After stepping down as working royals in 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved to America. Once they settled in the U.S., the Sussexes fired a barrage of verbal grenades at Harry’s relatives during TV interviews, podcasts, their Netflix docuseries, and Harry’s memoir Spare.
In December 2023, it was announced that Queen Camilla would be launching her podcast called The Queen’s Reading Room. Camilla already has a successful online book club which was set up during the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns.
Royal expert Jennie Bond predicts that the queen’s podcast will be just as successful.
She told Fabulous: “We have learned in the past couple of years that reading has been a passion for Camilla since her childhood and this is a way of sharing that love.
“In a hectic world so dominated by short-form social media messages — and giving us attention spans of a gnat — it is a noble aim to encourage children and adults to enjoy a good, long read.”
The first episode of The Queen’s Reading Room dropped on Jan. 8 and featured the newly-knighted crime writer Ian Rankin. The king’s wife is set to welcome other high-profile guests in the coming episodes including Joanna Lumley, David Baddiel, and Elif Shafak.
Following the news about Camilla’s podcast, an expert said The Queen’s Reading Room is likely going to tick off the Sussexes a bit. That’s because the couple had a multi-million deal with Spotify to do their own podcasts but the streaming service canceled Meghan’s Archetypes after just one season and terminated the deal.
Denise Palmer Davies, who is a brand expert and the director of Borne Media, believes the queen’s new podcast is Camilla’s “perfect revenge” against the duchess and her stepson after Harry branded her a “villain” and “dangerous” in his book.
Davies also thinks that the Sussexes will be “livid” if the queen flourishes in an area where they failed.
She opined: “After all the hurtful things Harry has said about Camilla, she has finally got her own back on them. If her podcast does well, and I am sure it will, she will have achieved in an area they so desperately wanted to succeed in, then that is the perfect revenge. I bet Meghan, in particular, will be livid over the whole thing and probably a bit embarrassed that hers fell at the first hurdle.”
