On the debut episode of her Archetypes podcast released on Tuesday (August 23rd), Meghan Markle talked with Serena Williams about ambition and being a mother. The Duchess of Sussex revealed that during her visit to Africa with Prince Harry in 2019, a fire broke out in their son Archie‘s nursery.
“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,” she said.
Markle continued, “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?”
Luckily, their “amazing nanny” decided to bring Archie downstairs with her while she made a snack. “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,” Markle said.