Meghan was excited. While she wasn’t that into art, preferring fashion, food, and wine, she welcomed the opportunity to network with a wider range of members and guests who were arriving at the Soho Beach House, a repurposed vintage hotel on the sand. She tried not to gawk as rap mogul Russell Simmons and actor and activist Rosario Dawson strolled by or take too much interest when Goldie Hawn’s daughter Kate Hudson waved at friends from a terrace. Ah, the thrill of arrival, of belonging. She had worked hard, she was on a top-rated show, and her blog was considered one of the best on the web. Miami Art Week, or at least the Soho Beach House version of it, would be hers!
Her great friend Markus Anderson, Soho House membership director, casually dressed in flip-flops and shorts, wandered over to say hello and brief them on the next few days of dancing, cocktails, and luxurious beauty treatments. This was life. A Bombay Sapphire gin gift basket awaited Meghan and Cory in their room, along with a fully stocked bar. The celebrity tent would a have full selection of tropically themed gin drinks. And then there were the sparkling wines and champagnes…
Markus Anderson is a great fixer and mixer. He has an instinct for putting strangers together who he thinks might gel. At lunch he placed Meghan next to Bahrain-born fashion designer Misha Nonoo. At the time she was an up-and-coming designer known as much for her marriage to art dealer Alexander Gilkes, friend of Princes William and Harry, as her maverick designs. Meghan and Misha got along famously, lunchtime drinks extending into evening cocktails. During the course of the afternoon they got to talking about her new collection, which was going to be unveiled at New York fashion week. Meghan would be on break from Suits. She would be there.
Hours later, Meghan was once again on a plane, this time headed for Spain, one of five countries she was due to visit on a whirlwind tour. This time there were no luxury hotels or smart cocktails. Instead, Meghan was taking part in the USO Holiday Tour, visiting American military bases in Spain, Italy, Turkey, Afghanistan, and England. Joining Meghan were eight-time USO tour veteran and country star Kellie Pickler and her songwriter husband, Kyle Jacobs; comedian Rob Riggle; Glee costar Dianna Agron; former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher; Washington Nationals pitcher Doug Fister; and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff army general Martin E. Dempsey and his wife, Deanie.
When the traveling troupe, who were joined by USO president J. D. Crouch and his wife Kristin, met at the Joint Base Andrews passenger terminal in Maryland on December 5, Deanie Dempsey told the assorted celebrities. “Embrace this experience. You will be so proud of our service members and their families.” Meghan was excited and a little apprehensive. Not only would she be flying aboard Air Force Two, specially commissioned for this tour, she would be meeting thousands of service members and their families during the trip. While she had done fan meet and greets before, it had never been on this scale or at this intensity.
After arriving in Rota, Spain, Meghan and her USO group toured the USS Donald K. Ross, an Aegis missile–equipped destroyer. They performed before an audience of two thousand service personnel and their families in a hangar on the base. Meghan, in a blue hardhat, posed with servicemen before going into her routine. She knew that she, Kelly Pickler, and Dianna Agron were carrying on a time-honored tradition, following in the steps of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, and Jayne Mansfield who had entertained the troops, providing a sweet taste of home, a reminder of why the troops did their jobs. Now things were rather different. There were women in the military and families on the bases, so goodbye cheesecake, hello folksy and funny. On stage she did one of her routines, giving a lighthearted talk about Suits before showing off her five-inch heels as Pickler and her band performed the signature song “Red High Heels.”
The USO tour group repeated their act in Vicenza, Italy, to soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and US Army Africa before heading to the air base at Incirlik, Turkey. Even though the base was several hundred miles from the battles raging in neighboring Syria, the atmosphere was tenser, the security tighter. Meghan smiled and tried to say more than “thank you” as she passed out cupcakes to the several hundred who gathered to watch Pickler and Jacobs perform country hits and the troupe do various comedy sketches.
The next morning the USO performers and their “chaperones” gathered on the tarmac to head to their most challenging gig, Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. This was the most isolated outpost, home to forty thousand military personnel and service members. “Bureaucrats, administrators, logisticians and thousands of International Security Assistance Force civilian contractors live at Bagram air base,” said British photographer Edmund Clark, who spent ten days there in 2013. “Unless you go out on patrol, you exist only on base.”
Surrounded by fencing and barbed wire, and reinforced by sandbags, with ground penetrating radar used to make sure enemy fighters don’t use tunnels to break into the coalition base, Bagram was relatively safe. Except for the occasional Taliban rocket that made it over the walls.
Meghan and her fellow performers joined service members for a holiday meal before they took to the stage. Meghan turned her back to the audience and snapped a quick selfie of the uniformed military members, then went into her inspirational speech: “I’ve never wanted to be a lady who lunches, I’ve always wanted to be a woman who works…”
Once again cupcakes were passed out, as fighter jets and C-130 transport planes taxied outside. Meghan and the others posed with groups of service members in front of a netting-draped wall. While the celebrities put on their practiced smiles for the cameras, the troops could barely muster a grin between them. Unlike the stars who had swooped in for a couple of days, they had months more of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by bursts of frenzied action to look forward to. It was a poignant interaction.
Their final stop in Cambridge, England, was a perfect way to decompress. Before their final show, airmen at the base gave the USO troupe a tour of the military hardware at their command, including F-15E Strike Eagles and CV-22 Ospreys, a helicopter-plane hybrid. Meghan spent her time chatting with families, paying special attention to the children. That evening, the Dempseys hosted a thank-you gathering for the USO performers at a Cambridge pub, the Anchor, with the performers in turn warmly thanking the Dempseys and the USO for the privilege of being able to entertain the troops. Before the evening ended, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serenaded the group. “If only we could have gotten him to do that in Bagram!” someone joked.
That was to be Meghan’s first and last USO tour. She expressed her feelings in an Instagram post where she showed a picture from the tour and then a heartfelt caption: “In gratitude to our troops, and the opportunity to thank them personally for their sacrifice and service. Such an honor and feeling very, very blessed.”
8
Seeing Both Sides Now
She had her passport. Check. Her bag of homeopathic remedies. Check. Her vaccines, including hepatitis A and B, typhoid, rabies, and tetanus, were up to date. Check. She had super-strength mosquito repellent. Check. A bag of long-sleeved light clothes. Check. Meghan was ready for a very grown-up journey, embarking on her first ever fact-finding mission on behalf of the United Nations. Though her visit to Rwanda in the heart of Africa was to focus on issues surrounding gender equality, it was also a chance for United Nations officials to evaluate the Suits star to see if she was able or willing to make the commitment as a Goodwill Ambassador for the international organization. A UN official pointed out that Meghan’s involvement as a gender equality advocate was at the level of an informal collaboration.
In early January 2015, when she landed in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, her first stop was to be introduced to the nation’s female parliamentarians. Almost a week of meetings had been scheduled to discuss the role of women in the nation’s democracy and the challenges facing Rwanda going forward. Time and again the point was made that only when women were treated equally in the home, at school, and in the workplace could they enjoy rich, fulfilling lives and give back t
o the community. The underrepresentation of women in the top jobs, a feature not just of life in developing countries but in her own nation, was an issue that always concerned her. The UN was celebrating the fact that Rwanda was the first and at the time the only country to have a female majority in the nation’s parliament, with almost two-thirds of the seats taken by women.
It was a great step forward. Meghan complimented Rwandan president Paul Kagame. “We need more men like that,” she said.
Though Kagame has his critics, this was a truly remarkable turnaround for a country which, just twenty years earlier, had suffered an appalling genocide. The figures were astonishing, with approximately 1 million people killed, most brutally hacked to death with machetes, and 2 million displaced into refugee camps. Meghan traveled to see the other side of Rwanda herself, the actor and her UN team traveling by van to Gihembe refugee camp, the sprawling collection of huts studded into the lush green hillside now home to seventeen thousand people who had fled the violence in the wartorn Democratic Republic of the Congo. She wanted to speak to the women at the grassroots and find out how they coped with a life that was meant to be temporary but had become permanent. Inevitably, every visit by a celebrity, even if the local population has no clue who they are, attracts a crowd, and Meghan posed happily with dozens of curious and excited local children.
As she traveled back over the bumpy dirt road, past the grazing goats and the lush green fields, she idly checked her emails, amazed that the signal was better here than in some parts of Toronto and Los Angeles. While she bounced along the road she learned that she had been invited as a guest to the BAFTAs, the British Academy film awards, which take place a few weeks before the Oscars.
Her management company told her that she would be sponsored by a high-end jewelry company that would fly her directly from Kigali to London, where she would be whisked into hair and makeup before being poured into a gown. “No,” screamed her gut. It had always been a dream to attend the BAFTAs, but she couldn’t shift emotional gears that quickly, from the purpose-driven work she had been doing all week in Rwanda to the polished glamour of an awards show. There would be other BAFTAs, other red carpets. But for now there was only Rwanda. As she later wrote, “This type of work is what feeds my soul.”
Of course, she was not the first nor will she be the last celebrity to struggle to reconcile the air-kissing superficiality of Hollywood with the stark reality of life for so many in the developing world. Oscar-winning actor and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie is a vivid example of a star who manages to straddle both worlds. The more she became involved with her humanitarian mission, the more she had to learn to switch off and switch on. Just like acting, but in real life.
Shortly after her return from Rwanda Meghan was front and center for New York Fashion Week in February. She was now a front-row girl, watching the models at the show of her fashion mentor Wes Gordon, but she was also photographed reviewing Misha Nonoo’s stylish collection. Her look was a revelation inspired in part by the neon swirls and scribbles of British artist Tracy Emin. The theme was Meghan’s cri de coeur: the empowerment of women. Nonoo had the models do their hair themselves, pulling it back into ponytails with a minimum of product and as many bobby pins as they liked. Meghan appreciated the symbolism and thought Nonoo’s collaboration with the orchestra Decoda “so classy and beautiful.” “It just set the tone,” she enthused.
She was still raving about the collection when she appeared on Joe Zee’s streaming fashion program on Yahoo! Style. The duo went back years, from the time they first met in 2011 drinking and shooting the breeze until late into the night. What Joe liked about Meghan was that she was decidedly un-Hollywood; she appreciated people other than herself.
In between the glitz and the glamour her advocacy for UN Women continued, undertaking further meetings at the World Bank and the Clinton Foundation and learning more about the facts and figures of gender bias in the developing world and, for that matter, her own country. While she had always had a thoughtful side, these days her friends noticed that she seemed more considered, more seasoned, and more appreciative too of the advantages she had been given and the opportunity to make a difference. In the days when she was scrabbling to gain a foothold on the elusive ladder of success, her time was taken up not with causes but with endless auditions, simply trying to make a living. Her acting success coupled with her voice on The Tig had given her the opportunity to focus on the issues that concerned her. Gender equality had always been near the top of her priority list: witness her first letter-writing campaign regarding the advertising for dishwashing soap.
She traveled to London to support actor Emma Watson in her #HeForShe initiative, the Harry Potter actor holding a live Facebook event to engage her fans in the campaign. Then it was Meghan’s turn to take center stage in front of a friendly but awe-inspiring audience. Meghan took a deep breath and focused. She was about to hit a personal milestone. Her mom and friends were there to support her in front of global luminaries like UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, UN executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, actor Patricia Arquette, her UN mentor Elizabeth Nyamayaro as well as Hillary Clinton (who, ironically, the same day overshadowed Meghan’s remarks with her comments about her controversial use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state).
On March 10, a day that she will always remember, the LA Valley Girl was about to speak before the United Nations as the newly appointed UN Women Advocate for Leadership and Political Participation.
Understandably Meghan’s voice sounded a little higher, as the normally nerveless actor opened her speech: “I am proud to be a woman and a feminist, and this evening I am extremely proud to stand before you on this significant day, which serves as a reminder to all of us of how far we’ve come, but also amid celebration a reminder of the road ahead…”
She told her story of the LA riots, her schoolroom, Ivory dishwashing liquid, and the chauvinist little boys at her school, of how she wrote to Procter & Gamble, women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, journalist Linda Ellerbee, and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. The putative presidential candidate smiled at that. She spoke inspiringly of how her letter made a difference and how she felt that she had helped, in her small way, to make the change.
She took aim at the weak representation of women in the world’s parliaments, citing data showing the number of women lawmakers had increased only 11 percent since 1995. “Eleven percent in twenty years. Come on. This has to change,” she said to applause.
As Meghan concluded, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon led the standing ovation. Could there be anything better? It was quite the accolade, one that would resonate as her speech was played in numerous schoolrooms around America, inspiring and provoking a new generation of young girls to make a difference.
“Meghan Markle has helped raise global attention to gender equality issues,” said a spokeswoman for UN Women afterward. “UN Women trusts and hopes that in her new and important public role she will continue to use her visibility and voice to support the advancement of gender equality.”
She appeared to have it all: she was a young, beautiful, articulate campaigner with a tasteful, on-trend website and a successful TV career. Curiously, her speech to UN Women seemed to be the high-water mark of her involvement with the international organization. Once they officially appointed her an advocate, it seems that her charity work on their behalf tapered off considerably.
Nonetheless the invitations to represent the issues she cared about or to appear on chat shows now started to come in thick and fast. As a spokesperson for gender equality and a cable TV star, it was only natural for her to be asked to host the Women in Cable Telecommunications 2015 signature luncheon. Maria E. Brennan, WICT’s chief executive, explained the choice, saying: “Meghan is a sterling example of someone who not only plays a strong female character, she is one in real life.”
Chat show host Larry King invited her back on his show—previously she had talked Suits with Patr
ick J. Adams—to talk about her role as a women’s rights advocate. Meghan was proving her skills at diplomacy, deftly deflecting Larry King’s question about which country had the worst record of human rights by saying that we have to take into account cultural differences.
Hand in hand with her humanitarian work were the undoubted perks of being a glamorous TV star. As her celebrity status rose, so did her price tag. She was learning that she could charge a fee just for turning up. Turbo-charging these opportunities for her was Kruger Cowne World, a speaking, branding, and hosting agency with headquarters in Chelsea, Central London, and offices in Santa Monica.
The agency, founded in 1999, represents a whole range of celebrities such as Virgin boss Richard Branson, Cher, and Sir Bob Geldof as well as charities like One Young World, where Meghan had spoken. The skin care line Clarins and the Pakistani poet Fatima Bhutto were also clients who were frequently name-checked by the actor. Meghan’s rate? Twenty thousand dollars and up per appearance.
She had entered a glorious, gilded world and was aware of the subdued hysteria of her day-to-day existence. She wrote: “I work long hours, I travel for Press, my mind memorizes. My mind spins. My days blur. My nights are restless. My hair is primped, my face is painted, my name is recognized, my star meter is rising, my life is changing.”
In March, just before her speech to the United Nations, she found herself on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. The visit, sponsored by Elle magazine, was a chance for her to discover her roots—and to enjoy some of the island’s fabulous but oft-neglected cuisine. Malta held a special place in her heart; her paternal great-great-grandmother Mary Merrill, the daughter of Mary Bird, a former housemaid to the British royal family and a British soldier, had been born here. She was eager to know more. When she told one friend she was going to the island, they noted: “When you go to Malta, everyone will look like you.” As she explored the island, it seemed her friend’s prediction was spot on.
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