Meghan Markle opened up about her time on the show in Deal or No Deal in 2006, saying that while she was thankful for the job, it didn’t make her feel ‘smart’. In a conversation with Paris Hilton on her podcast Archetypes, Meghan also addressed how she was “being reduced to this specific archetype” on the show.
On Tuesday morning, Spotify released the latest episode of the Duchess of Sussex’s podcast, Archetypes. At the beginning of the show, Meghan mentioned that she was flipping through channels and came across the show Deal or No Deal, where she used to be a “briefcase girl” in 2006. “This brought back a lot of memories,” Meghan said, adding that the show was not about acting but it was the only way she could pay bills while preparing for auditions.
She said, “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 also said that before the tapings of the show, models would line up for lashes, extensions and were given spray tan vouchers.
“There was a very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty — and not necessarily about brains,” Meghan said.
Meghan also recalled a vivid memory from working on the show about a show producer who couldn’t pronounce her name. “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, ‘Markle, suck it in! Markle, suck it in!’ Meghan said she finally left the show as she felt that she was being objectified on stage and ‘reduced to a specific archetype’. “I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage. I didn’t like being forced to be all looks and little substance, and that’s how it felt for me at the time — being reduced to this specific archetype,” she added.
Next, she spoke to Paris Hilton, who opened up about how she was slotted into the ‘bimbo’ tag. Paris mentioned that when she starred alongside Nicole Richie on the reality show The Simple Life, producers said they wanted Nicole to be “the troublemaker” and Paris to be “the rich, dumb blonde.” The heiress said she leaned into the character both on the show and in interviews.
Paris added that she got ‘stuck and lost’ in the character and she felt that the lines got blurred. She feels that she has come far from such stereotypes, as she is now an advocate against child abuse, particularly at residential schools. She said that it is ’empowering’ and that she has turned her pain into purpose. “I almost think that maybe God made me go through this and gave me this special gift so that one day I could be the hero that I needed when I was a little girl and help save these children from having to go through the torture that myself and so many others went through,” she added.
This is the sixth episode of Meghan’s podcast. Several prominent celebrities have featured on the show, including actors Constance Wu and Deepika Padukone.