Before she married Prince Harry and became the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle was a “briefcase girl” on the Howie Mandel-hosted game show Deal or No Deal. It’s a tale as old as time, really. Markle opened up about her experience holding the #24 briefcase in the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast with guest Paris Hilton.
“I had also studied international relations in college, and there were times I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina in Buenos Aires and being in the motorcade with the security of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain. Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite,” she said. Markle told Hilton that Deal or No Deal had a “very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty — and not necessarily about brains.” The Duchess continued:
“When I look back at that time, I’ll never forget this one detail — because moments before we’d get on stage, there was a woman who ran the show and she’d be there backstage, and I can still hear her. She couldn’t properly pronounce my last name at the time and I knew who she was talking to because she’d go, ‘Mar-kell, suck it in! Mar-kell, suck it in!’”
Markle eventually quit Deal or No Deal, and while she was “thankful” for the job, she didn’t appreciate how it made her feel, “which was not smart.” The Suits actress continued, “I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there. I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach knowing that I was more than what was being objectified on the stage.”
You can listen to the podcast below.
(Via People)