Mariah Carey doubles down on calling Meghan Markle a ‘diva’ in podcast interview

Mariah Carey has doubled down on calling Meghan Markle a ‘diva’, insisting she meant it to be in a complimentary fashion. 

The superstar singer, 53, appeared on the the second episode of her Archetypes podcast on Spotify when she told the Duchess, 41, ‘you give us diva moments sometimes Meghan’. 

A shocked Meghan had started to ‘sweat’ and ‘stopped her in her tracks’, when she heard the term, yet Mariah has since insisted that she meant no ill harm. 

Tweeting a link to the podcast on Friday, Mariah penned: ‘Really enjoyed talking to Duchess and Diva Meghan Markle about ‘The Duality of Diva.’ Yes! I called her a diva, in the most fabulous, gorgeous, and empowering meaning of the word!!! #Archetypes.’ 

Titled The Duality Of Diva With Mariah Carey, the episode explored the ‘complexities surrounding the diva’ and the negative connotations associated with the word.

Mariah, in a voiceover, mentioned the outlandish diva demands associated with the singer, saying: ‘Maybe you read about the time that she supposedly requested 20 white kittens and 100 doves in London? I don’t know.’

During the 46-minute episode, Mariah told the former Suits actress: ‘You give us diva moments sometimes, Meghan. Don’t even act like…’ with an aghast duchess responding and laughing in surprise: ‘What kind of diva moments do I give you?’

The Duchess of Sussex admitted she laughed nervously and was sitting in ‘quiet revolt’, worrying that her ‘girl crush’ on the popstar was ‘coming to a quick demise’ after Mariah claimed Meghan had ‘diva moments’.

Yet Mariah was quick to reassure Meghan that she was referring to her posture, her clothing, her ‘gorgeous ensembles’, according to the Duchess, who confessed she first thought her guest was making a ‘dig’.

Speaking at the end of the podcast, Meghan said: ‘It was all going swimmingly, I mean really well, until that moment happened, which I don’t know about you but it stopped me in my tracks when she called me a diva. 

‘You couldn’t see me, obviously, but I started to sweat a little bit. I started squirming in my chair in this quiet revolt. Like wait. What? No. What? How could you? That’s not true. Why would you say that?

‘My mind genuinely was just spinning with what nonsense she must have read or clicked on to make her say that.’

Yet she revealed that Mariah was quick to reassure her and that she meant the label as ‘chic’ and ‘aspirational’.

Meghan said: ‘She must have felt my nervous laughter and you all would have heard it too, and she jumped right in to make sure I was crystal clear.

‘When she said diva, she was talking about the way that I dress, the posture of a clothing, a quote unquote fabulousness as she sees it.

‘She meant diva as a compliment. I heard it as a dig. Heard it as the word diva as I think of it, but in that moment, as she explained to me, she meant it as chic, as aspirational.

Elsewhere in the Spotify podcast, part of Meghan and Harry’s £18million deal with the streaming giant, the Duchess said she was only treated like a ‘black woman’ for the first time when she began dating Prince Harry – and that ‘things really shifted’ for her after she entered royal life.  

The former Suits star said that she was inspired by the singer when she was a child because Mariah is mixed race. Mariah’s father is African-American and Venezuelan, while her mother is white Irish.

The Duchess, whose estranged father Thomas is white and her mother Doria is black, said that when Mariah first came on the music scene she thought: ‘Oh my gosh. Someone who looks like me. She’s mixed like me’, adding that she was a ‘fan girl’ of the star.

She added: ‘Because we’re light skinned, you are not treated as a black woman. You’re not treated as a white woman. You sort of fit in between. 

‘If there is any time where there was more focus on my race it was when I started dating my husband. Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a black woman because up until then I was treated as a mixed woman and things really shifted’.

Mariah replied: ‘But that’s an interesting thing, a mixed woman, because I always thought it should be OK to say I’m mixed, like it should be OK to say that, but people want you to choose.’ 

Starting the podcast, Mariah tells Meghan: ‘I’m MC, you can call me Mimi, you can call me Mariah, whatever you want.’ The duchess began the conversation by asking the name of Carey’s dogs – Cha Cha and Muttley P Gore Jackson.

Last Tuesday Meghan used episode one of Archetypes with Serena to take a veiled swipe at life in the Royal Family. She also recounted her horror at a time a ‘fire’ broke out in son Archie’s room during a tour of South Africa.

The then-four-month-old was not in the room at the time that a heater began to smoke but it left the duchess ‘shaken’ and ‘in tears’, she told her friend. Despite her upset, she said she was forced to continue with the couple’s official engagements.

Yesterday, in a 6,400-word magazine article to promote the podcast, the Duchess made a series of apparent swipes at the royals, warning she could ‘say anything’ now that she has left the Firm.

Meghan even suggested Prince Harry felt he had ‘lost’ his father over his decision to quit his public duties. But in an extraordinary clarification last night, allies of the couple said the duchess had actually been referring to the breakdown of her relationship with her own father.

Meghan told The Cut magazine: ‘Harry said to me, ‘I lost my dad in this process.’ It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that’s his decision.’ Yesterday a source close to Prince Charles said he would be saddened if Harry felt their relationship was lost, adding: ‘The Prince of Wales loves both his sons.’

In further shock claims, Meghan said the couple felt forced to leave Britain because ‘just by existing, we were upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy’, while Harry, 37, made his own jibe at the royals, saying: ‘Most people that I know and many of my family, they aren’t able to work and live together.’