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In the years since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex split from the monarchy and moved with their young family to California in 2020, they have opened up about their lives as working royals, highlighting the positive and negative experiences.
Amid the ongoing rift with senior royals back in Britain, Harry and Meghan have presented their side of events through TV interviews, documentary series and books. One project that gave followers of Meghan an insight into her royal life was her solo podcast, Archetypes, which aired 12 episodes with former partner Spotify from August to December 2022.
One revelation that Meghan made in the first episode of Archetypes, titled "The Misconception of Ambition with Serena Williams," was that while on an official royal tour of South Africa with Prince Harry and newborn Prince Archie in 2019, a fire broke out in his nursery.
Meghan recounted the experience in the context of a discussion highlighting the fact that people don't know what someone is experiencing behind the scenes, based on how they present themselves in public.
Newsweek looks at everything Meghan said about the fire in Prince Archie's nursery.
'A Fire in the Baby's Room'
In the first episode of Archetypes, Meghan gave an example of the expectation placed on her as a member of the royal family that she should keep moving forward with public engagements despite how she may have been feeling, telling Serena Williams of the time a fire broke out in her son's nursery.
In September 2019, Meghan and Harry took four-month-old Prince Archie with them on their tour of South Africa. There was a busy schedule of engagements, including Archie's first public appearance since he was presented to the media after his birth in May.
"The moment we landed, we had to drop him off at this housing unit that they had had us staying in," Meghan said, before she and Harry headed out on their first job.
After giving a speech in Nyanga, the duchess said an aide broke the news to her that while they were away "there's been a fire in the baby's room."
Archetypes, Ep. 1 'The Misconception of Ambition'
"When we went on our tour to South Africa, we landed with Archie. Archie was what, four and a half months old. And the moment we landed, we had to drop him off at this housing unit that they had had us staying in. He was going to get ready to go down for his nap. We immediately went to an official engagement in this township called Nyanga, and there was this moment where I'm standing on a tree stump and I'm giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say there's been a fire at the residence. 'What?' 'There's been a fire in the baby's room.' 'What?'"
Near Miss
The duchess continued to tell Williams that after racing back to the residence that the family were staying in for their trip, they found Archie safe and well, but his nanny was "in floods of tears."
Before putting the prince down for a nap, the nanny had taken him with her to the kitchen. It was in this short space of time, Meghan said, that "the heater in the nursery caught on fire. There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there."
After being briefly reunited with her son, Meghan said she was encouraged to go back out to fulfill the previously scheduled engagements.
"And so we're in the car. We had just landed, what, an hour or 2 hours before racing back? We get back our amazing nanny, Lauren, who we'd had all the way until, um. In Canada here. Lauren in floods of tears. She was supposed to put Archie down for his nap and she just said, You know what? Let me just go get a snack downstairs. And she was from Zimbabwe and we loved that she would always tie him on her, her back with a mud cloth, and her instinct was like, Let me just bring him with me before I put him down. In that amount of time that she went downstairs.
"The heater in the nursery caught on fire. There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there. And we came back. And of course, as a mother, you go, Oh, my God, what? Everyone's in tears, everyone's shaken. And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said, This doesn't make any sense."
'We Had to Leave Our Baby'
In her discussion with aides about being allowed time to stay with Archie and canceling engagements after the near miss with the fire, Meghan said that the experience was one of the examples of a time where "the focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels."
In the end, the duchess implied that she took the advice of the aides and that she and Harry continued their tour schedule as planned.
"I was like, Can you just tell people what happened? And so much, I think, optically. The focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels. And part of the humanizing and the breaking through of these labels and these archetypes and these boxes that we're put into is having some understanding on the human moments behind the scenes that people might not have any awareness of and to give each other a break. Because we did – we had to leave our baby. And even though we were being moved to another place afterwards, we still had to leave him and go do another official engagement."
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more