Meghan Markle appears as briefcase girl on Deal or No Deal

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The latest episode of Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast was released on Tuesday, October 18, titled “Breaking down ‘The Bimbo’”. The Duchess of Sussex spoke to media personality Paris Hilton about the term often used to describe an attractive but unintelligent woman. Before the two 41-year-old women spoke to each other, Meghan told her listeners how watching an episode of Deal or No Deal brought back a lot of memories, especially the way she felt valued for her beauty but not for her brains.

She explained that she had been scrolling through channels on her TV when she stumbled across an episode of Deal or No Deal, the show she had spent a short time working on while she attempted to break into Hollywood. 

Between 2006 and 2007 – when she was about 25 years old – Meghan featured in 34 episodes of the NBC TV show, which was then presented by American comedian and actor Howie Mandel. 

On Deal or No Deal – which was axed in the UK in 2016 – contestants choose between around 20 boxes, each containing different amounts of money. Across the pond, the boxes were instead briefcases that were be opened by beautiful women.

The LA-born star told how, having studied a double major in Theatre and International Relations at Northwestern University, she managed to land a job on Deal or No Deal. She felt lucky to be able to pay the bills, have health insurance, and be part of a union as a result, and found the whole thing a “fascinating” experience. 

She said: “My experience on the show, which included holding said briefcase alongside 25 other women doing the same, it was, for me, fascinating. I had studied acting in college at Northwestern University and, like a lot of the other women standing on stage with me, acting was what I was pursuing.

“So while Deal or No Deal wasn’t about acting, I was still really grateful as an auditioning actress to have a job that could pay my bills. I had income, I was part of the union, I had health insurance – it was great.”

However, Meghan said she felt as though the role only valued her beauty — not her brains — and had essentially “reduced” her to being a “bimbo”. She said the other women working on the show would wear fake eyelashes and hair extensions; they were given fake tan vouchers and padding was put in their bras. 

The mother of two claimed that this was because all the women had to look a specific way, adding how she would “never forget” that one of the show’s producers – who could not pronounce “Markle” properly – would allegedly order her to suck in her stomach before filming. 

It was a completely different experience from her time as an intern at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when she was just 20 years old: “I had also studied International Relations in college and there were times when I was on set, at Deal or No Deal, and thinking back to my time as an intern at the US Embassy in Argentina and Buenos Aires, and being in the motorcade with the secretary of the treasury at the time, and being valued specifically for my brain. 

“Here I was being valued for something quite the opposite. You have to imagine, just to paint the picture for you, that for the tapings of the show, all the girls, we would line up and there were different stations for having your lashes put on, or your extensions put in, or the padding in your bra.

“We were even given spray tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty and not necessarily about brains.”

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She continued: “And when I look back at that time, I will never forget this one detail because moments before we would get on stage there was a woman who ran the show and she would be there, backstage, and I can still hear her. She couldn’t properly pronounce my name at the time and I knew who she was talking to because she would go ‘Markle, suck it in’.” 

Meghan eventually quit the gameshow as although she was thankful for the steady income, she did not like how it made her feel.

She added: “I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there.”

The Duchess said she left with a feeling that she knew she was more than just being “objectified on the stage”, and that she did not like feeling forced to be “all looks and little substance”. 

You can listen to Archetypes on Spotify.

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