It looks like the public autopsy continues over the death of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s dreams to earn $20 million hosting podcasts for Spotify.
It certainly didn’t help that Harry reportedly made the outlandish suggestion to interview Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump for a podcast about childhood trauma. Now the CEO of one of the world’s top talent agencies has suggested another reason that the renegade royal couple couldn’t make it in the industry.
“Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent,” Jerry Zimmer, the CEO of United Talent Agency, said in an interview with the global news site Semafor. “And, you know, just because you’re famous doesn’t make you great at something.”
Zimmer should know something about talent. His agency is considered one of Hollywood’s most powerful talent agencies and is a rival to WME, which recently signed Meghan, an American former cable TV actor-turned Duchess of Sussex to a solo rebranding deal. Zimmer, who co-founded UTA in 1991, has represented a number of major stars throughout his career including Mariah Carey, Bryan Cranston, DJ Khaled, Chelsea Handler and Kevin Hart, Page Six reported.
His agency also represents a number of leading U.S. TV broadcasters and has been increasingly “focused on audio,” Semafor reported.
When news broke that Meghan and Harry’s reported $20 million deal with Spotify fizzled, Zimmer wasn’t surprised, Page Six reported. His comments about the Duchess of Sussex not being a great audio talent also reflect the new conventional wisdom in podcasting, Semafor said.
“Out are A-list celebrities and big-budget audio narratives,” Semafor reported. “The new audio talent is endemic to the medium, and has more in common with talk radio or daytime television personalities than with Windsors.”
Zimmer’s harsh words about Meghan’s lack of audio skills come after The New York Post and other outlets reported that Spotify cut ties with the Sussexes because of the couple’s lack of output. In 2½ years, the couple only managed to produce one half-hour Christmas special, which they co-hosted, and Meghan’s 12-episode Archetypes podcast.
Fellow Spotify podcaster Bill Simmons, a former sports writer who is founder of popular The Ringer podcast network, lashed into Meghan and Harry, apparently over the couple receiving millions of dollars for producing so little content. He called them “grifters” and indicated that Harry offered up some strange ideas for podcasts he’d like to host.
Bloomberg similarly reported that the British prince wanted to interview a series of controversial figures — Putin, Trump, Mark Zuckerberg — “about their early formative years and how those experiences resulted in the adults they are today.”
Other reports alleged that Meghan relied on a handful of producers to do some of the interviews for Archetypes, or that her producers did the bulk of the work on the podcast. In addition, the Wall Street Journal also reported over the weekend that Meghan failed to lure Taylor Swift into appearing as a guest on Archetypes. The duchess reportedly penned a personal note to Swift asking the pop star to be a guest, but was turned down.
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