A five-hundred-dollar Vitamix blender symbolized the growing divide. She insisted that her favorite kitchen appliance from their West Hollywood home come with her to Toronto, packing it into the backseat of her car, which was being moved by truck to Canada, even though it would have been just as easy to buy a new one. It sat on the kitchen counter in the Toronto house, a material reminder that her home was no longer in Los Angeles.
While Meghan saw her star rising, her husband’s career appeared to be treading water. During this time he produced Amber Alert, a low-budget thriller about a pair of reality show contestants who spot a car containing a kidnapped child. Though it was an intriguing premise, the movie did little box office business and garnered fewer favorable reviews. With no new projects requiring his attention and with Suits on hiatus, Trevor took Meghan on a cycling vacation to Vietnam. It didn’t help that he got sick with food poisoning as a result of Meghan sampling obscure local dishes like a female version of the TV globetrotter Anthony Bourdain. Their escape to exotic locales, which once provided a backdrop for their love, only served to highlight the distance between them.
He was not the only one experiencing the Meghan chill. Her friends in Los Angeles noticed the change in her now that she was on the way up. She no longer had the time for friends she had known for years, canceling lunches on short notice or expecting them to rework their own schedules to accommodate the busy life of the rising star. A networker to her fingertips, she seemed to be carefully recalibrating her life, forging new friendships with those who could burnish and develop her career. New folk like talented fashion stylist Jessica Mulroney, who worked with Sophie Trudeau, wife of the present Canadian prime minister, and her TV personality husband Ben, the son of the former Canadian prime minister, now came into her orbit, seeing them regularly at the newly opened Soho House in Toronto. As she was expanding her social horizons, her LA circle felt they were being left behind.
Though she might be getting above herself, everyone expected Trevor to keep her feet planted on the ground. So her Californian friends were genuinely shocked when she announced the end of her two-year marriage in the summer of 2013.
As her maid of honor, Ninaki Priddy, told writer Rebecca Hardy: “I knew they fought sometimes, but it wasn’t anything huge. The only obstacle was the distance because she was living in Toronto and Trevor was based in LA. I thought they were maneuvering through it. Trevor would take his work to Canada and run his office remotely.”
It was such a bolt from the blue for Trevor that even at a distance of five years, he can barely contain his anger, the normally affable laid back New Yorker switching gears from his usual “Hi, bro, how’s it going?” to a cold fury when her name comes into the conversation. “I have zero to say about her,” he said to inquirers. Trevor went from cherishing Meghan to, as one friend observed, “feeling like he was a piece of something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.” A wealthy entrepreneur pal claimed that the marriage ended so abruptly that Meghan sent Trevor her diamond wedding and engagement rings back to him by registered mail. Another confirmed that the decision to end the marriage was made by Meghan and that it had come “totally out of the blue.”
There were other consequences. The breakup also fractured her thirty-odd year friendship with jewelry designer Ninaki Priddy. After listening to Trevor’s side of the story, she decided she no longer wished to associate herself with Meghan. Exactly why is a close-kept secret. As she described it: “All I can say now is that I think Meghan was calculated, very calculated, in the way she handled people and relationships. She is very strategic in the way she cultivates circles of friends. Once she decides you’re not part of her life, she can be very cold. It’s this shutdown mechanism she has. There’s nothing to negotiate, she’s made her decision, and that’s it. The way she handled it, Trevor definitely had the rug pulled out from under him. He was hurt.”
Actor Abby Wathen, who had starred with Meghan in the low-budget movie Random Encounters in her pre-Suits days, had a different perspective on Meghan’s breakup. “We both went through divorce, so we bonded on that too. I was destroyed, but she was empowered. She took her power back. It wasn’t the right relationship for her, so she moved on.”
Now footloose and fancy free, Meghan spent more time exploring downtown Toronto. She could be found, glass of wine in hand, at Bar Isabel, the tapas bar where the grilled octopus and garlicky roast potatoes threw her into a “carb coma.” She also went into raptures about the pasta at Terroni, the local high-end Italian del chain, and also enjoyed poutine, a dish that originated in Quebec in the 1950s, comprising fries covered in gravy and cheese curds—where the squeakier the curds are, the better. On nights when she stayed at home, Meghan, who loves to cook, made vegetable soup in her beloved Vitamix or threw zucchini into the slow cooker with a little water and bouillon until it became what she called “a filthy, sexy mush” that she would toss with pasta.
It was her fascination with food that got her a gig with Men’s Health magazine. In 2013 they filmed an interview for their website, asking Meghan to give them the secret to a great burger and steak. It was sweet, unpolished, and very natural; as a California girl, she said, she preferred fish tacos, but for a quick meal “for her man,” she would throw a steak on the grill. She also agreed to film a racier version of the same shoot. This video, which appeared two years later, showed Meghan riffing on her role on Suits, her hair in a bun, wearing sunglasses, a short leather skirt, and power blazer. She unbuttons her sheer black top to reveal a spotted bra. “Grilling was never so hot,” screamed the film title. As the steak smoldered, so did Meghan. But there was a hesitancy in her eyes. She was playing up to the camera, but she seemed uncomfortable, conscious that she was portraying herself as a sex object to be leered at by men. She thought she had left those days behind on the game show Deal or No Deal. As far as she was concerned, this wasn’t a part she was going to play for much longer.
During the Suits hiatus Meghan took the female lead in a low-budget crime thriller called Anti-Social. The drama, which was based on a series of real-life robberies involving graffiti gangs, was filmed in Budapest and London. While the money men on the production were looking for nude scenes between Meghan and her costar, Gregg Sulkin, who is ten years her junior, to help give the picture greater appeal, writer-director Reg Traviss stuck to his guns and refused to try to exploit his star. He later explained, “It wasn’t needed for the story.”
Meghan’s stock and standing were rising with each season of Suits, which was now the highest-rated American television show in the demographic sweet spot, ages 18 to 49. She was increasingly in demand, and in November 2013 she was invited to attend the red carpet premiere of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, in London’s Leicester Square. Two days later Meghan and male model Oliver Cheshire were hosting the high-profile Global Gift charity gala, which benefited the Eva Longoria Foundation and Caudwell Children charities. Not that she was a fan of the red carpet, finding the glamorous shuffle with other celebrities an ordeal. As she wrote: “I loathe walking the red carpet. It makes me nervous and itchy, and I don’t know which way to look. I just revert to this nerdy child that I once was. I hate it. I get off the carpet and have to shake it off. Sounds dramatic, but it’s really nerve-racking for me.”
While in London, Meghan, the consummate networker, hoped to raise her public profile by discussing the last six episodes of Suits season 2 with members of the press. And she had another, more romantic agenda. Daily Mail reporter Katy Hind wasn’t expecting much when she agreed to meet Meghan on a chilly night in November, just another up-and-coming actor looking for a mention or two in the press. From what she had read, Meghan’s ambition was to become a politician, and she had fallen into acting during a holiday from her work at the US embassy in Buenos Aires in Argentina.
As they drank a bottle of prosecco at the rooftop bar of the Sanctum Soho hotel, the conversation turned to men, and, as Hind described, “her interest in British men of a certain, well, standing.” To
the reporter’s surprise, Meghan took out her iPhone and showed her a picture of a handsome man on her Twitter account. “Do you know this guy Ashley Cole? He follows me and he keeps trying to talk to me on Twitter. He’s trying really hard.”
Katy kept her cool, replying, “I bet.” Meghan continued to eagerly confide, “He wants to go out on a date while I’m over here in London. What do you think? Do you know him?”
The reporter certainly knew his reputation as both an England and Chelsea football player and the husband of Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Cole. He had cheated with several women, who had in turn sold their stories to the tabloids. Once Hind had broken the bad news, the actor seemed somewhat deflated, possibly anticipating that her visit to London may have spawned a new romance. “Thanks, I appreciate it,” Meghan told the Mail reporter, adding: “Some of my friends told me to stay away from him, too. I think I’ll leave it.”
During the next three hours, Meghan continued to down glasses of the Italian sparkling wine as she and Katy, both thirty-two, discussed the difficulties of modern romance and of finding the right guy. Meghan admitted that she was newly divorced—her decree cited “irreconcilable differences”—and was now single and ready to mingle.
The tipsy talk wound down, and the two hugged goodbye, with Katy wishing Meghan good luck. “Not that she’d need it,” the reporter commented wryly as she watched Meghan, who was unwilling to call a cab, persuade the owner of the bar to drive her a few blocks through the rain to her hotel, the Dean Street Townhouse.
7
The “Aha” Moment
Feeling bloated and puffy skinned, her black leather pants a little too tight, Meghan was just a tad out of sorts as she sat alongside her Suits costars on the dais at the five-star Langham Hotel in Pasadena. She looked out at the sea of television critics in front of her and was rather glad that her colleagues were fielding the questions from the Television Critics Association in a long-planned January conference. So far she had sat silently watching the back and forth, the discussion moving on to the shifting time slot, Suits moving from ten p.m. to nine p.m. “Will that affect the cursing?” asked one critic, referring to the show’s liberal use of profanity.
Meghan popped alive and grabbed the question. She looked at the show’s creator and executive producer, Aaron Korsh, and playfully rephrased the question: “Is that going to change for us being at nine o’clock—the shits and the dammits?” “Shit, no!” responded Korsh. The audience laughed. This was classic Meghan; the good sport, the slightly naughty girl next door, the guy’s gal. Her intervention had won the crowd. But it was no longer enough. She wanted to stretch her wings; she had things to say, points to make, that went way beyond the question-and-answer format concerning all things Suits. She was a well-traveled young woman with an appreciation of different countries, cuisines, and cultures. Meghan had a take on everything from Middle Eastern politics to makeup. She felt her role on Suits was a launch pad to something more. She was not yet exploiting her full potential.
Her recent visit to London, for example, had yielded only a small mention in the Daily Mail and a photograph in the giveaway morning daily, Metro UK. She had appeared on numerous red carpets since her work on the series began, but what started out as thrilling was now routine. She was still a pretty face in the crowd.
Meghan realized that she had to do better, to expand her visibility. From the moment Suits became successful, she could see that her young audience, especially teenage girls, were listening to what she had to say. Her Instagram following was growing exponentially, but static pictures of her life, her food, and her dogs didn’t provide an outlet for her thoughts on the world at large. She had a genuine point of view about a kaleidoscope of topics; she just needed a venue to express herself.
Just a few days later, on January 22, 2014, she attended the annual Elle Women in Television Celebration, her third appearance since Suits launched. Meghan felt that she had come home. She was inspired to be surrounded by so many creative and stimulating women like cooking and lifestyle celebrity Giada DeLaurentis and multi-award-winning actor Tracee Ellis Ross, who like Meghan was biracial. Unlike Meghan, Ross came from Hollywood royalty: her mother was Diana Ross, and her father was music manager and industry executive Robert Ellis Silberstein.
Ross’s career included a stint as a model, including walking the runway for Thierry Mugler, contributing as an editor and writer for Mirabella and New York magazines, and as the star of Girlfriends, a long-running sitcom, for which she had won several NAACP awards. Her new comedy, black-ish, in which she played a biracial doctor and mother to four, was garnering rave reviews. Rubbing shoulders with Ross and others, listening to their can-do success stories, stirred the urge in Meghan to do more. She was an ambitious young woman who wanted to raise her profile but also to use her celebrity to connect with issues that genuinely caught her interest, such as gender equality. How best to integrate her multifarious interests in one coherent, well-curated platform?
The answer came indirectly and unexpectedly. In February 2014, DirecTV, the satellite television company, celebrated the Super Bowl with a huge televised pregame party the day before the big game itself. The spirited game of celebrity flag football, called DirecTV Beach Bowl, was held in a large heated tent at Pier 40 on the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. For the event they created the world’s largest indoor beach, trucking in more than a million pounds of sand.
The band Paramore was scheduled to entertain the crowd, and Food Network star Andrew Zimmerman would broadcast live during half time. Ever the good sport, Meghan joined model Chrissy Teigen, a former colleague on Deal or No Deal, and other celebrities, including former pro quarterback Joe Montana, comedians Tracy Morgan and Tom Arnold, and the celebrity chef Guy Fieri in a beach game, which Meghan’s team won.
After the show Meghan won much more: a new, influential friend, tennis legend Serena Williams. At the time, Williams held seventeen world and US tournament singles titles and almost as many for winning doubles tournaments. More important, she had parlayed her fifteen-year career as a super athlete into lucrative endorsements, including her own fashion line, and even some acting gigs.
“We hit it off immediately, taking pictures, laughing through the flag football game we were both playing in, and chatting not about tennis or acting, but about all the good old fashioned girly stuff,” Meghan later wrote. “So began our friendship.”
What also impressed Meghan was that she was able to say, “Check out my website.” Or rather websites. She had an online clothing label as well as Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit accounts and a regular newsletter.
That was the light bulb moment. Meghan had been mulling over a website for some time, but seeing how someone as busy and as successful as Serena controlled her own site gave her confidence that she too could follow suit—or Suits. Her thinking was reinforced by an approach from an e-commerce company who offered to create a site with her name front and center. At first she was excited by the idea. “It will be your name, meghanmarkle .com, and we can run it for you,” they told her. Essentially her name would drive consumers to the site. While there would be some created content, the aim was to sell clothing and bric-a-brac from which Meghan would receive a percentage of sales. She pondered their offer, then she stood back for a moment and took a breath. As tempting as it sounded, the more she thought about it, it just didn’t feel right. “There was so much more I wanted to share,” she explained to friends. Meghan wanted a place where she could showcase her deeper self, where her voice would be heard, and where if there was e-commerce it would be thoughtful and ethical, rather than just marketing the latest fast fashion and trend. She wanted to stress the importance of giving back. Dumping a bucket of cold water over herself on the roof of golfer buddy Rory McIlroy’s Manhattan apartment for the ALS Challenge and then posting an Instagram of the result wasn’t quite enough, though it did raise money for a good cause, research into motor neuron disease.
She left the website idea percolating in
the background. With Suits on hiatus, she flew to Vancouver in western Canada to appear in a Hallmark Channel TV movie called When Sparks Fly in which she played Amy, a plucky reporter sent back to her bucolic hometown to write a human interest piece about growing up as the daughter of fireworks manufacturers. Her old boyfriend is about to marry her high school best friend, and suddenly Amy realizes that maybe the big city life wasn’t for her after all. It was a pleasing trifle and a paycheck, but that was about it. The plot about a difficult return home was the polar opposite of her next excursion, a visit to her alma mater, Northwestern University.
If she needed any more proof that she had an audience that went beyond the confines of Suits, she only had to look at the line snaking around the Ryan Auditorium as six hundred students shuffled forward for a coveted seat to see Meghan and the rest of the Suits family.
Communication studies freshman Nikita Kuekarni, who waited five hours for the event, was breathless with excitement. “I didn’t think it was real when people first told me about it. I thought people were messing with me. I was excited to have Meghan come!”
Meghan basked in the attention from the Northwestern students, comparing shared college experiences and discussing her character’s development. She gave her adoring audience a tour of the mind of her alter ego, Rachel Zane: “She’s layered and humanized; even though she seems so confident, she really has all these insecurities and vulnerabilities, and I relate to that as a woman and I think the fans will too.”
After the chat she posed for photos, signed posters, and later she and fellow star Rick Hoffman, who plays Louis Litt, recorded a promo video for the Northwestern University Dance Marathon, a charity fund-raiser in which Meghan had participated as a freshman.
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