Podcaster reveals truth behind handwritten note she received from Meghan Markle after 'concerns' for her Netflix show.. and why she was 'genuinely scared'
A podcaster who received a letter from Meghan Markle after expressing fears for her Netflix show has praised the handwritten note after her initial shock upon opening it.
Amanda Hirsch, who runs the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, also revealed people who know the Duchess of Sussex told her that the letter was Meghan's idea.
She added that it was a 'good moment' for Meghan, urged her to do more 'casual stuff' and invited her onto her own podcast to ask her about the Royal Family.
Hirsch had said in January that she was 'scared for Meghan' about the reception to With Love, Meghan - before the Duchess sent her the surprise letter in March.
The letter, written in elaborate calligraphy below the 'M' monogram, said: 'Dear Amanda, I heard you were feeling scared. Don't be, this is the fun part. Let's enjoy it!'
Then in April, Hirsch was signed up by talent agency William Morris Endeavor, which also represents Meghan, and received jam and tea from the Duchess two days later.
Hirsch has now spoken to Page Six Radio about receiving the letter, saying her husband gave it to her before she read it twice and her reaction was: 'Oh my God'.
The influencer insisted that her original opinion in January 'wasn't like super positive, but it wasn't negative', adding: 'It was sincere in that I'm concerned, this trailer came out, I know how people come for her.
'I'm genuinely scared she'll be ripped to shreds, though I was like making cringing faces at the trailer, which like I didn't watch it again because I couldn't watch myself on a green screen f***ing do this.'
She also said Meghan received a positive reaction to the letter, saying: 'She got good press out of it, people loved it, people thought it was like 'she's being snarky, she has a sense of humour, she gets it, she's zoned in, she tuned in, she's on the beat'.
'I think it was genuine from her, I think she was like 'don't be scared, Amanda'. That's what I think. I talked to some people that know her, and they confirmed, they said 'Yeah, she, it was her idea to write you the note after she saw this'.
'She said 'we should start sending notes', that's what I was told. And then I got the jam.'
Hirsch went on to say she was hoping to get Meghan on her own podcast, saying: 'I would love to have her on the pod. I do feel like, obviously it's a huge, I'm humble as f*** like don't think she would ever.
'But I do have the confidence that we could maybe get a different side of her and I would be so excited for that.'
Hirsch also encouraged Meghan to do more 'casual stuff', adding: 'I feel like it was a good moment, and I saw she did another pod and I was happy to see it received well.
'Because I genuinely am like, I want to see people like her. I don't get why people are so hard on her. But that's why I'm like, come on my pod, I want to ask you about the royals. Swearsies. I don't know about it.'
In her initial video showing her watching the trailer, Hirsch cringed as she watched Meghan bake a cake.
She said at the time: 'Oh guys I'm genuinely concerned for Meghan. I'm not a Meghan hater at all. It feels like a Blake Lively situation. I understand that some people think she's inauthentic. I get that.
'I'm so scared for her that this Netflix show will make those claims stronger. From the trailer, it looks like it might.
'In the trailer at least, she doesn't come across as relatable. I'm just scared for you Meghan. Why did you have to do that? Consult with me, I would have told you!'
But Hirsch was left 'absolutely flabbergasted and obsessed ' when a card topped with Meghan's logo arrived, and said she had become a 'fan' of Meghan 'for life', adding that she would be 'obviously framing this'.
In April, the podcaster said their relationship had reached the 'next step' after she received a gift from Meghan's new lifestyle brand As Ever including her jam in keepsake packaging.
Taking to Instagram to express her delight, Amanda gushed: 'First a letter now her jam!!! Are we gonna be bffs? Should I buy a one way to Montecito???'
Showing off the wooden box and handwritten card from the Duchess, she continued: 'Guess - if you had to guess - what package I just got! I cannot believe it. Why am I so excited? Like, this is the next step in our relationship. First a letter, then I suppose, a jam?'
Meghan's TV series was slammed by reviewers as 'gormless lifestyle filler' with a 'tangible desperation' following its release on March 4.
Others said it shows the Duchess is 'attempting to cling to fame by any means possible', while another described how she was 'joylessly filling kids' party bags with seeds'.
But despite being mocked, the series was renewed for a second season.
Meghan's second podcast, the eight-part series Confessions of a Female Founder, is currentrly releasing a new episode each Tuesday – with five having come out so far.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
31 minutes ago
- BBC News
TikTok star Khaby Lame leaves US after being detained by immigration officials
Khaby Lame, considered the most popular TikTok star in the world, has left the US after being detained by immigration officials. The influencer was detained in Las Vegas on Friday for allegedly staying in the country after his visa expired. He then voluntarily is one of hundreds of people caught in President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, which includes cross-country raids and an increasing number of deportations, and which has also sparked days of protest against Immigration and Customs has not publicly commented on his voluntary departure. ICE has said he arrived in the US on 30 April and then overstayed his said he was released the same day he was detained and subsequently left the country.A voluntary departure allows people who are facing removal from the US to avoid having a deportation order on their immigration record. Deportation orders can prevent immigrants from being allowed back into the US for up to a decade. The 25-year-old Senegalese-Italian influencer, who has 162.3 million TikTok followers, became popular during the pandemic for his silent videos and signature facial has been arrested by ICE under Trump?"It's my face and my expressions which make people laugh," Lame told The New York Times in 2021, adding that his reactions speak "a global language."As an Italian citizen he is allowed to travel to the US for business or tourism for up to 90 days without a visa. Lame attended the Met Gala in May. Otherwise, it is unclear what he was doing while in the deportation has made headlines as he is one of the more high-profile people to be deported in Trump's latest surge to cut illegal immigration into the country. Some 51,000 undocumented migrants were in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention as of early June - the highest on record since September 2019.
The Sun
34 minutes ago
- The Sun
How Beach Boys ‘genius' Brian Wilson brought sun-kissed California to world with some of the greatest songs ever made
GOD Only Knows how Brian Wilson created pop's most sublime tunes. The death of The Beach Boys icon at 82 marks the passing of one of the few artists who genuinely deserved to be called a 'genius'. 8 8 8 He was the composer, performer and producer Sir Paul McCartney looked up to. Despite penning all those era-defining songs with John Lennon in The Beatles, Macca placed God Only Knows above them all — and admitted that 'it reduces me to tears every time I hear it'. He performed the song with Brian in 2002 and, as you won't be surprised to hear, 'broke down' during the sound check. Among Brian's other best known songs, mainly co-writes, were Good Vibrations, Surfin' USA, I Get Around and Wouldn't It be Nice. Last night, his children said in a statement: 'We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. 'We are at a loss for words right now. We realise that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.' His daughter Daria added: 'I don't know what to say. I loved him in ways I can't explain. He was my dad.' Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards Ronnie Wood said he was 'in mourning'. John Lennon's son Sean Ono Lennon described the loss of 'our American Mozart'. And Nancy Sinatra said: 'His cherished music will live forever as he travels through the Universe and beyond. Brian Wilson's last ever performance of iconic Beach Boys hit just two years before his death aged 82 "God bless you, sweet Brian. 'One of the biggest thrills of my life was singing 'California Girls' with Brian.' Brian was born in Inglewood, southern California, in 1942, the first son of Audree and Murry Wilson. From a very early age, he was recognised for his musical gifts. He had perfect pitch and could sing back phrases sung to him as a baby. Brian had a difficult relationship with his dad. He, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and physical abuse by their father. The singer's 2016 memoir, I am Brian Wilson, paints Murry as 'violent' and 'cruel', but also suggests that some claims against him were exaggerated or unfounded. Murry had remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of The Caissons Go Rolling Along, Brian, then an infant, was able to reproduce the tune. At 12, the Wilson family acquired an upright piano, which Brian spent hours and hours teaching himself to play. 8 8 He and his younger brothers, Carl and Dennis, got into the pop sounds of the day — R&B, rock 'n' roll and doo-wop. Despite being partly deaf in one ear, Brian joined Carl and their cousin Mike Love to form a high school group, Carl and the Passions, later bringing in Dennis and Al Jardine to form the Pendletones. Brian co-wrote the group's first song, Surfin', which, in turn, inspired their record label to change their name to The Beach Boys. The rest, as they say, is history, As the chief inspirational force, he brought the sun-kissed Californian lifestyle — surfing, fast cars and parties — to a world emerging from post-war austerity into the Swinging Sixties. The band had adopted a clean-cut, college-boy image, sang about dreamy California Girls and be- came the West Coast's answer to The Beatles. Brian married his first wife, Marilyn, in 1964 and marital strains were to influence the lyrical direction of his masterpiece, The Beach Boys' eleventh album, Pet Sounds. Later that year, Brian had suffered a panic attack on a flight just hours after appearing on TV show Shindig! This prompted him to give up live appearances to concentrate on writing and production. His giant artistic strides began. It's also worth noting that this was the era of psychedelic drugs, notably LSD, and Brian was one of countless musicians to try them out, curious about their effect on songwriting. So came a huge change of tack in his career, leading to his rare mastery of instrumentation, harmony and recording technology. In his later years, Wilson was a man of few words who let his music do the talking. 'A SPIRITUAL RECORD' He struggled with mental illness and found interviews uncomfortable. But, during the times I met him, I found him polite and gracious and steadfastly sincere. In 2016, during a promotional visit to London, I asked Wilson to describe his happiest memory of making Pet Sounds — to some, the greatest album of all time. 'Well, I loved making God Only Knows with my brother Carl. He had a good voice,' he replied, fifty years after its release. It was his understated but heartfelt way of paying tribute to his youngest sibling, blessed with an angelic voice, who had died from cancer in 1998. He told me he had been striving to 'make a choir, a nice choir' with Pet Sounds. Through Carl and the rest of the group's glorious lead and harmony singing, he succeeded. Brian was responsible for the sweeping symphonic arrangements and wall-of-sound production that doffed a hat to Phil Spector's girl group work — but he took it to whole new places. He gave the album weird and wonderful sound effects — bicycle bells, trains, Hawaiian strings, Coke cans and barking dogs among them. 'And we had little toy instruments,' recalled Brian. 'We just thought we'd put them in there for the kids. I knew it would be a very special album,' he continued, before exclaiming, 'I just knew it!'. 8 8 In his memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, he elaborated further: 'I love the whole Pet Sounds record. 'I got a full vision out of it in the studio. "After that, I said to myself that I had completed the greatest album I will ever produce. 'It was a spiritual record. When I was making it, I looked around at the musicians and the singers and I could see their halos.' He also talked about the impact of The Beatles: 'I met Paul McCartney later in the Sixties, in a studio. I was almost always in a studio back then. 'We had a little chat about music. "Everyone knows now that God Only Knows was Paul's favourite song — not only his favourite Beach Boys song, but one of his favourite songs, period. "It's the kind of thing people write in liner notes and say on talk shows. "When people read it, they kind of look at that sentence and keep going. "But think about how much it mattered to me when I first heard it. 'I was the person who wrote God Only Knows and here was another person — the person who wrote Yesterday and And I Love Her and so many other songs — saying it was his favourite. 'It really blew my mind. He wasn't the only Beatle who felt that way. 'John Lennon called me after Pet Sounds — phoned me up, I think the British say — to tell me how much he loved the record.' I'm in a better frame of mind these days. It feels great . . . it's like I see some light. Things make sense to me again Brian Wilson It's sad to think that Wilson, this architect of the band's unique sunlit sound, went on to suffer years in the darkness in the Seventies and Eighties. Mental illness allied to drug abuse left Brian lost in a world of his own from which few believed he would return. But his rehabilitation began in 1988 with his self-titled first solo album. It continued with I Just Wasn't Made For These Times (1995), Orange Crate Art (1995 with long-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks), Imagination (1998) and Gettin' In Over My Head (2004). That same year, he finally realised his lost masterpiece SMiLE. 'That was amazing,' Brian told me. "I never ever imagined it coming out until my manager and (second) wife (Melinda) said: 'You ought to try to finish it.'' He also released a Pet Sounds Live album, but I asked whether he would consider playing the album again in its entirety in concert. 'I don't think we'll be doing that again,' he said with quite alarming frankness. 'We just thought we drove it into the ground.' Last year, it was revealed Brian was suffering from dementia. A conservatorship was awarded to his family, his publicist and manager after Melinda, his wife of 29 years, had died. 8 At the time of her passing, Brian said, 'Melinda was more than my wife. She was my saviour. "She gave me the emotional security. I needed to have a career. "She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. "She was my anchor.' I remember speaking to Brian on his 66th birthday in 2008, when, in the company of Melinda, life was looking up for this American music icon. Sporting a full head of brushed back grey hair, he spoke movingly about his situation. 'I walk every day for exercise so I can keep alive', he said. 'My state of being has been elevated because I've been exercising and writing songs. 'I'm in a better frame of mind these days. It feels great . . . it's like I see some light. Things make sense to me again.' Not just God, but the whole world, knows how special you were.
The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Morning Mail: Aukus in doubt as Pentagon reviews pact; Beach Boy Brian Wilson dies, Australia fight back at Lord's
Morning everyone. The Pentagon dropped a metaphorical bomb this morning, with the news it is launching a review of the Aukus pact, central to Australia's defence policy for the next 50 years, to check whether it is 'America first'. Meanwhile the mayor of Los Angeles has accused the Trump administration of provoking six days of unrest as part of an 'experiment', as other American cities prepare for protests. And the world is mourning the death of Brian Wilson, the creative force behind the Beach Boys. At home, Choice has exposed the shortcomings of some suncreen brands, and research shows we're listening to less homegrown music. Plus: Australia's men's cricket team fought back strongly at Lord's. Tuned out | The international success of acts such as the Kid Laroi and Amyl and the Sniffers (pictured) is not translating into more listens for homegrown talent, new research shows, with only 8% of the top 10,000 artists streamed in Australia in 2024 from these shores. AI push | Australia must 'lean in hard' to the benefits of artificial intelligence or else risk ending up 'on the end of somebody else's supply chain', according to the new industry and science minister, Tim Ayres. Methanol hope | Australian researchers have developed a prototype methanol 'breathalyser' capable of detecting small concentrations of the toxic substance in alcoholic drinks or on someone's breath. Zero sum | The financial cost to reach net zero by 2050 may shape the Coalition's decision on whether to retain or abandon the target, says the new shadow minister, Dan Tehan. Screen test | Some of Australia's most popular sunscreens, including some made by Bondi Sands, Banana Boat and the Cancer Council, are falling short of the level of skin protection on the bottle, a Choice investigation has found. Vale Brian Wilson | Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys musician, songwriter and producer who created some of the greatest pop music ever made, has died aged 82. Wilson was the creative force behind songs such as California Girls, Good Vibrations and God Only Knows. Aukus review | The Pentagon has launched a review of the Aukus submarine and defence agreement to make sure it is aligned with Trump's 'America first' agenda, throwing the $240bn defence pact with Britain and Australia into doubt. Trump 'experiment' | US immigration officials have increased 'enforcement activity' in California's agricultural heartland and the mayor of Los Angeles accused the White House of trying to test federal power as the conflict between the state and Donald Trump's administration intensifies. Follow developments live as other US cities brace for protests. Trump's show of force in LA was years in the making, experts have claimed, while the rightwing media has stepped behind the administration to attack the protesters as 'invaders'. China deal | Donald Trump has endorsed the US-China trade deal struck in London that will ramp up supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets needed for the automotive industry, saying it will take total tariffs on Beijing to 55%. Gaza tragedy | A Palestinian doctor whose husband and nine of her 10 children were killed by an Israeli strike has been evacuated from Gaza, bound for Italy with her only surviving child. The shocking death toll from inaction in prisons Ariel Bogle and Christopher Knaus speak to Reged Ahmad about why warnings about ligature points in prisons are still being ignored and what it will take to stop preventable deaths. Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $ In today's Grogonomics column, Greg Jericho delivers an impassioned plea that Labor's attempts to change superannuation tax concessions should be just the start of a concerted effort to reduce wealth inequality. With his illuminating graphs, Jericho argues that wealthy people oppose the changes because they're worried the rest of us will realise the system is rigged. When he became involved in setting up an animal sanctuary in the Indonesian jungle, Warren Ellis was a bit concerned he might come across as a 'Bono-like, grandstanding' figure. But the legendary musician need not have worried as a new film about the project reveals his life from Ballarat to sanctuary in Sumatra. Sign up to Morning Mail Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Cricket | Australia endured a topsy-turvy opening day of the World Test Championship at Lord's after they were skittled for 212 in two-and-a-half sessions before Mitchell Starc helped reduce the Proteas to 43-4 in reply. Football | The expansion of the World Cup means more teams from the Asian section in the US – and, as Australia's dramatic run shows, it has made for a more exciting qualifying competition. Plus, how Jordan qualified for the first time. Rugby union | The British & Irish Lions are confident the veteran tighthead prop Tadhg Furlong will be fit for their Australian tour despite some injury concerns. Investors, lawyers and governance experts say three major issues at Monash IVF require answers from management, the Age reports. A pizza maker in western Sydney can claim to be the best in the world after wining an international competition, the Telegraph reports. The city of Adelaide claims there is more parking than ever, but traders tell the Advertiser they think the council is waging a 'war on cars'. Business | Asic chair Joe Longo gives a speech and Q&A to the American Chamber of Commerce in Sydney at 12pm. Prisons | ABS figures on adult prisoners and community based corrections. Sydney | Speech on 'Trump and the West' at the Lowy Institute by John Hamre of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. If you would like to receive this Morning Mail update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here, or finish your day with our Afternoon Update newsletter. You can follow the latest in US politics by signing up for This Week in Trumpland. And finally, here are the Guardian's crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword If you have a story tip or technical issue viewing this newsletter, please reply to this email. If you are a Guardian supporter and need assistance with regards to contributions and/or digital subscriptions, please email
