Meghan Markle talked to pal Serena Williams on her debut Spotify podcast and said it was traumatic the day Archie’s “nursery caught fire.” She said it happened during her and Prince Harry’s visit in 2019 to South Africa with their newborn.
In the Duchess of Sussex’s first episode of her podcast “Archetypes,” titled “The Misconception of Ambition with Serena Williams,” the host talked about the family’s trip to South Africa in 2019, and said the heater in the room where Archie’s crib was located caught on fire. Markle said if it wasn’t for an attentive nanny, things could’ve ended very differently for the royal, who was born in May 2019.
“When we went on our tour to South Africa, we landed with Archie,” Markle explained. “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 us staying in.”
The couple said Archie was ready for a nap, and they left to attend an official royal engagement. After the event, she said they got in the car to return to where they were staying, and were told, “‘There’s been a fire at the residence.’ What? ‘There’s been a fire in the baby’s room.’ What?”
“She [the nanny, Lauren] was supposed to put Archie down for his nap, and she just said, ‘You know what? Let me just go get a snack downstairs,’” the duchess added. “Lauren’s 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,” Markle continued. “There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire extinguished.”
The former “Suits” actress explained that she, Harry, and everyone were obviously “shaken” by what happened and in “tears” because she said Archie “was supposed to be sleeping in there.”
Regardless of what they had just gone through, she said the royal couple still had to leave their child to go do another “official engagement.”
Markle and Prince Harry tied the knot in 2018. In March of 2020, the duke and duchess stepped down from their royal roles, and eventually ended up leaving the United Kingdom, moving to Southern California, where they raise their two children, 3-year-old son Archie and 1-year-old daughter Lilibet.