Meghan Markle has revealed for the first time details about their nanny during a tell-all chat with close friend Serena Williams. When speaking to the tennis pro for her new podcast series Archetypes, the Duchess dropped a bombshell that their baby son Archie, now three, escaped a fire that took hold in his bedroom whilst the Sussexes were on tour in South Africa in 2019.
Talking in the first episode of her podcast - titled The Misconception of Ambition - released on Tuesday, Meghan, who was away from Archie delivering a speech in Cape Town before the incident, praised her little boy's then-nanny, Lauren - a local Zimbabwean who instinctively tied him to her back with a mud cloth before the fire broke out.
The Duchess, 41, said Lauren, who joined them on their official tours, stayed with the family until they left for Canada. The 2019 incident comes after Harry and Meghan were 'forced to let go' of one of Archie's night nurses during her second shift 'for being unprofessional', according to the royal biography Finding Freedom in 2020.
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Speaking on the podcast, Meghan said: "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...
"...We get back, our amazing nanny, Lauren, who we'd had all the way until, um, in Canada. 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."
Meghan added: "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.'"
Meghan and Harry had dropped their young son off at their accommodation after flying in for their official tour. They then soon left for their first engagement.
In the podcast episode, she shared how she deliberated telling people about what had happened.
Meghan recalled: "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.
"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."
She then stressed the need for more understanding of the 'human moments behind the scenes' as the couple had to head to a second engagement moments after.
"We had to leave our baby... and even though we were being moved into another place afterwards, we still had to leave him and go do another official engagement," she added.
Later that day, Meghan and Harry met residents in Cape Town's historic District Six neighbourhood at its Homecoming Centre - where they heard from people who were forcibly removed to a township during the Apartheid era.
While nanny Lauren appeared to be a good match for the 'hands-on' family, their biography Finding Freedom - co-authored by journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand - claimed they let go of one of Archie's night nurses during her second shift 'for being unprofessional'.
The book says they were looking to establish a night time routine and needed an extra pair of hands. However it was short-lived.
"Meghan and Harry felt they were forced to let the nurse go in the middle of her second night of work for being unprofessional," the authors wrote.
They also detailed how the pair chose not to have any live-in staff, adding: "Harry and Meghan had agreed they didn't want heir home filled with staff."
