Meghan Markle says she had to continue royal tour after baby Archie narrowly escaped bedroom fire

Meghan Markle has revealed that her son Archie’s bedroom caught fire while she and her husband Prince Harry were on tour in South Africa.

In the premiere episode of her Archetypes podcast, the Duchess of Sussex was joined by her friend, tennis star Serena Williams.

At one point in their discussion, they touched upon the expectations of keeping a calm public appearance amid struggles in their personal lives.

Markle went into an anecdote from 2019, when she and Harry visited Nyanga township in South Africa as part of their royal duties.

Soon after landing in the country, they left four-month-old Archie with staff before going to an official talk.

“We finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say: there's been a fire at the residence,” she said.

“What?” a surprised Williams responded.

“[They said] ‘There's been a fire in the baby's room,’” Markle continued, before adding: “I can't believe I'm even talking about this.

“We'd just landed an hour, two hours before. We raced back, and our amazing nanny Lauren, who we'd had all the way from Canada to here, was in floods of tears.”

Markle went on to explain that their nanny was preparing to put Archie in bed for his nap when she decided to bring him with her to get a snack at the last minute.

"In that amount of time that she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire,” she said. “There was no smoke detector, someone happened to smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire [was] extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there.

“We came back, and of course, as a mother... everyone's in tears, everyone's shaken. And what did we have to do? Go out and give another official engagement.”

The podcast, which launched on Tuesday (23 August) aims to explore the labels and tropes that try to hold women back.