Meghan

by Andrew Morton

  The pilot, shot as full-length feature, was delivered in June 2007. After several viewings and much back and forth, Fox Studios decided to pass on making a full-blown series, airing it the following year as a standalone movie. It was a real blow for Meghan, who had harbored high hopes for the show. At least she could now add “stripper” to her acting résumé. Which she promptly did.

  While Meghan worked on The Apostles, Trevor was in production on a Sandra Bullock/Bradley Cooper comedy, All About Steve, written by two of his clients. Bullock had taken control of the film as producer, leaving Trevor to manage his growing stable of writers and directors.

  He was always hustling to get them work and to find new clients. When he went to coffee shops he handed out business cards to whoever was tapping away at their laptop. “What’s the worst thing that happens? I read a shitty script?” he laughed. He read scripts nonstop, going so far as to keep a stack in their bathroom at home as well as a supply of waterproof pens so he could make notes.

  As for Meghan snagging a role through her boyfriend, that had proved to be a bit of a washout. At least so far. Not so with casting agent Donna Rosenstein, who called her in to read for the role of Sadie Valencia, the spoiled daughter of a Las Vegas casino owner in this story of a crime boss’s family who were struggling to go straight. There were solid expectations that the comedy, Good Behavior, which also starred Chicago Fire’s Treat Williams as her father and Schitt’s Creek’s Catherine O’Hara as family matriarch, would be well-mannered—and funny enough—to make a series for the ABC network.

  When the show, which was filmed in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and also starred the Canadian actor Patrick J. Adams, was tested to a wider audience it got a thumbs-down. In the end, it was another pilot that ended up being broadcast as a standalone TV movie.

  Work did keep coming, though. Now twenty-seven, Meghan was finished with Good Behavior, and she was cast as the teenage vixen Wendy in 90210, a reboot of the long-running series Beverly Hills 90210, which she had watched as a teenager. The new version was trying to be equally iconic but raunchier, sassier, and cooler.

  In the series premiere, once again, Meghan’s character has a bawdy introduction, first shown outside West Beverly Hills High performing oral sex in another student’s car while pupils go back and forth. Her character lasted for just two episodes before vanishing without any plot explanation. The series, however, would run for five seasons. With various guest spots on established series like Knight Rider, Without a Trace, and the sitcom The League, she was almost becoming a familiar face to TV audiences. Real fame, or even just a steady paycheck—she was barely earning enough to pay for actors’ health insurance—continued to elude her. She was always on the cusp of making a breakthrough.

  When director J. J. Abrams, who even before his mega successes with Star Wars was lauded as the mastermind behind Mission Impossible III and Lost, had her playing junior FBI agent Amy Jessup in his sci-fi procedural Fringe, she once again had high hopes that something would come of it. She appeared in the first and second episodes of the second season, and though director Akiva Goldsman, best known for his hit A Beautiful Mind, hinted that audiences may be seeing more of Agent Jessup she never returned to the creepy tale of spooky shapeshifters and parallel universes. In fact, she was next seen altering her personal universe in a more conventional way, snorting a couple of lines of cocaine in the knowing TV comedy The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down. Based on the award-winning 2006 independent film, which featured her Deal or No Deal co-model Leyla Milani, the show charts the vagaries of the LA dating scene.

  In the sex, drugs, and anything goes movie, Meghan is shown as a single girl pouring herself into a super tight black dress—shades of Deal or No Deal—before heading out for the night, prowling the singles scene of downtown LA, where she knocks back some blow to keep the mobile debauchery moving.

  With roles where she had snorted coke, performed oral sex, and taught striptease to her name, what better credentials than to share an on-screen smooch with former junkie, funnyman, and now British movie star Russell Brand. Her “exotic” looks won her the role of Tatiana in Get Him to the Greek, which filmed in the spring of 2009. With no lines, she remained uncredited in the official cast list. Still she fared better than Brand’s ex-wife, Katy Perry, and singer Alanis Morissette, whose scenes were deleted.

  During this time, it was her partner who was getting the plaudits. Trevor was named by the Hollywood Reporter as one of the “Top 35 Under 35” in the Next Gen Class of 2009 for his work as a manager and producer. All those years of meetings and schmoozing were paying off—and he already had the pretty girl, as he had always dreamed of. Along with a glowing writeup in the Hollywood Reporter, the honor came with a party at My House, a Hollywood club notorious for its velvet ropes and bottle service, where Meghan did her best to shine as the beautiful and talented, as well as supportive, girlfriend of a bona fide mover and shaker.

  Trevor could now afford to give Megan a few crumbs from his growing pile of scripts. At least it would stop her continually nagging him to give her a part in one of his productions. Two clients, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, the writers behind Saw IV, V, and VI, had put together a nineteen-minute film, The Candidate, based on the short story by Henry Slezar. Meghan was cast as the secretary, in one scene showing off a beautifully written, hand-addressed envelope, an in-joke about her calligraphy skills.

  Trevor then found a small role for her in Remember Me, a 9/11-themed melodrama starring the British heartthrob Robert Pattinson. The movie, which was shot in June, was written by his client Will Fetters and turned out to be the producer’s biggest hit to date, a ratings and box office success. Meghan might be proving to be his lucky charm.

  Not that she thought so. Earlier that year, in January 2010, the young actor began an anonymous blog she called Working Actress, where she described in often heartbreaking detail the life of a struggling actor. In one post she wrote: “I’m not gonna lie. I’ve spent many days curled up in bed with a loaf of bread and some wine. A one woman pity party. It’s awful and ridiculous.” She described what it was like to have her minor scenes cut from a movie, the endless rejection, bitchy fellow actors at auditions, and tests shoots gone wrong. “All you are doing is setting yourself up for heartbreak,” she said of this most demanding of professions. Though her blog, which abruptly ended in 2012, was anonymous, fellow bloggers and actors confirmed she was the author. “Yes, it was definitely Meghan Markle who wrote it,” said actor Lancer Carter, who reproduced one of her posts on his own site.

  Shortly after beginning the blog, in July 2010, Meghan was again ready for her own close-up. She was cast opposite comedian Jason Sudekis in the comedy Horrible Bosses. In her thirty-five-second scene she played a FedEx girl whom Sudekis creepily hits on, saying that she is too “cute” for the job. Meghan was cool and polite, a professional just doing her job. That was it. Blink and you would miss her. There was, however, a major compensation. She got to work on the same set as her acting hero, Donald Sutherland, who played Jack Pellit in the movie.

  “I was so excited to work with him,” she enthused. “The woman in the hair department said he was a gem and that I would love him, so when I met him (and his oh-so-debonair self), I said: ‘Mr. Sutherland, I hear I’m going to fall in love with you before lunch break.’ He laughed, it broke the ice. And I resisted the very major urge to squeal.”

  Once her heart had slowed down, she had to recognize that this was yet another acting job that traded exclusively on her looks and sex appeal. Time to recalibrate. She was approaching thirty, an age in a notoriously cruel place like Hollywood when she would soon be considered over the hill. If she was not careful, her agent would be dropping hints about changing the date of birth on her résumé.

  Another casting season had passed her by, and she had nothing apart from a series of auditions on her calendar. It was hard not to feel discouraged, especially when she heard of the successes of her contemporaries. Those five years
were up, and she just hadn’t quite made that extra leap.

  Time to dip into Trevor’s bran tub of aphorisms. Along with “give it five years,” he had another favorite: “This is not a business for the weary. You’re either gonna buy an island or be sent to one.”

  Meghan straightened her skirt, focused her gaze, and walked into the next casting room. She wasn’t yet ready for Elba.

  6

  A Star Is Tailor Made

  Rachel Zane was a ballbuster. A ballbuster to cast, a ballbuster to play, and a ballbuster to even name appropriately. Sexy but unapproachable, Rachel Zane was a character created as the love interest on a new show, so new they hadn’t even worked out the title. Opinion was split. Some executives at the USA Network, who were developing the show in 2010, went for A Legal Mind. Others thought the title Suits was tailor-made for a snappily dressed office full of sharp lawyers. Suits won out. That was just one of numerous daily battles to give Suits a distinct identity.

  Casting and chemistry were critical to give Suits crackle and pop. Patrick J. Adams was perfect for the part of Mike Ross, the legal genius with an eidetic memory who couldn’t afford law school because he was paying to keep his sick grandma in an upscale nursing home. The actor’s eyes were the key to him winning the role: piercing blue, long lashed. The rest of him was just average-looking boy next door. He combined a vibe of intelligence with just enough seediness to flesh out the part of the brilliant college dropout who made a living by taking law school entry exams for other students.

  After several weeks of casting, on July 7 they had snagged The Others star Gabriel Macht as top lawyer Harvey Reginald Specter, and cast Rick Hoffman as the duplicitous partner Louis Litt, as well as Gina Torres, who played the sharp-tongued founding partner Jessica Lourdes Pearson.

  One part remained, the role of Rachel Zane. She was a paralegal who was smart, elegantly upper class, and so highly regarded at the fictional law firm that she had her own office, while several of the fictional lawyers still labored on the main floor. She had to be sexy without being overtly so, secure in her own power as a woman, but with a certain vulnerability as shown by the fact that she was unable to pass the LSAT, the exam that determined eligibility for law school. The show’s producers were looking for a woman who had “toughness and attitude while still being engaging.”

  “The part was just a nightmare to cast,” recalls one studio executive. “Then Meghan Markle came along.” Once told by famed casting director April Webster to use “less makeup, more Meghan” when auditioning, Meghan had dressed “sexy-professional-casual” to screen test for the role. Somewhat belatedly she realized that the plum colored spaghetti-strap top, black jeans, and high heels she wore were more “single lady lawyer on the prowl” than “attractive paralegal with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law.”

  Before her audition Meghan ran into an H&M store, picked out a simple black dress for $35 and raced back to the studio. She hadn’t even time to try it on for size. The producers of the then titled A Legal Mind asked her to change into the new garment before taking the screen test. It was the best $35 she had ever spent. As the show’s creator, Aaron Korsh, told writer Sam Kashner: “We all looked at each other after the Meghan Markle screen test like, ‘Wow this is the one.’ I think it’s because Meghan has the ability to be smart and sharp without losing her sweetness.”

  With the casting of Meghan Markle, the character of Rachel Zane was made flesh. Originally the brainy and beautiful paralegal was named Rachel Lane, but the clearance department felt the name was too similar to that of a real person. So they chose the surname of the show’s casting director, Bonnie Zane, an insiders’ compliment to the storied Hollywood professional for her work on the show.

  It was not as if Meghan was a shoo-in for the role. Now thirty, on paper she was too old to play a young paralegal, and the multiracial Gina Torres had already put a tick in the box labeled “ethnic diversity.”

  Her main rival was a younger, more experienced Canadian actor, blond, blue-eyed Kim Shaw. By now Meghan had learned to manage her expectations and not take rejection too personally. She was often too light, too dark, too skinny, too something or other for so many roles.

  Meghan didn’t feel great about her audition and called her agent, Nick Collins at the Gersh Agency, from her car. She told him that she could not get her head around the lines. It was a mouthful, the worst audition of her life. “I don’t think I did a good job in that room, and I need to get back in there,” she wailed. “I really want this part.” Her agent had heard this before from so many of his clients, and his answer was always the same: “There’s nothing I can do. Just focus on your next audition.” Once again, she felt that moment of Why am I subjecting myself to this torture? She had a top degree, a sparkling résumé, great connections; she didn’t have to put herself through the ringer every day. It was kind of inevitable, though, given her background. As she once said: “If you grow up in a coal mining town, you will probably become a coal miner. I grew up in the industry, and was always on set because of my dad, so it seems natural for me to be an actress.”

  In spite of her considerable misgivings, she tried to stay optimistic, going to yoga classes and meditating to stay grounded. All the while she headed out to other auditions, though none of them inspired her as much as A Legal Mind. In her heart, she felt this role would be perfect for her. It was kismet—her given first name was Rachel, just like the part she longed to play.

  While Meghan felt she had blown the audition, unbeknownst to her, behind the scenes the executives were busy putting together her test deal and drawing up the contract for the pilot if the network approved. As she recalls: “We had no idea that they loved my read. They loved my take on Rachel and they were putting together a test deal for me. It was a really good lesson in perspective. I think we are always going to be our own worst critics.”

  The head honchos at USA Network had chosen Markle over Shaw, formally casting her on August 24, 2010. As then USA Network copresident Jeff Wachtel explained: “Shaw was a little more traditional blond girl next door. The decision was a tough one because they were both really good. Meghan had a certain type of sparkle and was a little more urbane, a little more worldly.”

  The deciding factor was how they wanted the relationship between Rachel and Mike to play out. As Wachtel recalled: “One of the things that we needed at the beginning with Suits was Patrick’s character comes in as the hottest thing in town: he’s brilliant, has a photographic memory and fakes his way into being a lawyer and then he comes up against this girl who turns out to be the love of his life. We needed somebody who had a real authority to shut him down and still be the coolest thing around. And they had it right away. It was a lot of fun.”

  Meghan was still taking other auditions when her cell phone rang with a call from her agent, telling her she had been cast in the Suits series pilot and would begin filming in autumn in New York. She was overjoyed but also wary. After all, she had gone down this road before, especially with The Apostles, which, at the time, she felt confident was going to be her big break. After eight years going from audition to audition, had she finally caught a break? She could dream. If the pilot was a success, Suits could turn into a series, and then who knows. Meghan’s casting garnered a short article in the Hollywood Reporter, noting her uncredited role in the 2010 comedy Get Him to the Greek.

  When she began with a standard table read of the script, it was obvious that Meghan and Patrick generated chemistry, this elusive quality the showbiz equivalent of lightning in a bottle. It was vital that they had a spark between them as the ups and downs of their love story would be a narrative arc throughout the series—if the show was picked up by the network, that is.

  In the fall of 2010 Meghan flew to New York to shoot the ninety-minute series pilot. Since the elation of winning the part, reality had set in. She had already shot five pilots, including one for ABC with her current costar, Patrick J. Adams, and none of them had got any further. Maybe he was he
r unlucky charmer. As she later observed: “A pilot is like your baby, then you wait and wait to see if it gets picked up and it’s a hard thing to let go of. The one I had the most attachment to was one called The Apostles, which was my very first pilot. It’s probably revisionist history but I look back on it now and think: “That would have been amazing. But who knows?”

  On her first day of the shoot, the normally nerveless Meghan was a little edgy. Though she had grown up on film sets, it was one thing sitting in the wings watching the action, quite another to be center stage. Nonetheless, all those hours after school on professional soundstages, observing the interaction of actors and crews, overhearing the snatches of conversation and gossip between production assistants, and hanging around the craft service table, had taught her how to behave on set. She was charming to everyone, from grips to the lighting director. There was a degree of self-interest at work, having learned from her father that the placement of a light could enhance or slightly deform a pretty face, and that some of the placement depended on goodwill.

  Meghan was remembered as bubbly and warm, chatty but a good listener who didn’t dominate on-set conversations. She was a team player who radiated a sweet intelligence, saving her sterner, more ambitious self for those important on-set interactions with Patrick J. Adams.

  In a show that became known as much for its fashion as its plotline, costume designer Jolie Andreatta’s vision of Meghan’s on-screen look was crucial. She later recalled: “Rachel is classic to the word with a hint of rebellion thrown in. Her style is understated and her cute figure pulls it off perfectly.”

  On her return from New York, Trevor took Meghan to a beach resort in Belize for a vacation. It was here amid the tropical greenery and the soothing waves that he asked his girlfriend of six years to be his bride. Meghan was thrilled—and clearly in love. “They were both googly eyed for one another,” recalls a friend. “They were very much in love.”