Taylor Swift ‘declined Meghan Markle’s personal letter’ to appear on Archetypes

Spotify ended its £15.7m-deal with the Sussexes earlier this month

Taylor Swift reportedly declined to appear on Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast Archetypes despite receiving a “personal letter” from the Duchess of Sussex.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Spotify had ended its multimillion-pound deal with the Sussexes. One season of Archetypes was released last year.

After stepping down from their roles as senior members of the royal family, Prince Harry and Meghan signed multiple high-value content creation deals with entertainment giants including the Swedish audio streaming company and Netflix.

Their three-year deal with Spotify, signed in September 2020, was worth around £15.7m.

Citing insiders familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported on 15 June that the duke and duchess’s production company Archewell Audio had failed to meet the “productivity benchmarks required” to justify the payout.

According to a new report, the road to finally releasing Archetypes in August was littered with production hurdles and obstacles.

In the publication’s latest story, published on 24 June, Spotify executives were described as being “frustrated” with the time it took Archewell to come up with an idea for Meghan’s show and assemble a team to work on it.

People familiar with the deal told the outlet that Spotify’s Gimlet unit helped put together a list of potential guests for Archetypes but that finding the right kind of guest wasn’t easy.

The duchess reportedly sent a personal letter to Swift, asking her to appear on the show that hosted Mariah Carey, Serena Williams, and Paris Hilton.

However, Swift declined the invitation through a representative.

The Independent has contacted representatives for Archewell Audio and Swift for comment.

The publication also reported that Meghan would ask for last-minute changes to the episodes, reaching out to the show’s producers via senior Spotify executives including the former chief content officer Dawn Ostroff.

Elsewhere, it was reported that Archewell Audio failed to honour the terms of its deal with Spotify, which stipulated that both Harry and Meghan would be directly involved in producing and voicing a podcast.

Prince Harry reportedly struggled to finalise an idea for a show, after exploring possible podcasts about misinformation, veterans, and his point of view living in the US as an outsider.

According to a Bloomberg report, the duke also pitched a podcast in which he would interview Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their “childhood trauma”.

Both Archewell Audio and Spotify previously said the decision to part ways was mutual, adding that they were “proud of the series we made together”.

Archetypes topped Spotify’s podcast charts the week it was released, and won the People’s Choice Award for top podcast of 2022.