Finding Freedom
“Life is about putting others’ needs above your own fears,” Maria told Meghan. The young student returned to the soup kitchen.
“That has always stayed with me,” Meghan said.
Meghan’s willingness to help others and her drive to excel meant she often was deemed “fake” by classmates at school who felt it was impossible for anyone to be that “perfect.” However, Meghan never thought she was perfect. In fact, she often felt she had more to prove. Being biracial and not always knowing where she fit in, there was a part of her that just wanted people to see she was great at whatever she did. She didn’t like the idea of being seen as an underdog.
In high school, Meghan’s drive continued to bloom. She joined every club, from the yearbook committee to the Genesian Players theater group. She was voted homecoming queen. A natural performer and someone who sought out praise, Meghan was coming into her own.
Gigi Perreau, who taught Meghan acting for several years, said, “She was incredibly hardworking. I was bowled over by the strong work ethic she had at such a young age.” Meghan threw herself into even the smallest of roles, like when she played a secretary in a production of Annie.
Thomas often helped out with set design for Meghan’s school plays and “came to as many of her presentations as possible,” Perreau said. “You would always see his face in the audience, beaming with pride for his little girl.”
He also played a critical role in Meghan’s development as a feminist and, as she called herself, a “female advocate.” When she was eleven years old, her class was watching a TV show when a dishwashing liquid commercial aired with the tagline “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.” A boy sitting nearby shouted out, “Yeah, that’s where women belong, in the kitchen!”
Thomas encouraged Meghan, who was upset over the incident, to write letters of protest over the ad. She mailed off letters to “the most powerful people I could think of,” including First Lady Hillary Clinton, Nickelodeon news anchor Linda Ellerbee, and the dishwashing soap manufacturer—and they all responded. She received a letter from the White House; Nickelodeon aired an interview with Meghan; and the detergent manufacturer changed the commercial’s tagline to “People all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”
Meghan’s interest in acting turned into a career goal in high school, but her mother—always focused on the importance of higher education—advised her to get a college degree. And she wanted her daughter to have a career path in case acting didn’t fall into place for her. That wasn’t an issue for Meghan, who chose not to go on any professional auditions until she graduated high school and had already secured a place at Northwestern University.
She had enrolled in the private college located in a Chicago suburb, ranked one of the top schools in the nation, when she booked her first bit part in a Tori Amos’s music video of the song “1000 Oceans.” Blink and you might miss Meghan’s cameo as a passerby examining an enclosed glass box with the singer inside, but she earned $600 and, within weeks, auditioned for another role in a Shakira video. (She didn’t get the part in the video—and in fact didn’t get another acting gig until she appeared on General Hospital in her last year of college.)
At Northwestern, Meghan again found herself surrounded by mainly affluent students from affluent families. A work-study student, she juggled a full course load and part-time jobs to defray the cost of tuition and room and board. That was in addition to the babysitting she did to cover extra expenses, performing as a theater major, and volunteer work.
“I can’t imagine how the days are long enough for you,” said a good friend who went with Meghan to pick up her latest work-study assignments from the school office. She marveled at her friend’s ability to balance the pressure and rigor of her academics with everything else.
“How do you have time to do all this stuff?” her pal asked.
By not partying like most of her normal college kids. Her friends would never run into Meg, as they called her, at a bar in the middle of the week. Friday nights, when her sorority sisters were all going out to parties, Meg was headed out to professors’ houses to babysit. She rushed Kappa Kappa Gamma, eventually living in the sorority house and making some of her closest friends, including Genevieve Hillis and Lindsay. But even Meghan’s Greek life was less Animal House and more Elle Woods. As rush and recruitment chairman, she was in charge of bringing new people into the sorority and making them feel welcome. She also raised money for charity with events like a dance marathon she participated in with her other sorority sisters. The women danced for thirty hours to benefit Team Joseph, a nonprofit working on a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. “It got so tiring,” Meghan admitted.
By her junior year, she had finished most of her credits, so with the help of her father’s older brother Mick, she secured an internship at the US embassy in Buenos Aires. No one in the family was quite sure what Uncle Mick did, whether his communications job in Buenos Aires was actually a cover for a job in the CIA. But regardless, his connections allowed a twenty-year-old Meghan to broaden her horizons beyond the stage.
“I had always been the theater nerd at Northwestern University. I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliché—a girl from LA who decides to be an actress,” Meghan told Marie Claire. “I wanted more than that, and I had always loved politics, so I ended up changing my major completely, and double-majoring in theater and international relations.”
Meghan took the Foreign Service Officer Test, a prerequisite for a job as a State Department officer. When she didn’t pass the highly competitive test, she was extremely disappointed. She wasn’t used to failing. It was a major blow to the confidence she had always tried to protect.
And so, in 2003, after graduating from Northwestern, Meg found herself back in LA. She was a struggling actress who supported herself between auditions with odd jobs, including a stint as a calligrapher. In 2004, she was hired by the Paper Source, a high-end stationery store in Beverly Hills, where she received a two-hour-long training session in calligraphy, as well as gift wrapping and bookbinding. While working there, she did the wedding invitations for the actress Paula Patton’s 2005 wedding to the singer-songwriter Robin Thicke.
The first few years of her “hustling” for auditions, as she later described it, were marked with long periods without work. And when she did land parts—such as playing “hot girl” in the 2005 Ashton Kutcher romance A Lot Like Love—they weren’t exactly Academy Award–winning material.
In 2006, she became a Briefcase Model on Deal or No Deal, one of twenty-six women wearing matching outfits and each holding a case with anywhere between 1¢ and $1 million. The NBC game show was not only a steady paycheck but also a hot new property. After the premiere in December 2005, its first season averaged between a whopping ten and sixteen million viewers per episode. While following seasons dipped considerably in viewers, it maintained a strong appeal, spawning a syndicated series and a host of tie-in products, such as video and board games.
“Hello, ladies!” the host, Howie Mandel, said to the perfect rows of Briefcase Models on set.
“Hi, Howie!” they replied in unison.
That was the opening drill for the thirty-four episodes Meghan appeared in in 2006 and 2007. As Briefcase Model #24, she, like the rest of her fellow models, opened up her case whenever a contestant trying to win a million dollars called out her number.
Meghan and the other women recorded up to seven episodes in a day. Shooting so many in such a tight block meant long days. Afterward most of the other models liked to go out together, sometimes not even waiting to take off their show makeup before hitting happy hour. Not Meghan. While she was friendly enough, she didn’t go out with the other women. “She was popular with all the other girls,” said Leyla Milani, a fellow Briefcase Model. “But as soon as we were done, she would be off to something else.” Just as in college, Meghan was working when her peers were blowing off steam. She even kept busy during breaks on the set of Deal or No Deal. “When other girls were gossiping or chatting,” Leyla said, “she would be by herself reading scripts and preparing for auditions.”
After two seasons on the game show, Meghan was ready to put down her silver briefcase. Over the next three years, she kept up the auditions, booking a Tostitos commercial and small roles in a few films and TV shows, including Horrible Bosses, CSI: NY, Knight Rider, Without a Trace, and ’Til Death. In a two-episode arc on the CW reboot of 90210 in 2008, her character, Wendy, stirred up trouble when she was caught giving oral sex to playboy student Ethan Ward in a school parking lot. Meghan was hesitant to shoot the scene, but struggling actresses can’t be picky.
She never stopped pushing, even when she thought she blew her audition for the series-regular role of the gorgeous and confident paralegal Rachel Zane, in Suits, a new show for the USA Network. Meghan didn’t cry or go home to eat a pint of ice cream. Instead, she called her agent.
“I don’t think I did a good job in that room,” she told him. “I need to get back in there.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “Just focus on your next audition.”
2
When Harry Met Meghan
When Meghan arrived in London, it had been five years since she moved to Toronto to star in Suits, and her life was worlds away from that of the struggling LA actress driving to auditions in a run-down Ford Explorer that she didn’t have enough money to fix when the automatic locks stopped working (and so spent five months entering through the trunk).
While her role on the USA Network drama wouldn’t have put her on the A-list in cities like LA or New York, she was very quickly adopted as a Canadian celebrity. Even as her star rose, Meghan never stopped working to expand her opportunities. After hiring the London-based PR firm Kruger Cowne to promote her interests, she began commanding cash—upward of $10,000 an appearance—to turn up at red carpets, such as the September 2014 Marchesa Voyage for ShopStyle collection launch in New York City, or as a speaker, as she was for Toronto’s 2015 “Dove Self-Esteem Project” and the Women in Cable Telecommunications Signature Luncheon in Chicago that same year.
When she signed with Kruger Cowne, Meghan also linked up with APA, one of the world’s largest commercial talent agencies, to develop her career as a lifestyle influencer based on The Tig, the blog she launched in 2014. A place to curate of all her passions (food, fashion, and travel—as well as social issues such as gender equality) filtered through an “aspirational girl-next-door vibe,” the blog was named after Tignanello—the full-bodied red wine that won her heart after the first sip.
“It was my first moment of getting it—I finally understood what people meant by the body, structure, finish, legs of wine,” she wrote. “The Tig is my nickname for me getting it. Not just wine, but everything.”
The Tig wasn’t the first time that Meghan had taken to the Internet to not only express herself but also to reach out to others. From 2010 to 2012, she wrote The Working Actress, an anonymous blog that detailed the pitfalls and triumphs of struggling to make it in Hollywood. She had always enjoyed writing in school and even thought about becoming a journalist at one point, as it was an opportunity to channel her creativity and frustration. The blog captured the heartfelt moments of joy when she booked a job and the despair and rejection actors felt each time a role was lost in an industry often driven by appearance rather than by talent. While she never publicly acknowledged authorship of the popular blog, it was one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets that she was the face behind it—and she quickly became recognized for its clever advice and honest anecdotes.
Where The Working Actress was raw and candid, The Tig was polished and optimistic. Whether it was Meghan walking a rugged coastline in a perfectly belted camel coat or a “Tig Talk” with famous pals like the actress Priyanka Chopra or a recipe for “spicy broccoli and hempseed stew,” the website was curated eye candy that she hoped would be “the breeding ground for ideas and excitement—for an inspired lifestyle.”
The newest face in her working world was Violet von Westenholz, a PR executive from Ralph Lauren who had scheduled several events during Meghan’s summer trip to London, where the actress would be one of the many celebrity brand ambassadors for the label. In addition to the fashion world, Violet was also well-known in English society. Her father, Frederick Patrick Piers Baron von Westenholz, a former Olympic skier, was one of Prince Charles’s oldest and closest friends, so Violet and her siblings grew up skiing in Switzerland with Prince William and Prince Harry.
On the calendar for the actress was Wimbledon. With Ralph Lauren as the fashion sponsor in charge of the official merchandise, Violet arranged the tickets and passes. On day two of the tournament, Meghan sat in the stands to support her friend Serena Williams. Meghan first met the tennis champ at a Super Bowl party in Miami in 2010. Out of all the stars and athletes there, Meghan and Serena “hit it off immediately,” as Meghan later described. Connecting over “good old-fashioned girly stuff,” the women snapped photos of each other on their phones.
At Wimbledon, however, Meghan was serious while watching Serena battle it out against Amra Sadikovic. She was the first to pump her fist when her friend scored a point or stand to cheer when the tennis champ won a set. She hadn’t known much about tennis before becoming friendly with Serena, but now she was a fan.
Meghan did tear herself away from the action long enough to spot British actor Dominic Cooper in the VIP bar area, where she joked about having a small crush on the Preacher star and deliberated whether she should talk to him. She decided not to approach this nice English gentleman. She was too busy having fun with her girlfriends.
Violet wasn’t the only one setting up meetings for Meghan in London. A few months before she arrived in town, Jonathan Shalit—who has helped carve out television careers for Simon Cowell, Mel B, and other British household names—signed Meghan to his talent agency, Roar. The hope was for Meghan to enter a new space, perhaps hosting a food-centric TV show.
Jonathan’s interest in the American actress for some kind of food, travel, and culture show stemmed from The Tig, which was exactly the kind of future Meghan hoped would blossom out of her website.
“There is a vision, and it’s a big one,” Meghan said about The Tig, which she dreamed about spinning into a cookbook or a lifestyle brand. “The opportunities are endless.”
While the actress-turned-lifestyle-guru Gwyneth Paltrow, who turned her website Goop into a $250 million empire, was an obvious source of inspiration in marketing herself, Meghan had another one far closer to home in Jessica Mulroney—Canada’s most prominent lifestyle influencer and a very close friend.
Jessica and her husband, Ben—the eldest son of the former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney and the host of the entertainment show eTalk—were the city’s hottest young power couple. She parlayed the brand-name Canadian family she married into and her sense of style into a boutique career as an influencer, stylist, and wedding planner. Her Instagram feed was filled with pictures of domestic perfection—like Jessica with her long, blown-out brown hair, her blue eyes fringed in black lashes, reading a book on the floor with her adorable twin sons, Brian and John, her lean legs crossed and on her feet a pair of sky-high black stilettos.
After the women were introduced by a local fashion publicist, Jessica not only encouraged Meghan to follow the same path but also introduced her to an exciting, fizzy social scene filled with high-profile charity events, the openings of new hotspots, fabulous restaurants, and fancy friends like Michael Bublé. Jessica and Ben were good friends with the Canadian singer-songwriter and his wife, the Argentinian-born actress-model Luisana Lopilato, whose intimate parties at their home in Vancouver were a coveted invite. When Meghan snagged a seat at his dinner table in November 2015, it provided fodder for a blog post of the singer’s favorite holiday songs titled, “Tig Tunes with Michael Bublé.”
By 2016, The Tig and her Instagram account had gained a big enough following that she felt in a position to think about opportunities outside of Suits. Eager for a change, she had signed to a literary agency in the United States and was in talks to release a food-focused book to capitalize on her new platform. While Meghan was in London, Jonathan, in his uniform of black vest, white shirt, striped tie, and brightly colored socks, pitched a show where she would travel the world, discovering new foods with a focus on sustainability. Think Padma Lakshmi meets Anthony Bourdain.
Jonathan wasn’t the only well-known industry type Meghan networked with while in England’s capital. She also met up with Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan at his local pub in Kensington, the Scarsdale Tavern. “I’m in London for a week of meetings and Wimbledon,” Meghan had quietly direct messaged via Twitter to Piers after she arrived in the British capital. “Would love to say hi!” They had never met before, but she was keen to know the controversial and outspoken personality behind the outrageous tweets about Donald Trump, who he became frenemies with on the NBC reality series Celebrity Apprentice.
Meghan showed up to the cozy, dark pub looking “every inch the Hollywood superstar,” Piers described in the Daily Mail, “very slim, very leggy, very elegant, and impossibly glamorous. She was even wearing the obligatory big black shades beloved of LA thespians.”
During their two-hour drinks, Meghan sipped dirty martinis while the two discussed gun control, her career, her childhood dreams of becoming either president of the United States or a TV journalist, and her biracial upbringing. Piers was charmed.
Just before eight o’clock, Meghan bade Piers farewell, as she had to run to her dinner date at 5 Hertford Street with Misan Harriman, whose father, Chief Hope Harriman, was one of the founding fathers of modern Nigeria. Misan—the founder of the website whatweseee.com and the director of the global network of polo games called British Polo Day—could often be found at polo matches alongside Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Misan invited Meghan to the members-only club-restaurant in Mayfair, which was said to be one of the most prestigious clubs in the world. Members who have made their way through the unmarked maroon door on Hertford Street to dine by candlelight in the private rooms with silver service included George and Amal Clooney, Mick Jagger, and Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie. While Meghan might have enjoyed sipping gin fizzes under the club’s hushed lighting, what she really looked forward to was a blind date she had planned for the following evening.
It was summer, and she was newly single. Although her two-year relationship (her first serious one since her divorce three years earlier) had only recently ended, Meghan still very much believed in finding lasting love. During her visit to London, however, Meghan joked to a pal that she’d settle for “a nice English gentleman to flirt with.”
Except this date was with no ordinary guy. Over lunch on July 1, Meghan revealed the mystery man’s identity to her London-based agent Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne. Gina and Meghan, who first met at the 2014 One Young World Summit, had traveled to numerous overseas jobs together and even took a side vacation during a work trip to Malta in March 2015. So the actress felt she could confide in the agent as a friend.
“I’m going on a blind date tonight,” Meghan said coyly, after finishing off her salad at the Delaunay restaurant, near London’s Covent Garden.
“Who is it?” Gina asked. “Do I know him?”
Meghan leaned in excitedly and whispered, “I’m sure you know him. It’s Prince Harry.”
Floored by the news, Gina asked her friend in a hushed tone, “Do you know what you’re letting yourself in for?”
“Well, it’s going to be an experience,” Meghan said, “and at least it will be a fun night.”
“This could be crazy,” Gina said, trying to impress upon the American the insane and unique culture of tabloid coverage in the UK that came with dating a royal. “You will be the most wanted woman.”
Meghan wasn’t thinking that far ahead of herself, particularly since the woman who had set her up with the prince said, “Let’s just get you in a room together and see what happens.”
Despite reports that Violet von Westenholz had set up the date, it was mostly Meghan’s pals Misha Nonoo and Markus Anderson who were in on the first meeting. (The couple themselves prefer to keep the story of their matchmaker a mystery, even to close friends. Meghan’s only clue to pals at the time was that her first encounter with Harry was “serendipitous.”)
Markus, a Canadian native and Soho House’s global membership director, always made sure Meghan was comfortable at the Toronto outpost of the private members-only club with locations all over the world. Behind the velvet roped-off doorway of the nineteenth-century Georgian building that the club spent $8 million to renovate into an exclusive oasis, Meghan, who would have her own booth reserved on the third floor when she went there for drinks, spent many an afternoon curled up on one of the library’s leather club chairs with her MacBook, working away on her blog, or hanging out with her Suits castmates.
Markus provided Meghan with introductions to many business and cultural elites—both in Canada and beyond. At a Soho House lunch in Miami, he was the one who sat the actress next to Misha, a budding fashion designer with a vivacious personality and impeccable pedigree. The occasion for the December 2014 Miami trip was Art Basel, a decadent art fair that brings the internationally rich and famous for a week of parties and events of all sorts and sizes. Markus invited Meghan, an art lover, to stay at the epicenter of the action, Soho Beach House, to get some sun, see some art, and have some fun.
A perfect place to make new friends and connections, the Soho House event saw Misha and Meghan hit it off immediately. Born in Bahrain but raised in England, the sunny blond designer, who split her time between New York and London, attended business school in Paris before entering the world of fashion. Her handsome and well-connected husband, Alexander Gilkes, was named to Art + Auction’s 100 Most Powerful People in the Art World list after founding Paddle8, an online auction house. An old Etonian pal of Prince William’s and Prince Harry’s, Alexander met Misha when she was seventeen, and they were married seven years later in Venice with no less than Lana Del Rey performing at their 2012 vows.
Meghan was instantly intrigued by Misha’s effortless glamour, and Misha felt similarly about the actress’s fresh-faced interest. “She’s an impressive woman and so much fun to be around,” said Misha.
Before lunch was over, the women exchanged information and tagged each other in photos on Instagram.
The smart and pretty fashion designer spoke about new business opportunities to Meghan, who was eager to expand her social and professional horizons. Meghan loved hanging out with Misha, described by a friend as “one of those undercover, cool, rich aristocratic girls.” Anytime that she was in New York, she would stay at Misha’s West Village duplex, where the designer and her husband constantly entertained a revolving group of interesting people.
The friendship wasn’t one-sided, though. When Misha was named a finalist of the prestigious CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards during New York Fashion Week in November 2015, Meghan made a huge splash on the red carpet when she wore one of her friend’s designs to the awards dinner. The image of Meghan posing in the silver liquid-metal mini dress with a deep plunging neckline was everywhere the next day—a great push for Misha’s burgeoning fashion line.