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Meghan Markle has opened up about her time as a "briefcase girl" on Deal or No Deal and why she parted ways with the show.
On Tuesday's (October 18) episode of her podcast Archetypes, Markle shared that she felt “objectified” and “not smart” throughout her experience on the game show in 2006. While she "was still really grateful as an auditioning actress” to have the Deal or No Deal job, Markle said she “didn’t like feeling forced to be all looks and little substance.”
“There were times when 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 Buenos Aires,” she said. “And being in the motorcade with the secretary of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain.”
“Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite,” the royal added.
The Duchess of Sussex detailed how the show had "a very cookie cutter idea of precisely what we should look like,” as the briefcase girls would go through stations for putting on fake eyelashes, getting extensions put in, or adding padding to their bra before each taping.
“It was solely about beauty. And not necessarily about brains,” Markle said.
On the podcast, Markle also recalled a specific experience during her time on Deal or No Deal that she “will never, never forget.”
“There was a woman who ran the show and she would be there backstage and I can still hear her,” the duchess said. “She couldn’t properly pronounce my last name at the time, and I knew who she was talking to because she would go ‘MAR-KELL SUCK IT IN! MAR-KELL SUCK IT IN.’”
“I ended up quitting the show,” Markle continued. “Like I said, I was thankful for the job, but not for how it made me feel ― which was not smart.”
“I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there and I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach,” the former Suits actress added. “Knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage.”
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