Meghan Markle Deep Dive, Part One: From Struggling Actress to Meeting Harry

Back Row with Amy Odell

This episode traces Meghan Markle's life from her Los Angeles upbringing to her pivotal moments in Hollywood before meeting Prince Harry. Host Amy

Key takeaways

• At age 11, Meghan wrote a letter to Procter & Gamble about sexist dishwashing commercials, earning her a spot on Nick News.
• She worked as briefcase girl #24 on Deal or No Deal in 2006, later describing the role as uncomfortable and heavily objectifying.

Main topics

• Meghan Markle's childhood & family dynamics
• Early acting career & Deal or No Deal

Notable quotes

"I wasn't black enough for the black roles and I wasn't white enough for the white one, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn't book a job."

Conclusion

The episode offers a chronological, media-savvy breakdown of Meghan Markle's pre-monarchy

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have returned to the UK to live. This after their splashy move to Montecito and leaving the royal family officially six years ago. After they left the royal family, they tried to make it work in Hollywood with podcasts, Netflix shows. Harry published his splashy memoir, Spare. So what's going on and how did they get to this point? I find this couple endlessly fascinating. Meghan herself has emerged as something of a style icon. People love what she wears. The pieces sell out sort of like when Kate Middleton wears something and then it flies off the racks and you can't buy it anymore. So I wanted to do a deep dive today into Meghan Markle. Who is she? Where does she come from? How did she get to the point where she was excited to marry Prince Harry and be a part of the royal family to feeling like that didn't work for her? To go deep today into those questions, I invited my friend Justin Ravitz, former editor at Us Weekly and Hello Magazine. He has interviewed Prince Harry and covered Meghan and Harry together and worked with their PR people who are no longer working with them. But he got an inside view into how they operate and how they deal with the media. So I asked him to join me today for this deep dive. A lot of the research I did comes from the excellent book, The Palace Papers by Tina Brown. I really like how she provides insight into how this world works. I think she does it better than anybody. So we'll be quoting her ahead, but you should definitely check out her book. It is a really entertaining and engrossing read. And we'll be talking about Justin's experiences working with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's teams as well. The first part of this podcast will be available for free. To listen to the full thing, go to backrow.net slash subscribe, become a premium subscriber to the newsletter and you will get podcast access included. Or if you just want the audio content, you can go premium on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This is an independent show. Backrow Speaker 1 (1:58) is Speaker 2 (1:58) primarily funded by paying subscribers who make this work possible. I'm Amy O'Dell and this is the Backrow Podcast. Today, it's Meghan Markle's story. A deep dive into what her story can tell us about the monarchy, the media, and celebrity today. Speaker 2 (2:16) So I'm here with my bestie, Justin Ravitz. It's so fun to pod with you again. I Speaker 1 (2:22) know. I've been dying to come back. I'm glad we finally have a reason. Speaker 2 (2:25) Welcome back to Back Row. So previously, we talked about Taylor Swift after her wedding. We did the biggest narratives, and you shared some really great, I think, fresh insight about how Taylor Swift engages with the media and the types of narratives that someone like that kind of gets out into the public and how they operate. And I thought that was so much fun. Who else could we talk about? And Meghan Markle is in the news because she and Prince Harry have just moved back to the UK. So I thought that we could kind of go chronological. Speaker 1 (3:04) And Speaker 2 (3:04) I want to tell Meghan's story. And before we did this podcast, I went back to the palace papers by Tina Brown. who is so fun to read on anything royals related. Speaker 1 (3:18) This book came out Speaker 2 (3:20) in 2022. I think it was a big hit. But she talked about a number of key royal women like Queen Elizabeth and Diana and Kate Middleton and Meghan. Speaker 1 (3:31) I love Tina's The Diana Chronicles, Diana Diaries, something. That's one Speaker 2 (3:36) of my favorite books. Yeah. So Speaker 1 (3:38) good. I love the Vanity Fair Diaries as well. But I should read the Royal Diaries or whatever they're called. But I've read. excerpt. I'm very aware. I've done the clip notes. I've talked to you about this, talked to my partner about it. So yes. Speaker 2 (3:49) Well, she's a really good guide to the world of the British monarchy and how it functions. And I think why Meghan didn't fit within it, I guess, which is not to say that Meghan didn't experience racism and that institution is not deeply problematic and needs to modernize. because it is and does, but she has really good analysis. So maybe you can start us out by reading. Can you read this from the introduction of her book? Speaker 1 (4:24) Okay, I'm not going to read it in a posh British Tina Brown accent. Please don't. Speaker 2 (4:29) I'm sure you do a good one, but please don't. I'm Speaker 1 (4:31) tempted to, but I'm not going to do it. Okay. the notion that the countryside rooted duty obsessed tradition bound senior members of the british royal family bear any resemblance at all to hollywood celebrities is head explodingly off track celebrities flare and burn out the monarchy plays the long game there is no time stamp on the public's interest in you as long as it's clear that your interest is the public as the queen's grandmother queen mary once said to a relative You are a member of the British Royal family. We are never tired and we all love hospitals. We all love hospitals. That's great. Speaker 2 (5:10) Yeah. And she also says in the book that like Queen Elizabeth loved opening a bridge and she describes that as meat and potatoes, Royal stuff. Speaker 1 (5:19) Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:20) So that's what the Royal family does. Megan came at it, you know, really for more of a Hollywood. background and perspective because she was on Suits, that USA, what was it called? USA Network? Speaker 1 (5:36) USA Network. I never watched it. Speaker 2 (5:37) Do you remember TV? Yeah. Like old TV. Yeah, it was on USA. Speaker 1 (5:41) Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:42) Cable show, but popular. Anyway, so Tina Brown says that it's baffling, that's her word, baffling, that Meghan did not prepare for royal life and study the institution because her Suits colleagues said that she was known for doing her homework and... She would always grill people around her for notes. But Meghan told Oprah in that infamous 2021 interview after they said they were leaving the royal family, she said she didn't do any research. Speaker 1 (6:09) I, too, find that baffling because it's not exactly an obscure subject. If you're as ambitious as someone like Meghan Markle, like, it's not that hard to pick up a few issues of Vanity Fair or a Tina Brown book and be like, how does it... royal family operate? Did she really think that it would be just like marrying up, like marrying a slightly more famous celebrity? And then she had a key to the Hollywood kingdom and she could write her own ticket and do whatever she wanted and support other causes. I've been baffled by that, like Tina Brown since the beginning, when Meghan claimed that she didn't really know who Harry was and she had to look him up. Speaker 2 (6:48) Well, he was the spare. Speaker 1 (6:50) Yeah, I know. She studied foreign Speaker 2 (6:52) affairs at Northwestern. She's clearly very smart. She went to Northwestern. She studied theater and foreign affairs. Speaker 1 (6:58) Yeah, I find that whole line to be a bit facetious. I don't believe that part of what Megan has said. Let's put it that way. I Speaker 2 (7:07) mean, maybe it is possible. And we'll talk about like kind of what was going on with her when they met. But maybe she was busy. Speaker 1 (7:15) Like Speaker 2 (7:16) trying to be. Meghan Markle, like on the world stage, like she wanted to be like a UN ambassador, like Angelina Jolie level. Maybe she was busy, you know? Speaker 1 (7:25) Right. Yes. Yes. I think that the Angelina Jolie comparison is a good one because perhaps that's what she thought she could do because Angelina Jolie has a lot more leeway, like money and fame and you can do what you want, support the causes you want. You know who I thought of actually with Meghan? Who? Different royal. I thought of Grace Kelly. Because Grace Kelly, you know. Yeah, Speaker 2 (7:47) yeah, yeah. That's a good Speaker 1 (7:48) comparison. I mean, Grace Kelly did a few more high profile projects than Suits. You know, she was like a major movie star in amazing, amazing movies. But, you know, she made that transition. Of course, the Monaco royal family is not the British royal family. But Grace Kelly, before she died in a tragic accident, seemed to sort of handle that transition a lot. better. But anyway, maybe Megan saw someone like Grace Kelly and thought like, oh, I can do that. That looks so easy. Again, without doing the full homework of what it truly is like to be a royal, like cutting ribbons and respecting a hierarchy and staying in your lane and knowing what number you are on the call sheet, so to speak. Speaker 2 (8:34) Yes. And we're going to get into that. If you enjoy this podcast, you'll also love my Back Row newsletter. It's a publication covering fashion, power, and the money behind it all. The stuff that legacy media wouldn't print. Fashion and culture journalism without the PR gloss. Sign up for a premium subscription and you'll get access to all paywalled podcasts along with the newsletter. Subscribe at backrow.net slash subscribe and I'll also drop the link in the show notes. So should we talk about her childhood a bit? And again, this is really, my research for this is really Tina Brown because I think she's a good source on this stuff. And she's a good reporter. So she's from the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. Her dad, Tom Markle, worked as a lighting and photography director on the Fox show Married with Children and the soap opera General Hospital. And that's where he met Megan's mom, Doria Ragland, who had different jobs in her career, but was a makeup assistant. And this job. that Tom Markle had, it was like pretty grueling hours. He would light the set from midnight to 7 a.m. and meet with the director during the day. And he got an apartment nearby so that like during the day when he could sleep, he could go to this apartment and like take a nap. And he had been married before and he had two kids who were teens when Megan was born. It was difficult because Tom had this, you know, these other kids. this other family and the kids were living with them. And Megan is born and she's kind of like the apple of his eye. And they get, according to Tina, and she uses these words, they get very jealous of that. And particularly because Tom helps Megan with her acting career, but he doesn't do that for his other daughter. Speaker 1 (10:24) Samantha. Speaker 2 (10:24) Samantha, right? So then Doria moves out with Megan. When she's two years old, four years later when Megan is six, they divorce owing to these tensions in the family. And the half-sister, oh, Samantha, she was bitter, according to Tina Brown, when Tom paid for Megan to go to private schools, even though money was tight. So that also contributed to the jealousy and resentment and then very sad development. Samantha learned that she had multiple sclerosis and she ended up confined to a wheelchair. Really sad. But anyway, so Megan is exposed to the entertainment industry, thanks to her dad and living in Los Angeles. And she decides that she wants to be a star. So Tom is nominated for an Emmy for General Hospital when Megan was 12 years old. And he takes her to the awards and she tells him. she wants to be famous just like him one day. Speaker 1 (11:28) I believe it. Speaker 2 (11:30) Yeah. I mean, I'm sure a lot of kids, it's like Gwyneth Paltrow too. I obviously wrote the book about. Speaker 1 (11:35) Yeah. Her Speaker 2 (11:36) father was a producer and that was like her entree into Hollywood. Speaker 1 (11:41) Yeah. I do think it's funny that Megan entry or her first glimpse into Hollywood would be a married with children in general hospital, like very like not low budget, but middle brow entertainment. But anyway. Speaker 2 (11:54) Well, General Hospital is a soap. It's like daytime. Speaker 1 (11:57) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:58) And Married with Children was like a really successful sitcom, right? Speaker 1 (12:01) It was. It was. It's just that it's not