Fire in Archie’s room
Still, Meghan had to work
Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry during a visit to South Africa in 2019.
© imago images/i Images
A fire broke out in 2019 in a room where Duchess Meghan’s son Archie was supposed to sleep. Nevertheless, she had to go to an appointment.
In her Spotify podcast “Archetypes”, Duchess Meghan (41) talks to Serena Williams (40) about a shocking experience in 2019. Although shortly before that, there was a fire in a room where her son Archie (3) was supposed to sleep had broken out, she had to attend a public appointment.
“There was no smoke detector”
The moment of shock occurred during an official trip to Meghan and her husband, Prince Harry (37), to South Africa almost three years ago. Their son was around four and a half months old at the time. Immediately after landing, they dropped the little one off with his nanny Lauren at the accommodation where the family was supposed to live at the time. Then we went to the first appointment as Meghan tells in the first episode of the podcastwhich was released on August 23.
When Harry and Meghan got back in the car afterwards, they got the message: “There was a fire in the residence. […] There was a fire in the baby’s room.” They then rushed there. “We’re coming back and our amazing nanny Lauren […] was in tears.”
The nanny was going to put little Archie down for a nap but decided to take the baby with her when she went to get a snack. Luckily, Archie wasn’t in the room when a fire broke out on a radiator. “There was no smoke detector,” says Meghan. Instead, someone in the hallway smelled the smoke and eventually put out the fire.
“That doesn’t make any sense at all”
As a mother, she thought after arriving: “Oh, my God, what?” All had been dissolved. “And what do we have to do? Go out and have another official appointment? I said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense. […] Can’t you just tell people what happened?'”
Even if they were to move later, Harry and Meghan first had to “leave their son behind” and make their way to another appointment. “I couldn’t have done that,” Williams is certain.
Perhaps this experience also cemented Harry and Meghan’s decision to step down as senior members of the royal family. Along with Archie, the pair left Harry’s native UK in 2020 for North America. In the summer of 2021, their daughter Lilibet was born in the USA. The family lives in Montecito, California.