Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(21)
It was quite the adventure for the twenty-year-old, flying from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires on her own. She joined a team of nearly thirty State Department officials and guards in the mid-sized American enclave. Before starting work, she was given an orientation to the building complex and the city, safety being the primary focus. The young student was warned about where to avoid, what to do in an emergency, and which telephone numbers to call—basic but vital information. With the anniversary of 9/11 approaching, the threat level for all American embassies around the world, including the embassy in Buenos Aires, had been raised to Code Orange security, the second highest level.
For the most part, her day-to-day life was the routine and mundane world of the office grunt, filing, answering phones, and drafting letters. As a consummate team player, she impressed her superiors with her enthusiasm and demeanor.
She was a willing worker, undertaking the tedious, run-of-the-mill jobs quickly and efficiently. Her superior, Mark Krischik, now retired, recalled her as a young woman who was good to work with and who carried out her assignments with “efficiency and ingenuity.” Though memories are hazy, there was talk of a dalliance with a US Marine tasked to guard the embassy compound. But what was more certain was her love of the Spanish cuisine and the city’s buzzing nightlife.
As it was her twenty-first birthday on August 4, 2002, she was given permission to travel in the convoy that was picking up the US finance secretary Paul O’Neill, who was making a whistle stop visit to South America. It was a treat. However, her opportunity to be treated like a VIP for an hour or two rapidly turned into a terrifying ordeal.
She was waiting in the motorcade when Secretary O’Neill landed at Ezeiza Airport, fifteen miles outside the center of Buenos Aires. Argentina had recently defaulted on a $141 billion debt, and neither the International Monetary Fund nor the American government were in any mood to bail them out. Before he left Washington, O’Neill had announced that South American nations should have policies in place to “ensure that aid is not diverted to Swiss bank accounts.” Though his target was the corrupt political elites siphoning off billions of dollars into their own personal bank accounts, the suffering man and woman in the street blamed the United States for the economic calamity that had befallen them. After he landed at precisely five o’clock. his motorcade drove to a meeting with President Eduardo Duhalde, head of the interim government. Though O’Neill was expecting a bumpy ride, even he was perturbed when banner-waving demonstrators surrounded the convoy. “I remember the arrival because protestors banged on my limo with their placards. It was a memorable event,” he later deadpanned.
The junior press officer was terrified, recalling that it was the scariest moment of her life. It was all the more concerning as the American embassy was already on orange alert not only because of the impending anniversary of 9/11 but because of intelligence reports suggesting that Islamic militants could be setting up a network in South America. Meghan would have already been wary, and it’s easy to imagine how frightening she would have found an angry mob of protesters attacking her car.
However, the experience certainly didn’t seem to put her off considering her future working for the government agency. “If she had stayed with the State Department she would have been an excellent addition to the US diplomatic corps. She had all that it takes to be a successful diplomat,” Mark Krischik recalled.
Certainly she was sufficiently committed to a career with the State Department to take the Foreign Service Officer Test while she was still in Argentina. The three-hour exam is a mix of politics, history, general knowledge, and math, requiring an awareness of everything from the origin of be-bop to East Asian labor laws. It proved a stretch too far, and Meghan failed the exam. There were consolations, though: Meghan spent a further six weeks from school at the IES study program in Madrid, where she polished her Spanish.
When she returned to Northwestern she was able to regale her friends with tales of tapas and tango, and tried to brush off her disappointment at missing the mark on her Foreign Service Officer test. In any case, fate, it would seem, was pushing her into the world of entertainment. Her lighting director father pulled favors to put her forward for a casual role on General Hospital, just as he had done with his eldest daughter almost a decade earlier. In November 2002, Meghan auditioned for a day player role where she said around five lines. Thanks to her father’s influence, she got the part. The episode aired just before Thanksgiving.
A few weeks later she was at a holiday party with friends when she was approached by a man who introduced himself as Drew. Instead of wanting to date her, he wanted to manage her. A friend had slipped him a copy of a student film in which Meghan had appeared, and he was impressed, calling Meghan to tell her, “You know what, you’re going to make money, and I’ll take 10 percent. I think you should stick around.”
But at that time in her life Meghan couldn’t stick around. She had courses to finish back at Northwestern and a graduation to attend. But she promised she’d be back. As she saw it, as one door had closed, another one opened. If the State Department didn’t want her, maybe Hollywood did.
Once home from Northwestern, diploma in hand, Meghan went out and auditioned for commercials, none of which she booked, but was good for experience. By now this was a well-trodden route, Meghan having attended numerous auditions when she was still at Northwestern. Then she got a call. Her best friend from college, Lindsay Jill Roth, was working in casting for a film called A Lot Like Love starring comic heartthrob Ashton Kutcher. She had snagged Meghan a place for an audition with a one-word role.