A royal expert believes Meghan Markle may have “hit a nerve” with Princess Kate with a remark made in the third episode of her new podcast ‘Confessions of a Female Founder’. The mum of two sat down with pal Kadi Lee, co-founder of Highbrow Hippie, to discuss ”what it means to grow something from the ground up, how to lead with your values, and why staying connected to your community is the ultimate marker of success”.

In the episode, titled ‘Building Your Brand Brick by Brick’, Meghan said that when Kadi turns up at their £12million Montecito mansion, Archie and Lilibet call her “Auntie Kadi”.

News.com.au Royal Reporter Bronte Coy told The Sun, the title could “hit a nerve” with Princess Kate. She said: “It was, for context, off the back of Kadi saying that she was sad not to have been blessed with children herself – so she thought that was obviously a personal spot for her, and she said ‘I’ll just be the cool auntie’.”

She added: “[Meghan] calling her aunt Katie is obviously going to hit a nerve because the kids do have aunties and Aunt Catherine over in Britain that I don’t think that they have any sort of relationship with.

‘So it would clearly hit a nerve. ‘It was an interesting comment, I would say and when I heard it, it was like ‘Oh, that’s going to hit’.'”

In the podcast episode, Meghan Markle said the pair had met in 2020 – the year of Megxit, when Meghan and the Duke of Sussex quit the working monarchy for a new life in the US – and told of her attempts to dye her own hair at home during the pandemic.

Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was the guest for the first episode of Confessions of a Female Founder. She and Meghan spoke about their close friendship and juggling work with motherhood, and how they both navigated postpartum preeclampsia, a rare complication that can be life-threatening after giving birth.

Meghan’s joint venture with Lemonada Media is Meghan’s second stint in podcasting after her deal with Spotify to launch Archetypes.

The episode with Kadi is the third instalment from Meghan’s eight-part series with Lemonada Media, which promised “girl talk” and advice on how to create “billion-dollar businesses”.