She was ready to Plead the Fifth! Meghan Markle revealed that she wanted to be on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen during her Suits days — but she wasn’t approved as a guest.
The Duchess of Sussex, 41, jokingly confronted host Andy Cohen about the mishap during the Tuesday, November 29, episode of her “Archetypes” podcast on Spotify. “I was so eager to be on your show because I was such a Housewives fan at the time and I just couldn’t get booked, Andy!” the Bench author quipped, adding that this happened between 2012 and 2014 when seasons 2 and 3 of Suits aired. “So, thanks for being here with me.”
The Bravo exec, 54, hinted that he’d heard before that Prince Harry‘s future wife had tried to land a guest spot on WWHL. “I had that feeling when basically we started to kind of forensically figure out if it was you, because we had a sense,” the Superficial author explained. “We were like, ‘I think she may be a Housewives fan, but even worse, Andy, we think we didn’t have her on the show.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my God. If it turns out that Meghan Markle actually expressed an interest to be on Watch What Happens Live and we [said no], it is now the biggest blunder in the 13 years of the show.'”
Though the Suits alum was once a Bravoholic, she confessed to Cohen that she no longer watches the franchise that inspired her interest in WWHL. “I stopped watching The Housewives when my life had its own level of drama that I stopped craving,” she explained before Cohen finished her sentence with “other people’s.”
While she’s no longer tuning into the Housewives’ antics, Meghan said she understands why other viewers are still enthralled. “I get why it was such a huge, huge part of pop culture,” she told the talk show host. “And when it began, because you began with Orange County and I’m from California, at least it felt remotely like a world that I knew but still felt so foreign.”
The duchess also revealed that she’d never heard fan discussion about how she should join The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills after her move to California. Cohen, for his part, said he was happy she didn’t know about it. “She has a full plate! She’s Meghan Markle,” he quipped. “You never heard that? Good. Well, I never even tried to stoke the fire because I was like, ‘Folks, that’s not happening.'”
When Meghan joked that the podcast interview was her audition for The Real Housewives of Montecito, the Most Talkative author told her she didn’t have to try out. “We’ll build the show around you,” he said. “How about that?”
Cohen was one of three guests on the “Archetypes” season finale alongside Judd Apatow and Trevor Noah. The podcast has previously only featured female guests, but Meghan explained that the Duke of Sussex, 38, actually inspired her to change it up for the last episode.
“It was important to us that women have a space to share their authentic and complicated, complex and dynamic experiences,” the former actress explained. “It also occurred to me, and truth be told, at the suggestion of my husband — that if we really want to shift how we think about gender and the limiting labels that we separate people into, then we have to broaden the conversation … and we have to actively include men in that conversation, and certainly in that effort.”
