constructive business advice; it’s simply an effusive chinwag between two like-minded pals that may as well have taken place behind a deluxe set of closed doors,” Rachel Aroesti wrote.
In its own review, the Express had hoped to hear Wolfe Herd “share more learning curves about her journey rather than lunches with Meghan and bottles of rosé.”
“Meghan takes control of the narrative early on in the episode. She bluntly directs the podcast by informing her friend of how she wants the conversation to be ‘relaxed and easy’ — which is normally a chat you would have with a guest behind-the-scenes instead of on-air for broadcast,” the review reads.
In a second review by The Times of London, reviewer Charlie Gowans-Eglinton said Markle could have quizzed her guest on “how she made a billion, but she had other things on her mind.”
“I have been listening for eight minutes and 48 seconds before Whitney (I will call her Whitney, since we are doing ‘girl talk’) speaks about business for — I timed it — 17 seconds before Meghan chimes in again,” he wrote.
The frosty reception to Markle’s podcast debut comes just weeks after her Netflix series, “With Love, Meghan,” was also mercilessly dragged by critics following its release.
Still, that didn’t stop the former actress from boasting about its streaming success on social media.
The Sussexes, who signed a $100 million deal with Netflix in 2020, are no strangers to poor reviews from critics — Harry’s “Polo” doc received extremely disappointing reviews after its release in Dec. 2024.
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