Meghan Markle’s bonus podcast episode is a dreadful ending – she kept making same mistake

Meghan Markle wastes another high-profile interview by not getting the best out of her well-connected guest, Tina Knowles.

Meghan has just dropped the finale of Confessions of a Female Founder (Image: Lemonada Media)

The finale to Meghan Markle’s podcast, ‘Confessions of a Female Founder’ can be seen as a missed opportunity for the Duchess of Sussex to prove she is well-deserving of another series with Lemonada Media. By booking Tina Knowles, the 71-year-old mother of the legendary singer, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Meghan has proved that booking a great guest is only half the job.

Meghan dropped her latest bonus episode today as a surprise for fans which was seemingly recorded after the podcast series finished – which makes me think after weeks of interviewing, Meghan has failed to learn the basics of interviewing techniques and skills needed to draw the best out of her guests, and to give them all the attention that they deserve.

Tina Knowles, who has recently launched her memoir, Matriarch, is an impressively well-connected guest, whose daughters have dominated the music industry for decades, both as solo artists and in bands. Her insights and experiences, with her hairdressing business and music industry knowledge, could have offered real depth to the conversation in a time when the music industry elites are being scrutinised.

Throughout the finale episode, Meghan struggled to guide the discussion effectively, often drifting into surface-level questions or focusing on her own brand. For instance, comparing the shelf-life of Tina’s hair care products to her jams or steering the beginning of conversations about Beyoncé to her own life experiences, she missed the chances offered to follow up on intriguing points.

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Meghan interviewed Beyoncés mum, Tina Knowles (Image: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images)

Understandably, the main focus of Tina Knowles’s interview should be her own life experiences and lessons learned but having a daughter with 311 million followers on Instagram and a massive global fan base, the common-sense approach would be to draw in Cowboy Carter fans.

Tina touches upon her daughter’s childhood and explains how the superstar could have been a hairdresser after growing up watching her mum work in a salon – which is intriguing, knowing the path she eventually chose. Her mum explained, candidly: “She’s on a stage with hot lights and she wears wigs a lot, and she’s managed to keep her hair beautiful and healthy and that’s not an easy task when you’re in showbiz.”

Instead of offering fans the full story of how Beyoncé maintains her own healthy hair, Meghan once again, similar to previous episodes, jumps in with her own anecdotes. She interrupts: “I was on Suits for seven years, and I remember so many other actresses, especially if you’re in that grind, they said ‘You are going to fry your hair’, and everyone was recommending that I should start wearing wigs. I never ended up doing it. By the way, if I was in that industry longer, I understand why you need to protect your hair in that way.”

Listening to every episode of Confessions of a Female Founder, I would describe Meghan as an oversharer. We’ve heard plenty of the same stories of Meghan Markle since she left the Royal Family in 2020 – from her Netflix documentaries to the bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, Sussex fans want new information and not the same stories regurgitated.

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Meghan missed an opportunity to tap into Beyoncés fan base (Image: WPA POOL)

Despite Tina Knowles’s clear potential to elevate the episode, the interviewer failed to draw out her most compelling stories and perspectives and the episode felt like a missed chance rather than the breakthrough it could have been.

There are so many areas I wanted the podcast explore – Tina keeping grounded with stardom, or more childhood stories about Kelly, Solange, and Beyoncé, which would have drawn in more music fans.

Meghan’s podcast would also improve if she was able to interview her guests face-to-face. Every interviewer understands difficulties of time constraints and being cost-effective, but if Meghan had “80 people in the kitchen”” working on her Netflix show, you assume she had a big team of producers on her podcast.

Throughout the episode series, too much time was also wasted with exclamatory remarks from Meghan as soon as she saw her podcast guest appear on a screen, and shuffling around with small talk. These days, time is limited for a listener who would rather absorb useful information than listen to a wasted opportunity.