She was marrying her long-time producer boyfriend and was in a pilot where the omens looked good. There was serious talk of a TV series. At long last her Hollywood dream was coming true. As her half brother, Tom Junior, recalls: “Meg was on her way up, marrying a guy with a production company and now making good money.”
All those on-set rumors turned into a joyous reality when in January 2011, USA Network gave the green light for the first series. Shooting would begin on April 25 in Toronto. Finally, after years of auditions that went nowhere, roles that ended up on the cutting room floor, and—most disheartening—pilots that never got picked up, Meghan had a series. The only downside was that she would have to take a five-hour flight if she was to see her Hollywood-based fiancé. The sacrifice was going to be worth it. As she and Trevor caught planes like others hailed taxis, the commute was not going to be a hardship. They were both ambitious young people; if anything, Trevor was more driven than Meghan. So he was totally understanding that this was an opportunity that she could not miss.
Her joy, however, was tempered with sorrow. While she was preparing for the series, her mother phoned to tell her that Alvin Ragland, her eighty-two-year-old grandfather, had tripped and fallen as a result of getting tangled with a dog lead while out walking his dog. He had hit his head on the sidewalk, and Doria’s father died of his injuries on March 12. She remembered Alvin as a real character. Meghan appreciated his knowledge of antiques, an enthusiasm that inspired her own fascination with the finer things in life. In the family reorganization following his death, Doria inherited his single-story green stucco house in what is known as the “black Beverly Hills.” It was close to the University of Southern California, where, in the late spring, Doria, now a mature student, would complete her master’s degree in social work. Her daughter was ecstatic, probably more effusive than her mother. She watched proudly as her mother collected her degree on a makeshift stage at one of the many graduation ceremonies taking place on the extensive campus in June. Given the difficulties of her background, the trouble at her high school following the earthquake, and the temporary jobs she had taken on to make ends meet, her achievement was a genuine personal triumph, an indication of her smarts and her determination.
The first episode of Suits aired on June 23, to generally favorable reviews and, more important, an enthusiastic audience. The cast, crew, and money men at the network were ecstatic, the producers thrilled that their gamble to cast Meghan opposite Patrick had paid off big time, the show’s fans buzzing about the couple’s on-screen chemistry.
Their off-screen chemistry was equally noticeable, almost uncomfortably so, according to guests at Meghan and Trevor’s wedding which took place in Jamaica in September 2011. They had clearly developed a bond of familiarity that is invariably the corollary of working up close and personal for so long and so intensely. Patrick J. Adams has a different take on their interaction at that time. He later told writer Lesley Goldberg: “In some ways, Meghan and I were the closest because we were the youngest people in the cast and both came in with the least experience. We grew up together over the course of the show.”
He might have kept his distance if he had known that she had been cast to play a calculating serial killer in an episode of the quirky crime show Castle, titled “Once Upon a Crime,” which she filmed while Suits was on hiatus. As Princess Sleeping Beauty, Meghan’s character plotted a complex series of murders with fairy-tale themes, and was cast for the part by her champion, Donna Rosenstein.
For Meghan, shooting her first series of Suits was actually more stressful than organizing her wedding. After choosing Jamaica Inn in Ocho Rios, an idyllic spot with balconies overlooking the sea, she had delegated the organization to an in-house wedding coordinator who handled every detail of this destination wedding. Given the hectic lives she and Trevor were leading, it was a lifesaver. All she had to worry about was the guest list, choosing the flowers, agreeing to the menu—and packing a bikini or two. Oh, and her strappy white wedding dress.
Meghan knew a month before their nuptials that Suits had been picked up for a second season, a cause for celebration but also uncertainty as, once more, the newlyweds would be long-distance commuters, seeing each other every two or three weeks, depending on if Trevor had meetings or had arranged to see his family, who lived on Long Island. The couple was determined to enjoy a long weekend of parties, including beach wheelbarrow races, culminating with the wedding ceremony.
With the ocean as backdrop, the couple recited vows they had written themselves, promising to love and care for each other. One of her bridesmaids recalled, “It was such a moving wedding. I started crying the moment I saw her in her dress.” Though the couple had officially married in Los Angeles in a brief civil ceremony, this was the real celebration for family and friends, complete with a rousing chorus of the traditional Jewish “Hava Nagila” sung while the bride and groom were hoisted up in chairs held above their guests’ heads.
On return from their Jamaican celebration, Trevor and Meghan were able to spend more time with one another before shooting began once more in Toronto. It was just as well that she was enjoying a brief break, as her father was in need of her support. For the last few months, he had cared for his increasingly frail mother, Doris Markle, who he had flown from her home in Florida to his house in Los Feliz. As his home is close by the ABC TV studios where he worked, he was able to visit during the day to check that she was okay. Sadly, as her chronic forgetfulness slipped into dementia, that was no longer a practical option. The last straw was when she absentmindedly left a pan on the stove, causing a small kitchen fire. He arrived home to find the fire department and paramedics at the scene.
The only option was to place her in a specialist facility, moving her into Broadview Residential Care Center, an affordable nursing home in Glendale, Los Angeles. Once the first season of Suits wrapped, Meghan visited her as much as she could, making the twelve-mile drive from her cozy house on Hilldale in West Hollywood to see her grandmother. She read to her, brushed her hair, and did simple arts and crafts with the aging matriarch. As she slipped deeper into the gloaming of dementia, Doris did not recognize her son, Tom Senior, nor her grandson, Tom Junior. Yet her eyes would light up when she heard Meghan’s voice and felt her comforting touch. “With her dementia, grandmother got weird about me and dad but was always okay with Meg,” recalls Meghan’s brother, Tom Junior. “I saw the private side of Meghan, a genuinely caring, loving person. She had an amazing relationship with Doris even though she didn’t know her that well.”
In October, she and Trevor walked the red carpet at the Anti-Defamation League Entertainment Industry Awards dinner at the Beverly Hilton hotel, the most high-level event she had ever attended. More importantly, she was master of ceremonies for the evening. She dressed the part in a simple Stella McCartney velvet cocktail dress, while Trevor, beaming with pride, looked his usual slightly rumpled self. They mingled with other celebrities, and Meghan glowed. She was on her way.
Meghan also continued to visit her ailing grandmother at the nursing home. Tom Senior and Tom Junior could only be there on weekends, but Meghan came frequently during the week as well. With Doris fading fast, Tom Senior flew in his brothers to say their last goodbyes. She died on November 25, 2011. Trevor and Meghan were present at her funeral. It was the first time that most of the Markles had met the TV producer. Meghan’s brother remarked, “She was completely head over heels and seemed really happy when I saw them together, despite the sad circumstances. They seemed extremely happy together.”
These family reunions were few and far between. The last time Meghan had seen her half sister Yvonne, who had rechristened herself Samantha, was when she and Tom Senior made the trip to Albuquerque for the eldest Markle daughter’s college graduation. “She was lovely, very polite and sweet,” recalled Tom Senior’s first wife, Roselyn, about Meghan’s visit. During the graduation ceremony, Meghan sat next to Samantha’s preteen daughter, Noel, and made small talk with the girl, th
en posed for photos, smiling and trying to make everyone feel at ease.
It was the last time Meghan would see her Markle relations. The actor also left Trevor behind when she flew to Toronto to settle back into her new life, filming for nine months for the show’s successful second season. Of course, the couple Skyped and FaceTimed, but it was wearing being apart, especially living through the long, gray Canadian winter. She did her best to get the Californian vibe going in her rented house in Seaton Village, lightening the wall colors and trying to convey a bright and airy feel amid the chilly gloom. Candles, leafy plants, and of course white hotel-style bedsheets with a high thread count helped to bring a touch of Hollywood to Toronto.
It might have been cold outside, but it was hot on set, the budding, but often thwarted romance between Rachel Zane and Mike Ross fueled Suits’ growing success as much as the Machiavellian plot twists about a law firm and its clients. On screen, sparks flew between Rachel and Mike, enthralling viewers, especially after the second-season finale, which climaxed with their characters having heated sex in the fictional law firm’s file room. Fans had become really invested in the fictional couple, Adams recalling a chance encounter with a Swedish hiker who had twisted his ankle on a backpacking trail in New Zealand. When Adams, who was on holiday, went to help, the young man forgot his injuries and told the actor how badly he wanted Mike and Rachel to “figure things out.”
Their on-screen intimacy led to speculation that the pair had fallen into the trap of many costars: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz. In fact, the Canadian-born Adams had fallen for an earlier female lead, Troian Bellasario, the daughter of producers Donna Pratt and Donald P. Bellasario, who played opposite him in 2009 in the play Equivocation. They fell in love, but after a year they broke up, Bellasario going on to win a role in the first season of Pretty Little Liars. In a move that his Suits character Mike Ross would have approved of, Adams devised a cute way of winning back the showbiz heiress. He quietly scored a bit part on Pretty Little Liars and then joined his surprised ex-girlfriend on set at the table read-through. His ploy worked: the couple reunited, eventually became engaged in 2014, and married in 2016.
While the “will they, won’t they” romance between Rachel and Mike gave the show its sexual tension, it was the other man in Rachel’s life, her father, a powerful rival lawyer played by African American actor Wendell Pierce, who really caught the attention of the show’s 4 million strong audience.
As the story develops, we learn that Rachel, much to the disappointment of her successful and wealthy father, is stuck as a paralegal because she just can’t pass the law school entrance exam, the LSAT. While her character has some daddy issues, it was Rachel Zane’s biracial heritage that stirred controversy, with both African American and white viewers confused that a girl who looked so white had a black father. One fan asked if she was adopted, while others were more hostile about the fictional paralegal’s heritage, exposing an ugly, racist side in the show’s viewership. Even though the American president himself was biracial, the decision by the show’s producers to cast a woman of mixed race as a modern-day equivalent of a conventional upper-class white woman helped move the dial a little with regard to racial stereotypes and traditional images of beauty.
As the show’s popularity grew, Meghan and her colleagues were asked to build a following using social media in order to help with ratings. Even though she had never heard of Instagram, she found herself opening an account and posting photographs from her private life. What began as a chore turned into an enjoyable and highly addictive daily habit, the actor building up an amazing 1.9 million followers by the time she closed the account. Her first image on May 24, 2012, showed her Suits script from the episode “Break Point”; a copy of Forbes, the American business magazine; as well as liberal TV commentator Rachel Maddow’s first book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, about the rise of presidential authority and the diminution of Congress. With her Instagram debut Meghan was demonstrating that here was an actor with brains as well as beauty who was involved and engaged in the world around her. Subsequent posts would be less forthright, featuring favorite food, engaging selfies, travels abroad, and images of Toronto. It was a curated, very considered vision of her private world.
Her involvement in the outside world was not just through the distorting prism of Instagram. She took part in a USA Network campaign against racism, appearing on screen in Characters Unite, an award-winning public service program created to address the social injustices and cultural divides. Wearing a T-shirt with the words I WON’T STAND FOR RACISM, she encouraged people to stand together against prejudice while sharing her experience of being a fly on the wall while white people told black jokes or made bigoted remarks.
Closer to home the actor volunteered to help at a local Toronto soup kitchen for the homeless, the St. Felix Centre, which was founded by the Felician Sisters. She asked the show’s producers if at the end of the day they would donate any leftover food from the craft service, the daily unlimited buffet of snacks designed to fuel the actors and crew through the shoots. They were happy to agree to her request, the Suits family also making a substantive cash donation to the homeless charity.
The cast and crew were also encouraged to bond, to be a family. It helped all round. A happy set was a productive set. They formed a tight-knit group, bicycling places and going out for drinks or dinner, playing board games and drinking whisky, as one cast member recalled, “into the wee hours.” The cast vacationed together over Canadian Thanksgiving, Meghan bringing her Vitamix super-blender to whip up soups and cocktails for the group. It was during one of these group get-togethers that Meghan was inspired to take what turned out to be her favorite vacation of all time. During a casual conversation with Meghan’s costar Gabriel Macht, he told her that he and his wife loved RV vacations. After listening to him wax lyrical about a trip to New Zealand, Meghan decided to follow suit. She and Trevor too rented a RV and spent two weeks driving around New Zealand’s sparsely populated South Island. They went hiking over glaciers, visited wineries in Marlborough, and rented a beach house for a few days. She vividly remembers the extraordinary night they pulled up at a campsite in Akaroa, a tiny village surrounding a dead volcano. As she later recalled: “I was washing my hair and I hear something and I open the shower curtain and there is this 13-year-old boy who had crawled under the stall and was trying to steal my underwear. I grabbed my towel and I had shampoo in my hair and I yelled: ‘Where is your mother?!’ I found his parents and they were mortified of course. And to this day, oh my god, that kid will be sitting at home going ‘that’s the girl from Suits, I saw her naked!’” Now, of course, he will be able to boast that he saw a Hollywood princess in the buff. In spite of her encounter with this junior Peeping Tom, she voted the vacation one of the best trips of her life.
When she returned home, she discussed with Trevor the prospect of adding to their family. She wanted a dog. So just before Christmas she and Trevor found themselves gazing at a pair of six-week-old puppies at a pet adoption agency in Los Angeles. They had only recently been rescued from being put down at a dog shelter. One of the Labrador mixes was black; the other was golden. As luck would have it, David Branson Smith, the screenwriter son of a biographer of Princess Diana, Sally Bedell Smith, adopted the black puppy, whom he called Otto; Meghan took the yellow puppy, whom she named Bogart. She had talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia Di Rossi, to thank for the final decision. As Meghan was communing with the tiny pooch, Ellen tapped on the glass of the viewing area and yelled: “Take the dog!” As Meghan recalls: “So I brought him home because Ellen told me to.” Soon the adorable Bogart had ousted pictures of herself and her husband on her Instagram feed. She turned the pooch into a much-photographed star, the puppy bogarting the joint social media feed.
In February 2013 Meghan emailed David Smith to say that she and Trevor “always wondered if (Bogart) and h
is brother would recognize each other… Kind of a sweet thought.” Schedules were consulted and the two brothers had a reunion on the beach at Malibu. As Sally Bedell Smith in the London Sunday Times recalled: “Otto bounded out of David’s car straight towards Bogart. For the next hour they romped around like, well, long lost brothers.” Meghan filmed and posted the reunion like a social media pro, exclaiming: “Oh my God, how sweet, they’re really the same size.” They never saw one another again, though two years later, in 2015, Bogart was joined by another rescue dog, a beagle mix that Meghan named Guy.
By then the other “guy” in her life was long gone. Even though Trevor opened an office in New York—only an hour’s flight to Toronto—to expand his business, cracks began appearing in their marriage. What once endeared now irritated. Meghan, a self-confessed perfectionist who was as fastidious as she was controlling, had tolerated Trevor’s scattered approach to life for years. He was notorious for arriving late, his clothes rumpled, his hair disheveled, and often as not a new stain on his seersucker jacket. “Sorry, bro,” was a constant refrain as he hurtled from meeting to meeting, always just behind the clock.
Her home in Seaton Village was a vision of order and crisply ironed perfection. When she flew back to their Los Angeles home after Trevor had been in solo residence for a few weeks, not so much. Though Trevor would consistently visit, he often felt like an outsider, his presence an irritating distraction.
Whether she wanted to admit it to herself or not, Meghan, who once said that she couldn’t imagine life without Trevor by her side, was now building a new world for herself. As Toronto was becoming more her home than Los Angeles, the dynamics in their relationship subtly altered. She was her own woman now, earning a steady income, making new friends on set and off, no longer dependent on her man’s money. Or his connections.
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