Listeners hoping for a revival of Megan Markle’s one-season podcast should probably make their peace with demise. There’d been hopes that the show, part of her and Prince Harry’s abortive podcast deal with Spotify, might reappear elsewhere, so that hope wasn’t completely unreasonable—but news from the U.S. Patent office suggests that that dream might be over.
Archetypes launched in August 2022 with the lofty goal to “investigate, dissect, and subvert the labels that try to hold women back.” Over its 12 episodes, the Suits star spoke with notables such as comedian Margaret Cho, Pamela Adlon, and Mariah Carey, then wrapped the season in November.
The show was canceled the following June, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Shortly after that, Megan and Harry’s deal with Spotify ended, a spokesperson for the royals said, “Meghan is continuing to develop more content for the Archetypes audience on another platform,” suggesting that the show might continue, just somewhere else.
Meanwhile, the Sussexes had been working to secure ironclad rights to the Archetypes name, filing a trademark application for the term with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 2022, the Daily Mail reports. Their initial bid was rejected this January due to a potential conflict with a trademark registered in May 2018 (coincidentally, the month and year the couple wed).
They revived their effort to trademark the name on July 24, the Mail reports, about a month after the podcast’s cancellation was made public, saying then in a reported filing that Markle “respectfully disagrees that there is a likelihood of confusion” and “requests that the refusal be withdrawn.” But last month, they withdrew that request in what’s known as an “express abandonment,” a form that stops the application process in its tracks.
Then again, Megan and Harry’s calendar seems abundantly full, even without the demands of a podcast. The couple closed out the Invictus Games just last week, but by the end of the week, they were back in California, Hello! reports.
And by Friday, they were also back on stage, this time at the One805 Live! charity event for Santa Barbara County’s first responders, which was held at Kevin Costner’s $26 million (per Page Six) estate. Much has already been made of a video from the event, in which Markle appears to believe that a mic being carried by a woman is for her—and is then rebuffed. Watch the footage for yourself, and wonder—does that yearning for the microphone suggest that Markle’s audio dreams have not died with Archetypes’s patent application? Perhaps those hoping for her return to podcasting have something to cling to, after all.
Eve Batey
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