Meghan Markle took a break from dispensing entrepreneurial wisdom on her Confessions of a Female Founder podcast to make her first-ever guest appearance on someone else’s show.
The former Suits actress was the inaugural guest on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, a podcast hosted by the founder of IT Cosmetics. The 90-minute sit-down, which dropped Monday, was largely filled with the same superficial advice and anecdotes about business, relationships, and parenting that we have come to expect from the one-time royal – including a bit about the plight of “working hard.”
The woe-is-me schtick is something both Megyn and Dave Portnoy have taken issue with when it comes to Markle. And on Thursday’s show, the Barstool Sports founder and president joined to discuss the interview and why the former duchess is a “malignant narcissist.”
Markle on ‘Hard Work’
The podcast began with a fawning introduction from the host complete with dramatic music and emotional teases. “She is an American member of the British Royal Family and entrepreneur, author, actor, founder of the lifestyle brand As Ever that just sold out of stock completely in the first hour of its recent launch into the world,” Lima said as the soundtrack swelled. “She’s also a mom to her two beautiful kids, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, and wife to husband, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.”
Taking all of those ‘titles’ into consideration, Lima said Markle has been “working so hard for so long” only to have all of her projects “blossoming” at the same time. Markle suggested that “working hard” has been a struggle.
“To the world, it’s just, ‘What has she been doing? Does she work,'” she said. “As opposed to oh my gosh, I work so hard, and I appreciate what hard work looks like. I like working hard, and I’m still working hard, right?”
She then spoke directly to the fruit spreads, teas, and baking mixes she sells through her As Ever brand. “The moment that everything sells out, it doesn’t mean that we’re done,” Markle continued. “It means we’re working on replenishment, and what are the next SKUs, and what’s the next tranche of products, and what’s the timing on that, and writing the newsletters and writing the social media captions and making sure that all that feels in line, and what’s the cadence of it, and what’s the photography that we want to do, and what do I want to wear for those shoots.”
But her to-do list doesn’t end there. She said she has been doing all of that “while also editing all the time coded notes for season two of With Love, Megyn, and then being in edits for the podcast, and being a mom and wife and a friend.”
“Those are all jobs,” Markle added. “I mean, I love being that busy. But I do think it’s really interesting when people have no sense of what goes into the thing, and then when the thing seems like oh, wow, huge. The thing is not done. The finish line was really the starting line.”
‘Malignant Narcissist’
Portnoy said the whole thing felt like a parody, but he found her take on “working hard” to be tone deaf. “That would infuriate me as someone who is trying to start a business and struggling because [Markle] can’t fail… You’re in the royal family,” he said. “To complain about, ‘Oh, the business’… If you don’t want to show up, if you don’t want to do the schedule, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to do. You’re living in, literally, a fantasy tale.”
The lack of self-awareness is what Megyn said she has come to expect from Markle. “She is a malignant narcissist who cannot get enough of herself while simultaneously playing the victim,'” she explained. “It’s ‘my castle is too small,’ ‘the queen is mean to me,’ ‘they won’t let me call myself Her Royal Highness anymore, but I’m going to put it all over my stationery and on the gifts that I give to my friends.’ She never stops whining.”
Ultimately, Portnoy said the Sussexes can’t have it both ways. “I can’t have someone marry into the Royal Family and be like ‘woe is me’ with all of the attention you’re getting… Then they renounce their royalty, but they still want the royalty,” he noted. “So, it is hypocritical to get into that situation then want nothing to do with it, but you do want anything to do with it.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Portnoy by tuning in to episode 1,062 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.