Royals at War

by Dylan Howard

  However, when Meghan and Trevor began dating in 2005, both their careers were still very much in first gear. A year later, Meghan hadn’t managed to get much further than the odd walk-on cameo here and there, on daytime TV shows and low-budget TV movies. She fervently hoped her hotshot new boyfriend would help change all that. Meanwhile, Trevor’s big, breakthrough project, a humorous action caper feature called Zoom, had not only flopped, it had crashed monumentally. Its lead, Tim Allen, was nominated for a Razzie award, for Worst Actor. For a hungry film producer, this was not the best start to a career.

  Meanwhile, Meghan was waiting tables in a Beverly Hills restaurant to make ends meet. But the pair knew Hollywood well enough to know that perseverance and luck were the keys to success. Meghan was also aware that her mixed heritage was equally capable of being a negative, as well as a plus point. “I wasn’t black enough for the black roles and I wasn’t white enough for the white ones,” she wrote in Elle, in 2015. Again, she began wondering what sort of future she had in show business and how she would find success. However, she was at least happy in love, with her partner, whom she lovingly referred to as “Trevity-Trev-Trev.”

  By now, Meghan and Trevor were living together. “She was definitely a curator of a beautiful life,” recounted Ninaki Priddy. “She liked to throw dinner parties with beautiful menus that complemented flavor profiles with amazing wines.”

  Priddy, who still enjoyed a sister-like closeness to Meghan, remembers the fairy-tale romance between Meghan and Trevor. “She loved him. He was very doting. They were a great support system for each other through difficult times, like the death of her grandma, her father’s mother, Grandma Markle. Meghan was really close to her.”

  Suddenly, a lucky break came her way. Meghan Markle—the prize-winning pride of Immaculate Heart, the double-major in Theatre and International Relations, who had built up an impressive resume of charity works and interned with the Civil Service, who had wowed audiences with her dynamic stage presence, and who had worked around the clock to advance her career—was invited to become a high-heeled, miniskirted, smiling assistant on the popular TV show Deal or No Deal. It was, tragically, the best thing she’d been offered to date.

  Over 2006 and 2007, in thirty-four episodes, Meghan appeared on the popular show as a briefcase model. She beamed beside one of twenty-six numbered briefcases onstage, as a contestant tried to choose a winning one or chickened out and accepted a low cash prize.

  But for the briefcase girls, the rewards were fairly decent and consistent. Meghan would have made eight hundred dollars per episode, and when the show was in full production swing, she could clear over twenty thousand dollars a week. She earned every cent of her paycheck, though—for all the glamour and excitement of the show, Meghan was standing in high heels for hours in a freezing TV studio, going through endless takes and keeping a professional smile plastered to her face. The girls were decked out in skimpy, revealing clothes, without any lines to speak of. The ardent feminist in Meghan was appalled and humiliated. But it was a reasonably well-paying gig and afforded her chunks of downtime during which she could travel with her jet-setting partner.

  Plus, there were other compensations. Being in the public eye on a popular show on a weekly basis was doing Meghan’s profile no harm. Unlike most of the girls on the show, Meghan kept a low profile offscreen, avoiding the C-list Hollywood party scene that many of her fellow briefcase girls were involved in. The women attracted their share of attention, with the likes of Donald Trump visiting the set a few times to leer at Meghan and her friends. One fellow briefcase girl, Tameka Jacobs, told Andrew Morton: “He was a creep, supercreepy. But some girls were attracted to his money and power, so took his number.”

  During this time, Meghan scored a small role on CSI: NY but little else of note. It rankled her, said one friend, that while she was scuffling for any role she could get, Trevor was producing another comedy movie, this time starring Robin Williams and Mandy Moore. Despite this, he had nothing for his future wife. Meghan’s innate sense of dignity and propriety prevented it from becoming a major deal, but at the same time … the man she had hoped for so much from was delivering so little.

  As 2006 shaded into 2007, some glimmers of hope began emerging. Meghan met an agent, Donna Rosenstein, who was influential at ABC. She got Meghan an audition for a planned crime thriller, The Apostles. The character was Kelly Calhoun, a former hooker who’d married a born-again Christian policeman, played by Keith Robinson, living a superficially respectable life in Southern California. Speaking some years later, Robinson remembered his erstwhile screen wife with affection. “Sometimes you don’t jive with every actor or actress you work with, but with her, it was very seamless,” he told a BBC radio interviewer. “She was very into it, very giving. It wasn’t a hard sell for me at all. We had some pretty intense scenes. I think we did a pretty good job. She was very laid-back.”

  It was a meaty role, with potential for Meghan to explore her full range. She shot a pilot, felt positive, prayed for good news, and then—Fox studios declined the pilot episode in June 2007. Despite having told herself to stay cautious, Meghan was devastated. So close … yet so far. Again. As her husband’s career began to flourish—he was now coproducing a Bradley Cooper/Sandra Bullock vehicle, All About Steve—it looked as if Meghan’s would never get going at all.

  Although The Apostles hadn’t been picked up by the network, Meghan’s ease on set and natural screen presence didn’t go unnoticed. She soon got a part in another pilot, this time a mafia comedy for ABC, Good Behavior. Unfortunately, this too met the same fate as The Apostles.

  Trevor’s career was bouncing from strength to strength. While Meghan continued picking up small television roles and the occasional bit part in a movie, he was being tipped by the Hollywood Reporter magazine as one of the faces to watch in 2009. The accolade finally spurred Trevor into throwing a few small roles to his girlfriend, in middling movies like Remember Me and The Candidate. But Meghan failed to cut through, languishing deep in the closing credits.

  Around this time, Meghan began writing an anonymous blog, Working Actress, which was a litany of self-pity and maudlin reflections from an actress who was clearly not making her mark. Only outed as the author some years later, it was a sobering look into a world of days spent miserably huddling beneath the duvet, beaten down, confused, and downcast by the endless stream of rejection: “I’ve spent many days curled up in bed with a loaf of bread and some wine. A one-woman pity party. It’s awful and ridiculous.”

  “THIS IS THE ONE”

  I had no idea that this late August morning of 2011 would change my life. Suits stole my heart. It’s the Goldilocks of my acting career—where finally I was just right.

  —MEGHAN MARKLE

  In 2010, Meghan’s agent, Nick Collins, sent her the script for a new drama that he felt had some potential. Meghan was mildly excited, but cautious, after her recent slew of disappointments. The show was to be called A Legal Mind. Meghan was asked to audition for the part of a kick-ass paralegal in a high-pressured corporate law firm, who was also the love interest for the main character, Mike Ross, played by Patrick J. Adams. Aaron Korsh, the showrunner, wanted the character of Rachel Zane to be a tough cookie, in a hypertestosterone world of corporate law, a sassy woman who could deal with the guys in her office yet still manage to evoke a blend of inner vulnerability and grit.

  One hot August morning, Meghan turned up for her audition. She was dressed in a casual, everyday outfit. When she arrived, she quickly determined that her getup wasn’t quite right. Panic. Dashing out of the studio offices, she rushed into the nearest store she could see—a branch of H&M—and grabbed a simple, black $35 dress. Running back to the offices, she managed to get changed and audition.

  It was a disaster, she wailed on her phone on the way home. She’d screwed up. She hadn’t nailed it at all. Her agent soothed her, as he had soothed countless other clients on their way home from auditions, convinced they’d messed up. He
ignored Meghan’s pleas to call the producers and arrange a fresh audition. He’d heard that a lot, too. Nothing could be done now, he counseled, just try and forget it and look forward to the next audition. There’d be more—eventually.

  But Meghan knew in her heart that her days of auditioning for roles she wanted were starting to run out. She didn’t know how much longer her nervous system could cope with the constant emotional grind of preparing, showing up, undergoing all manner of indignities and requests, before the inevitable rejection arrived in her inbox. Or, in many ways worse, getting a role—only for the entire production to be canceled after a harrowing shoot for the pilot.

  But unbeknownst to Meghan, Jeff Wachtel, the president of USA Network, and Aaron Korsh were in fact blown away. Meghan’s presence and chemistry with her costar Patrick J. Adams had crackled on tape. She brought that essential cocktail of qualities to the character that exceeded anything anyone else had managed to impart. Her striking appearance, her innate professionalism, her blend of charisma, steel, and grace all coalesced into Rachel Zane. They had found their perfect actress. Talking to writer Sam Kashner years later about the audition, Aaron Korsh recalled: “We all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, this is the one.’ I think it’s because Meghan has the ability to be smart and sharp, but without losing her sweetness.”

  On August 24, it was announced that Meghan had the role and the pilot would begin shooting in New York that autumn. She was elated but thoughtful. This had happened many times before. Would the show make it past the all-important pilot?

  In the meantime, there was more excitement in Meghan’s life. Immediately after Meghan had wrapped the ninety-minute pilot in Manhattan, Trevor whisked his girlfriend off on holiday, to Belize. There, a diamond solitaire ring and a typically Trevity-Trev-Trev proposal—half-chaotic, half-laughing, but loving and sincere—charmed Meghan utterly. She squealed a delighted yes.

  The couple’s joy was complete when, the following January, it was confirmed that the USA Network would commission the show, now named Suits, and shooting would begin that April in Toronto.

  THE RING RETURNED TO SENDER

  In 2011, two life-changing events took place in Meghan’s life. First, Suits debuted on June 23, to widespread critical acclaim. Meghan was singled out for praise for her portrayal of Rachel Zane—a sparkling presence, fizzing with energy and sexual tension with her costar. She was now what she had always dreamed of being—a bona fide star in her own right, after years of minor roles, failed pilots, dashed hopes, and broken dreams.

  The show soon gathered a dedicated following that tuned in week after week to keep up with the high-powered legal drama and, of course, the twists and turns of Rachel Zane’s on-off romance with her unpredictable colleague, Patrick Ross. The steamy scenes between them inevitably led to speculation around the actors’ real-life relationship. (Despite their sizzling on-screen chemistry, it was resolutely platonic.)

  The wedding of Meghan Markle and Trevor Engelson, at the Jamaican port of Ocho Rios, took place on September 10, 2011, a day of friends, family, sunshine, drinks, laughter, and much love. Busy shooting Suits, Meghan had turned over most of the organization to a professional wedding planner, who was given a generous budget for a four-day party at the town’s Jamaica Inn. It certainly would not have been cheap—the Jamaican Inn’s custom marriage packages start at $1,500, and then there was the Herculean task of arranging family and friends’ flights and accommodation.

  Meghan’s wedding dress was a long, white, strapless floor-length gown with a short V-plunge, accessorized with an encrusted silver belt. (Coincidentally, the same year, Kate Middleton wore a similar design for her wedding to Prince William.)

  Meghan kept things simple, with some dark eyeliner and natural lipstick, and wore a gold bangle that, in due course, was joined by her wedding ring. Trevor, meanwhile, was cool and breezy, in a white shirt with matching trousers.

  The couple was married in a rapid ceremony on the beach, the bride’s hair still wet from the swimming pool. They’d written their own vows. Once the short ceremony was over, everyone set about getting pleasantly oiled on copious quantities of wine and spirits. There were “human wheelbarrow” races across the sand and later that night, a jolly dance with the couple held aloft on chairs, in honor of Trevor’s Jewish heritage. Three more days and nights of partying followed, with guests including Meghan’s immediate family, close friends, and some of the cast and crew from Suits. After the celebrations were finally done, Trevor and Meghan flew home to Los Angeles for some quality time together. This was all the more important, as Suits had been confirmed for a second season, and Meghan would soon be jetting back off to Toronto, where filming took place. The happy couple faced a future in which they would be living and working in different cities. After seven years together, the pair had committed to each other for life, at a time when their personal fortunes were twisting and turning with increasing velocity.

  Ninaki Priddy’s ringside seat to Trevor and Meghan’s marriage afforded her a unique perspective on the pair’s internal dynamics. “After the wedding, it was like a light switched off. There’s Meghan Before Fame and Meghan After Fame.”

  Meghan started to fully embrace her notoriety as the filming of the second season of Suits got underway. The crackling sexual tension between Rachel Zane and Mike Ross had fans hooked, alongside the brilliantly crafted story lines and gripping plots. Furthermore, as the show’s writers evolved Rachel’s backstory and introduced her biracial heritage into the mix, she became something of a poster girl, when leading characters of color were still a rare sight on mainstream television dramas. Meghan was encouraged by the studio to develop her own brand, such as launching her Instagram account, which reflected not only her hectic filming schedule, but a carefully curated selection of images that showed off her esoteric reading lists, her globetrotting life, food, fashion, and everything else that went into creating Brand Meghan. She soon attracted a huge following, with judicious use of hashtags, links, and likes. Soon, Meghan had an enviable online presence. Marketers and big brands began to sit up and take notice.

  Like many people who have struggled and slogged to achieve success, its arrival turned Meghan’s head. As her fame grew, old friends such as Ninaki Priddy noticed how the actress’s behavior was getting markedly more selfish.

  “The tone of her voice, her mannerisms, the way she laughed—didn’t seem real to me anymore,” she recognized. “By season two of Suits, she was turning down lunch with us because she said she’d be recognized. I felt if I questioned her behavior, I’d be left on the outside.”

  Ninaki noticed also that Meghan expected friends to change their own plans to fit in with hers, or to drop prearranged appointments or engagements to accommodate Meghan’s. It raised eyebrows with her old gang, and there was a feeling that Meghan’s success was going to her head in no small way. But also, as with any old friends, there was a tolerance and loving acceptance. Privately they thought she was being difficult. She’d struggled for years, so she would return to normality. It would be OK, eventually. “Wouldn’t it?” questioned one pal.

  To Trevor, it was becoming increasingly obvious that his own schedule would also have to bend to his wife’s a little more than he had anticipated. As Meghan’s filming got underway, he found himself having to travel to Toronto each weekend, to spend time with her. “It’s not up to me to speak for Trevor, but I know he was traveling to Toronto every few weeks,” recalled Ninaki. “[He] would have walked the earth to make their marriage work.”

  Still, the couple managed to spend some quality time together engaged in their favorite pastime of traveling. In late 2011, they rented a campervan and took off around New Zealand on a low-key adventure, which provided plenty of cozy romantic moments.

  Then there was the dog. In 2013, Meghan engaged her friends and Suits colleagues to petition a local dog rescue center to allow her to take an abandoned pup. Ninaki was one of the people cc’ed on Meghan’s begging emails to the adopt
ion center.

  “She’d fallen in love with [the dog], but found someone else wanted the dog, too,” Priddy recalled. “So she emailed the pet adoption people and explained how she could provide a great life for it. She spoke of what a great time the dog would have in the Suits family. I felt that she was playing the Suits card to try to get what she wanted.”

  Whatever swayed the center’s decision, Meghan successfully adopted the Labrador pup, whom she named Bogart and who would become a regular star of Meghan’s Instagram stories. Two years later, in 2015, Bogart would be joined by another pooch, a rescue beagle mix whom she named Guy.

  While Meghan continued to thrive and flourish in Toronto, Trevor was continuing to expand his own operations, opening up a New York office so he could reach Toronto quicker. But his easygoing personality, which had always been at odds with Meghan’s controlled perfection, was beginning to severely impact Meghan.

  In his biography of Markle, Meghan: A Hollywood Princess, author Andrew Morton wrote that Markle effectively froze husband Trevor out of her life while her star was rising in Toronto. Quoting a friend of the pair’s, he reported: “[Engelson] went from cherishing Meghan to feeling like he was a piece of something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.”

  Morton also wrote that, as Markle gained professional success, she left the home she and Engleson shared, taking a blender with her, to move to Toronto to film Suits, because of his “scattered approach to life.”

  Meghan’s friend, actress Abby Wathen, concurred, concluding the Suits star simply felt the relationship wasn’t right for her anymore.

  “She always knew she would be successful, she just knew it,” she said. “She knows what she wants and she gets it. We both went through divorce, so we bonded on that too. I was destroyed, but she was empowered. She took her power back. She moved on.”