Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Inga Parkel

Brooke Shields podcast episode calling Meghan Markle ‘too serious’ quietly removed

Brooke Shields’s recent interview in which she criticized Meghan Markle for “being too precious and serious” has been quietly removed just days after it was released.

Last week, The Blue Lagoon star, 60, made an appearance on India Hicks’s An Unexpected Journey podcast, where she recalled her decision to interrupt the Duchess of Sussex at a SXSW festival panel in March 2024.

British designer and writer Hicks is the goddaughter of King Charles.

Both Markle and Shields were a part of SXSW’s International Women’s Day panel led by broadcaster Katie Couric.

In the podcast episode, which is now no longer available, Shield remembered Markle answering one of Couric’s questions with a memory about how “at a young age, she was already advocating for women.”

“She starts telling a story about how when she was 11 — and she keeps saying, ‘Well, when I was 11, I saw this commercial and they were talking about how washing dishes was for women. And she said, ‘I didn’t think only women wash dishes. It wasn’t fair. So I wrote to the company,’” Shields remembered.

Shields said Markle repeatedly kept highlighting acts she did when she was 11. “She kept saying she was 11! She wrote to the company, they changed the text; they changed the commercial.

“It was just too precious, and I was like, they’re not going to want to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to anybody be precious or serious.”

It was at that moment that Shields interrupted Markle. “I go, ‘Excuse me, I’m so sorry, I’ve got to interrupt you there for one minute.’ I was trying not to be rude, but I wanted to be funny because it was so serious,” the Pretty Baby actor recounted, quipping, “I just want to give everybody here a context as to how we’re different. When I was 11, I was playing a prostitute.”

As of Tuesday, the link to the podcast episode leads to a “page not found” error on Hicks’s Substack. It’s not known exactly when the episode was taken down or the exact reason for its removal.

The Independent has contacted Shields and Hicks’s representatives for comment.

Hicks’s Substack features regularly published blog-style articles documenting her “unexpected life with a dash of history, a touch of humor, and the occasional royal reflection.”

The latest episode of her podcast is now from April 19. Titled, “Lady P’s Final Podcast: Life Lessons,” the segment includes a conversation with her 96-year-old mother, Lady Pamela — the third cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.