Meghan

by Andrew Morton

  This was the fourth stop of seven for the Suits university tour, which included the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, the University of Arizona, Boston University, Harvard, and Columbia. It was a bid by the network and show’s producers to reward their highly engaged collegiate audiences by treating them to a preview screening of the winter midseason premiere.

  With the website now moving to the front burner, she contacted a friend, photographer Jake Rosenberg. A graduate of Ontario College of Art and Design, Rosenberg had started Coveteur.com six months after graduating with a degree in industrial design. While he loved photography, he was excited about branding and design. During a photo shoot in 2011, he and a fellow twentysomething, stylist Stephanie Mark, ended up creating a site devoted to snapshots of beautiful closets and snippets of subjects’ homes. “We thought it would be fun and interesting to see what it is really like in stylish people’s homes and closets,” says Mark. The pair did six photos shoots and posted them on their new site, which crashed from the amount of traffic. They immediately realized they were onto something that might be profitable as well as fun.

  “We would come back and talk about what we had seen, where this person we’d met was shopping, which restaurants and bars people were talking about,” says Mark. “We realized we had all this content.” They expanded their coverage and in 2013, redesigned the site to make space for advertising and editorial. Rosenberg listened to Meghan’s concerns about her proposed site, especially when she stressed there was so much more she wanted to share. Over several glasses of wine and tapas, they discussed her vision for the site, which would essentially be an insider’s guide to travel, food, fashion, and makeup with a leavening of more serious op-ed articles dealing with women’s issues. Essentially it would be a dash of Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog, Goop, with a soupçon of Marie Claire seasoned with Meghan’s own style and focus.

  Now with a vision for her own site, Meghan turned down the original company’s offer to create a commercial “Meghan Markle” site and decided to have a go on her own. First she hired a website designer. When she showed the results to Rosenberg, his sharp and practiced eye immediately told him that this could be a problem.

  “I beg you, please don’t go down this path; use our graphic designer from Coveteur,” he told his friend. The result was TheTig.com, which featured Meghan’s own elegant handwriting, and a logo with a wine drop as the dot of the letter i. Meghan had chosen the name from an Italian wine called Tignanello. It is a wine born out of the vinter’s desire to make his product stand out in a sea of reds. Meghan liked that idea. Standing out. She would drink to that.

  For Meghan, Tignanello had a deeper meaning, representing that “aha” moment when she finally understood what components went to make a good wine, to give it length, finish, and legs. She wanted to carry that excitement of discovery into her website, writing, “The Tig is a hub for the discerning palate—those with a hunger for food, travel, fashion and beauty. I want to create a space to share all of these loves—to invite friends to share theirs as well, and to be the breeding ground for ideas and excitement—for an inspired lifestyle.” Frothy, fizzy, and fun, The Tig appealed to her fan base, who appreciated her elegant style and her classy persona. At the same time, she envisaged using The Tig to draw attention to more pertinent social and political issues as they affected women.

  Meghan, the aspirational girl next door, had created a site for other classy girls like her who wanted to join the party. With the help of Jake Rosenberg, fashion designer Wes Gordon, and designer Brett Heyman of the acrylic purse brand Edie Parker, who created a resin clutch labeled with “Ms. Tig” for Meghan, the stage was set. Finally, she also followed the advice of her costar Gina Torres, who had told her, using one of Meghan’s longtime nicknames, “Nutmeg, just leave room for magic.”

  When filming started again Meghan’s busy days didn’t leave a lot of time for magic. She would wake up at 4:15 a.m., down a cup of hot water with fresh squeezed lemon, and eat a bowl of oatmeal with sliced bananas and agave. Then she would let the dogs out in the backyard before driving her leased Audi SUV to the set, a mazelike replica of a law office, detailed down to the pink message pads and pens on secretaries’ desks, with pivoting glass walls that allowed the cameras to shoot any angle without glare. The New York skyline was a backdrop, and the location scenes were shot in Toronto, with establishing shots from the B-roll of Manhattan to give a sense of place. After early morning makeup and wardrobe, where clothes would be altered “on the inhale” to give them their tightest, sleekest fit, Meghan would wait in her trailer for her scene to be ready.

  With the birth of The Tig, Meghan had her hands full, making sure that the new arrival was fed, watered, and coddled. It was a full-time occupation, staying awake until the early hours cruising Instagram for ideas about what was cool, hot, interesting, and timely; writing all the short, snappy content herself; and hustling anyone and everyone to get celebrities to answer her emailed five questions that created the format for Tig Talk. Actor and singer Emily Rossum got the ball rolling by saying that if she was down to her last $10—one of the standard questions—she would sing in the street for money. Others like fashion guru Joe Zee and blogger Jessica Stam added their thoughts, while Meghan dragooned interior designer Natasha Baradaran to talk about her favorite city, Milan. She knew that big names drove traffic and would attract other celebrities to participate. One of the first people she wanted to have for Tig Talk was model-turned-entrepreneur Heidi Klum. She emailed everyone she knew, hoping to get an email or phone number for Klum or her assistant. In the end Heidi responded, as did “the queen,” who informed the actor that everything tasted better with a slug of vodka. Of course, the queen she was talking about was TV screen queen Elizabeth Hurley, who plays the conniving and occasionally cruel Queen Helena in the E! show The Royals, a tongue-in-cheek take on the House of Windsor.

  There were profiles of cool places to visit, interesting restaurants, and innovative chefs. This feature snagged her a new love. For years she had been eating at the Harbord Room, a small restaurant in downtown Toronto that opened in 2007. It was run by handsome celebrity chef, Cory Vitiello, who boasted that he cooked the best burger in town. The foodie in Meghan was intrigued.

  Over the past seven years, Vitiello had made a name for himself both in and out of kitchen. He had famously dated Canadian heiress and former politician Belinda Stronach, as well as eTalk’s talking head Tanya Kim, before turning his attention to Canadian TV gossip reporter Mary Kitchen. Now with The Tig, Meghan had a way to get to know him better. Much better. For Meghan, love was in the air. But, as she was to discover to her horror, not online.

  One evening Meghan was curled up with her laptop and a glass of wine in hand, preparing for an evening finding stories and people to populate The Tig. Her methodology was to delve into other lifestyle blogs and online news sites, follow links for inspiration, and then maybe poke around on Instagram using hashtags to guide her to potential Tig Tales. First, though, she wanted to just peek at the Suits pages on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and USANetwork.com. The latest episode had a story line featuring Rachel Zane front and center, and it was airing that night. She was curious to know the response to her character’s dalliance with an old boyfriend. When Meghan took another sip of her red wine she nearly choked as she scrolled through to the comments. “You dirty bird!” “I’m unfollowing you! How could you cheat on Mike?” “Whore…” And it just got uglier as the episode hit different time zones and aired across the country. Meghan deleted the worst of the comments from her own page and Twitter feed and blocked the abusive users. As the night wore on she was genuinely concerned, and not a little afraid, as more and more emoji of knives and guns appeared.

  Fans weren’t just angry at her character, Rachel Zane, for kissing her old boyfriend, Logan Sanders, played by Brendan Hines; they were furious at Meghan Markle. They believed that the actor was responsible for the story line, not the scriptwriters. As she pondered j
ust how fans could become so invested in a story, which was, after all, make believe, the comments kept heating up. Now there were death threats. “Meghan Markle, you slut. I wanna kill you.” This was out of control.

  The next morning she went to see Suits creator Aaron Korsh. This has to stop, she told him. “We have to scale this back.” The producers and writers had always been good to her, incorporating aspects of her own personality into Rachel’s character, making Rachel a foodie because Meghan enjoyed cooking and making her biracial because of Meghan’s own family background. This time the lines were becoming uncomfortably blurred, with fans unable to tell the real Meghan from the fantasy of Rachel. Besides, Meghan wasn’t that kind of girl. The story line going forward had Rachel more actively attempting to seduce her old boyfriend as she turned her back on Mike. That plot development didn’t feel right to Meghan, not least because it presaged a possible exit for her character, something for which she wasn’t yet prepared.

  “I like Rachel, I like playing Rachel, I like what she stands for. And this feels really out of character,” she said earnestly. It was a bold move, telling the show’s creator she didn’t like the direction her character was going. But she felt she owed it to the fans and to her own integrity to speak up. Plus she had been frightened by the aggressive vitriol and threats of violence.

  Editor Angela Catanzaro, who had worked on the series since the beginning, agreed with Meghan, telling Korsh, “I love Rachel, but if you put that scene on the air, I would never like her again. That’s not the kind of woman I would like working with my husband.”

  Korsh saw the wisdom in their words, and within an episode, Mike Ross and Rachel Zane’s romance, much like that of their star-crossed namesakes on Friends a decade earlier, was correcting itself and gearing up to be back on track. Panic over. At least for the time being.

  Meghan stared at her phone in disbelief. The inbox of her email was filling up almost faster than she could read the subject lines. Her site, The Tig, was proving to be more popular than she had ever imagined. At this early stage every email went directly to her mobile phone, and as Meghan quickly scrolled the ever-expanding list, one sender jumped out at her, the United Nations. It might just be a fund-raising appeal, but what the heck? Meghan opened the message and read the contents with growing surprise. The United Nations was asking her to consider becoming involved in their new gender equality program, #HeForShe. When Meghan dialed the number given in the email, the contact person at United Nations Women explained that they had read her short essay in The Tig regarding women’s independence to coincide with Independence Day. She had begun by writing: “Raise a glass to yourself today—to the right to freedom, to the empowerment of the women (and men) who struggle to have it, and to knowing, embracing, honoring, educating and loving yourself. On this day, and beyond, celebrate your independence.” She then went on to showcase the thoughts of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

  On the back of this Tig entry, UN officials wondered if she might want to work with the international organization on a new initiative on gender equality they were promoting.

  While she was honored, she also wanted to get an idea of what this project was all about, rather than blindly saying yes. “Why don’t I come and intern for you for week while we’re on hiatus?” she asked the staffer. “You know, answer phones, bring you coffee.” Within a few weeks surprised UN officials found themselves inducting Meghan into the bustling corridors of the New York–based institution. In truth it was rather more than making the coffee. She shadowed Elizabeth Nyamayaro, head of the UN #HeForShe movement to encourage men to support women in the quest for gender equality, and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, and sat in on meetings at the World Bank, the Clinton Foundation, and even the war room for UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon.

  She was assigned a seat on the front row along with TV presenter Wolf Blitzer, NGO director Gary Barker, and actor Kiefer Sutherland, as Harry Potter actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson made a rousing speech for men as well as women to join the #HeForShe campaign. Watson noted that at the present rate of progress it would be seventy-five years before women were paid the same as men for the same work and that it would take until 2086 before all teenage girls in rural Africa would receive a secondary education.

  During the launch of the campaign, Meghan experienced her very own Tig moment when she watched the interaction between the former president of Finland Tarja Halonen and a UN staffer. “Madame President, may I get you anything? Would you like you like water or a pen?” Halonen smiled and replied, “A lipstick.”

  It was something that Meghan connected to. She saw no contradictions between a woman running a country and still wearing lipstick—she could be feminine and a feminist at the same time. As she later wrote: “To be a breadwinner at work, and a bread baker with her kids at home.”

  At that time, before Donald Trump had entered the race for the presidency, one of her other feminine idols was businesswoman Ivanka Trump, who had her own jewelry and clothing line. She was thrilled when Ivanka agreed to fill in her simple questionnaire for a Tig Talk, and more thrilled when she accepted her invitation to meet for drinks and dinner the next time Meghan was in New York.

  Meghan gushed, “Don’t get me started on her jewelry collection: the late night ‘window shopping’ I have done on my computer, snuggled up in my bed with a glass of wine, staring longingly at the beautiful designs. And there are the shoes, the home collection, the clothing, and the natural extension of her brand with a kids’ collection—a smart choice given that she is now a proud mama. When we have drinks, I will make sure I order whatever she does—because this woman seems to have the formula for success (and happiness) down pat.”

  With well-known names like Ivanka Trump involved, her little engine that could, her nickname for her website, was gaining a head of steam. She was justifiably proud when her site was named Best of the Web in both Elle magazine and InStyle.

  She was, however, in need of help to stoke the boiler. Every post on The Tig had to be cross-posted to Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to increase traffic; luckily there was an app for that. Even better, there was now a person, Judy Meepos. Meepos, then the deputy editor of the Tech, Yeah! section of InStyle magazine, had gotten a lot of internet air kisses from Meghan in August when she had written a breathless profile of Markle and The Tig. Meghan decided to hire her, Meepos joining her site in October 2014.

  Meepos was not only responsible for social media but also, as she said, “wrote and edited daily postings, initiated collaborations and partnerships, and served as a market editor for posts and television.” The popularity of The Tig and Meghan’s account meant that after just six months her little engine was ready to earn its keep through e-commerce. She followed the lead of Jake Rosenberg and Coveteur in partnering with RewardStyle.com, an ecommerce site that, rather clumsily, billed itself as an “invitation-only end-to-end content monetization platform for top-tier digital style influencers and brands around the world”—or, in plain English, a clever way of helping upmarket blogs make money.

  The site RewardStyle was founded in 2011 by Amber Venz and future husband Baxter Box as a way for Amber to monetize her fashion blog. For a while their system worked like a dream. Bloggers created clickable links from their content that lead directly to retailers and brands. If a reader clicked through and made a purchase, the blogger earned commission, creating a semi-passive income stream.

  By the time Meghan had launched The Tig, Instagram was taking over as the preferred platform for influencers. While their system made it harder to buy products directly, clever web mavens worked their way around that difficulty.

  With The Tig in Meepos’s capable hands, Meghan boarded a plane headed to Dublin, where she had been asked to participate in the One Young World Summit, an international forum for young leaders of tomorrow. The biannual conference was the brain child of two advertising executives, David Jones and Kate Robinson, the duo aiming to “g
ather together the brightest young leaders from around the world, empowering them to make lasting connections to create positive change.” Robinson felt that Meghan had something to say and was popular with the student-aged audience. Not only would she be discussing global issues with young people, but she would be rubbing shoulders with humanitarian celebrities like Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first woman president; Sir Bob Geldof; Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan; and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador John Chau. At the event, held at Dublin Castle, she made a beeline for Ali Hewson, wife of rock star Bono, who had founded a socially conscious clothing line Edun and an ethical beauty line Nude, subjects which fascinated her.

  For her forum on gender equality she was with a high-powered panel who included lawyer Sabine Chalmers, General Electric senior vice president Beth Comstock, digital pioneer Michelle Phau, and film director Maya Sanbar. In the beginning Robinson, who chaired the discussion, was worried if Meghan would cope with a question-and-answer style forum. She came away pleasantly surprised at Meghan’s eloquence, saying, “It wasn’t your average actress stepping up and talking about gender equality. It was the real deal—very forthright, very confident and very un-celebrity.” Others in the audience were also impressed by her grasp of human rights and gender issues as well as her approachability and warmth. Human rights lawyer Phiwokuhle Nogwaza recalled: “She is really soft and gentle. She is friendly and very warm and engaging. It didn’t feel like I was speaking to someone from one of the biggest shows on TV. It was like talking to a regular girl. She knew the problems in detail, which I found incredible. She is humble and really down to earth.”

  She also had a real knack of mixing the glamour of celebrity with commitment to her humanitarian work, she and her chef boyfriend Cory Vitiello flying to Florida in early December for Art Basel Miami, an offshoot of the Swiss original. The now annual event, started in 2002, attracts seventy-seven thousand visitors a year, and the place to see and be seen was her usual stomping ground, Soho House.