Meghan Markle’s ‘B-word’ podcast indirectly hits back at bullying allegations

In Meghan Markle’s latest episode of her “Archetypes” podcast, she explores the way strong-minded women are often labeled “difficult” and “pushy,” or even have the “B-word” attached to them.

The Duchess of Sussex says nothing in Tuesday’s episode about how she herself was labeled “difficult,” “demanding” and worse in books and media reports about the time she lived in the U.K, before and after she married Prince Harry.

The former TV actor doesn’t bring up the fact that she was the subject of an internal Buckingham Palace investigation over allegations that she bullied palace staff. It’s also as if her reputation wasn’t challenged by two recent books by prominent royal authors who detailed allegations that she was haughty, controlling and launched into angry tirades at aides when she didn’t immediately get what she wanted.

In one of those books, “Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors,” journalist Tom Bower reported that Harry’s old private school friends also called her “humorless” and used the B-word to describe her after they said she wouldn’t laugh at their crude jokes when they first met her during a weekend shooting party at the queen’s Sandringham estate.

Meghan’s representatives have dismissed the bullying allegations, first reported in the Times UK in March 2021, as part of “a calculated smear campaign.” On her Spotify podcast episode Tuesday, Meghan gets to control the narrative and chooses to ignore those allegations completely, but they remain a subtext during the hour-long show, titled “To ‘B’ or not to ‘B?’ With Mellody Hobson and Victoria Jackson.”

At times, it almost sounds as if the episode’s talking points and Meghan’s conversations with these trailblazing female business leaders were specifically tailored to address those allegations — albeit indirectly — and attempt to correct perceptions about her.

With her mellifluous voice that’s a natural for podcasting, Meghan talks about how “strong-minded women” are branded “difficult.” In describing what people mean when they use the B-word, Meghan says: “What these people are implying when they use that very charged word, is that this woman, ‘Oh, she’s difficult.’ Which is really just a euphemism or is probably not even a euphemism. It’s really a codeword for the B-word.’”

Meghan also recalled some advice she once got from a friend.

“My friend said to me, there’s a certain point when you come to terms with the fact that not everyone is going to like you, the goal can’t be for everyone to like you, but the goal can be for them to respect you.”

The duchess also talked about how some friends are “reclaiming” and “embracing” the “B-word,” but she said she refuses to use it herself. She said she would never use it except when referring to a female dog.

Meghan’s guests on the episode included her friends, Hobson and Jackson. Hobson is the chairwoman of Starbucks and was the first Black woman to chair an S&P 500 company. She also is married to “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. Meanwhile, Jackson is the cosmetics mogul who is said to be part of the Sussexes’ close-knit group of friends in Montecito, the Daily Mail said.

Jackson described a harrowing event when she was a teenager in the 1970s and was “raped and stabbed” by the notorious “pillowcase rapist.” Jackson went on to build a $1 billion business in cosmetics and then moved into medical research after her daughter was diagnosed with a rare and often fatal eye condition.

Before talking to Hobson, Meghan recounted another conversation with a friend who noted that the B-word is a way to make “a convenient villain” out of assertive women in positions of power.

Meghan could definitely count herself among such women. After all, the Los Angeles native assertively worked to attain positions of power, first in Hollywood, when she won a co-starring role on a TV show, and then on the international stage when she married into the British royal family. Now, she and Harry, living in California, are attempting to forge careers as major media moguls, global philanthropists and influencers.

“It becomes a way to take their power away,” Meghan said. “Keep them in their place. A lot of times it’s tied to the very women who have power and agency, as my friend was suggesting, who aren’t comfortable being silent, like, businesswomen and entrepreneurs.”

Meghan also said, “I remember when I was a kid and people would say ‘sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you.’ Well, that was just a flat-out lie. Of course names hurt. But what happens when we use that pain to fuel purpose, when the B-word is shouted with one intent, but you’re able to let it go and to remind yourself of all the other words with a ‘B’ that better describe you: Beautiful, blessed, brilliant, beguiling, blissful, bedazzling. Take your pick.”