Meghan Markle Says Working on 'Deal or No Deal' Made Her Feel "Not Smart"
Long before marrying Prince Harry, and prior to her role in the series Suits, Meghan Markle worked as a "briefcase girl" in the show Deal or No Deal. Meghan was among the women who would display the briefcases containing different cash prizes for the show contestants; and while it was simply a job she had as she worked her way into acting, the now Duchess of Sussex has some thoughts about how the show made her feel.
On her new episode of Archetypes, her Spotify podcast, Meghan spoke with guest Paris Hilton about the "bimbo" stereotype.
She kicked off the show by telling Paris that she was recently flipping through the channels on TV—"this, by the way, is a rarity when you have two children under the age of four"—and came across Deal or No Deal, which "brought back a lot of memories."
She said that when she participated in the show, she was grateful to have a job to pay the bills while she auditioned for bigger acting roles. Still, she was often bothered by how she was portrayed on the screen.
"I had also studied international relations in college, and there were times I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina in Buenos Aires and being in the motorcade with the security of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain. Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite," she said.
The duchess said that before going out on stage, the models would line up to get lashes, extensions, bra paddings, and more. They were also given spray tan vouchers every week.
"There was a very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty—and not necessarily about brains," Meghan, now mom to son Archie Harrison, 3, and daughter Lilibet Diana, 1, with Harry— said.
"When I look back at that time, I'll never forget this one detail—because moments before we'd get on stage, there was a woman who ran the show and she'd be there backstage, and I can still hear her," Meghan recalled. "She couldn't properly pronounce my last name at the time and I knew who she was talking to because she'd go, 'Markle, suck it in! Markle, suck it in!'"
Eventually, she quit the show and moved on to other TV projects. "I was thankful for the job, but not for how it made me feel, which was not smart. And by the way, I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn't the focus of why we were there. I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage," Meghan said. "I didn't like being forced to be all looks and little substance, and that's how it felt for me at the time—being reduced to this specific archetype."
Paris said she felt the same way when she starred alongside friend Nicole Richie on their reality show The Simple Life. She said producers wanted Nicole to be "the troublemaker" and Paris to be "the rich, dumb blonde." The hotel heiress said she ended up playing into the character both on the show and in interviews, and almost got "stuck and lost in the character," to the point where sometimes, she said, "I forgot who I was."
Paris—who also has spoken of being verbally and emotionally abused as a teen while in private school—is now an advocate against child abuse.
"Now I'm pushing for federal legislation and going to D.C. and yeah, it's just been so empowering. Just really turn my pain into a purpose," she said in Meghan's podcast. "And I almost think that maybe God made me go through this and gave me this special gift so that one day I could be the hero that I needed when I was a little girl and help save these children from having to go through the torture that myself and so many others went through."
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