Meghan speaks of ‘fear of failure’ amid controversy over using HRH style
The Duchess of Sussex suggested her A positive blood type means she is an over-achiever and said she was given business advice by Oprah Winfrey.
The Duchess of Sussex has spoken of her “fear of failure” and said she was given business advice by Oprah Winfrey, amid growing controversy over use of her HRH style.
Meghan, in her latest podcast, claimed she is an over-achiever because her blood type is A positive, and admitted ignoring her own advisers to follow her gut feelings.
The duchess interviewed her “close friend” Jamie Kern Lima, just hours after the billionaire make-up entrepreneur released her own sit-down podcast chat with Meghan, which sparked a storm over the duchess’s apparent use of her HRH style in contradiction to an agreement with Buckingham Palace.
An image of a gift basket of ice cream and home-made jam sent by Meghan to Kern Lima showed a monogrammed card featuring the printed italic message: “With Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex”.
As part of their Megxit negotiations with the Palace, Meghan and the Duke of Sussex agreed to stop using their HRH styles when they stepped down as senior working royals in 2020.
They still retain the styles, which Harry has had since birth, but they are essentially held in abeyance.
The duchess’s representative has denied the couple are using them.
In the fourth episode of Meghan’s Confessions Of A Female Founder podcast, the former Suits actress described how she started small with her jam-making inspired business venture because of a fear of failing.
“At the beginning, I just liked making jam. All I liked to do was just make jam and preserves. And it went from ‘OK, I’m going to share this jam with lots of friends and family’, to ‘People really like it and it brings me joy, so maybe I can share it more broadly’.
“But even then I was in so much fear of failure or opinion that I wasn’t thinking big enough at first.”
She said she initially only applied for a cottage licence to be able to sell jam at farmers’ markets in California.
But she said Oprah, who carried out a bombshell interview with the Sussexes in 2021 in which they accused the royal family of racism and failing to help a suicidal Meghan, inspired her to channel her own “essence” in her business.
“You know Oprah, who I know is a mentor and friend to you … she was the one that said ‘There are tons of things you can put your name on, but for you and how you like to show up for people, once you figure out how to encapsulate your essence, then you’ll know’.”
At one point Meghan hinted at some behind-the-scenes difficulties during the previously recorded podcast.
Kern Lima asked: “Well, are you OK?”
Meghan said: “Yeah, well, you saw my text yesterday but there’s a lot going on. That’s for our rocking chairs.”
Meghan insisted she did not know about the success of Kern Lima, co-founder of IT Cosmetics, when she first met her.
“I didn’t know any of that. I knew none of that. I just knew her as Jamie, my new neighbour, and she soon became my rocking chair friend – you know, the kind of person could just go and sit in your sweats and cozies with no make-up on and just chat for hours,” the duchess said.
The duchess revealed her blood type is A positive and described it as an example of her “over-achieving”.
Meghan told her guests: “I feel like we haven’t talked about our blood type, but yours is probably an A positive like mine, because I was like ‘Even my blood is over-achieving’.”
And she said when she was auditioning for commercials as an actress, her agent would not submit her for beauty or skincare adverts because she had freckles.
Meghan said: “They’re like ‘No, no, no, it’s never gonna work, because freckles aren’t a sign of beauty’. It was, you couldn’t see yourself reflected there.”
The duchess also described grappling with opinions and going against her advisers’ suggestions to follow her own gut.
She was frequently accused of ignoring royal aides’ advice when she was a working royal.
Meghan said: “When there are lots of opinions and you’re grappling and you’re trying to figure it out, it’s like, when do you trust your gut, or when do you trust the advice?
“And especially if you enlist someone to be an adviser, and at what point do you have to sit there, get quiet with yourself and be able to confidently look at them and say that maybe what works, but that’s not what’s going to work for me?”
