Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(27)
Trevor then found a small role for her in Remember Me, a 9/11-themed melodrama starring the British heartthrob Robert Pattinson. The movie, which was shot in June, was written by his client Will Fetters and turned out to be the producer’s biggest hit to date, a ratings and box office success. Meghan might be proving to be his lucky charm.
Not that she thought so. Earlier that year, in January 2010, the young actor began an anonymous blog she called Working Actress, where she described in often heartbreaking detail the life of a struggling actor. In one post she wrote: “I’m not gonna lie. I’ve spent many days curled up in bed with a loaf of bread and some wine. A one woman pity party. It’s awful and ridiculous.” She described what it was like to have her minor scenes cut from a movie, the endless rejection, bitchy fellow actors at auditions, and tests shoots gone wrong. “All you are doing is setting yourself up for heartbreak,” she said of this most demanding of professions. Though her blog, which abruptly ended in 2012, was anonymous, fellow bloggers and actors confirmed she was the author. “Yes, it was definitely Meghan Markle who wrote it,” said actor Lancer Carter, who reproduced one of her posts on his own site.
Shortly after beginning the blog, in July 2010, Meghan was again ready for her own close-up. She was cast opposite comedian Jason Sudekis in the comedy Horrible Bosses. In her thirty-five-second scene she played a FedEx girl whom Sudekis creepily hits on, saying that she is too “cute” for the job. Meghan was cool and polite, a professional just doing her job. That was it. Blink and you would miss her. There was, however, a major compensation. She got to work on the same set as her acting hero, Donald Sutherland, who played Jack Pellit in the movie.
“I was so excited to work with him,” she enthused. “The woman in the hair department said he was a gem and that I would love him, so when I met him (and his oh-so-debonair self), I said: ‘Mr. Sutherland, I hear I’m going to fall in love with you before lunch break.’ He laughed, it broke the ice. And I resisted the very major urge to squeal.”
Once her heart had slowed down, she had to recognize that this was yet another acting job that traded exclusively on her looks and sex appeal. Time to recalibrate. She was approaching thirty, an age in a notoriously cruel place like Hollywood when she would soon be considered over the hill. If she was not careful, her agent would be dropping hints about changing the date of birth on her résumé.
Another casting season had passed her by, and she had nothing apart from a series of auditions on her calendar. It was hard not to feel discouraged, especially when she heard of the successes of her contemporaries. Those five years were up, and she just hadn’t quite made that extra leap.
Time to dip into Trevor’s bran tub of aphorisms. Along with “give it five years,” he had another favorite: “This is not a business for the weary. You’re either gonna buy an island or be sent to one.”
Meghan straightened her skirt, focused her gaze, and walked into the next casting room. She wasn’t yet ready for Elba.
6
A Star Is Tailor Made
Rachel Zane was a ballbuster. A ballbuster to cast, a ballbuster to play, and a ballbuster to even name appropriately. Sexy but unapproachable, Rachel Zane was a character created as the love interest on a new show, so new they hadn’t even worked out the title. Opinion was split. Some executives at the USA Network, who were developing the show in 2010, went for A Legal Mind. Others thought the title Suits was tailor-made for a snappily dressed office full of sharp lawyers. Suits won out. That was just one of numerous daily battles to give Suits a distinct identity.
Casting and chemistry were critical to give Suits crackle and pop. Patrick J. Adams was perfect for the part of Mike Ross, the legal genius with an eidetic memory who couldn’t afford law school because he was paying to keep his sick grandma in an upscale nursing home. The actor’s eyes were the key to him winning the role: piercing blue, long lashed. The rest of him was just average-looking boy next door. He combined a vibe of intelligence with just enough seediness to flesh out the part of the brilliant college dropout who made a living by taking law school entry exams for other students.
After several weeks of casting, on July 7 they had snagged The Others star Gabriel Macht as top lawyer Harvey Reginald Specter, and cast Rick Hoffman as the duplicitous partner Louis Litt, as well as Gina Torres, who played the sharp-tongued founding partner Jessica Lourdes Pearson.
One part remained, the role of Rachel Zane. She was a paralegal who was smart, elegantly upper class, and so highly regarded at the fictional law firm that she had her own office, while several of the fictional lawyers still labored on the main floor. She had to be sexy without being overtly so, secure in her own power as a woman, but with a certain vulnerability as shown by the fact that she was unable to pass the LSAT, the exam that determined eligibility for law school. The show’s producers were looking for a woman who had “toughness and attitude while still being engaging.”
“The part was just a nightmare to cast,” recalls one studio executive. “Then Meghan Markle came along.” Once told by famed casting director April Webster to use “less makeup, more Meghan” when auditioning, Meghan had dressed “sexy-professional-casual” to screen test for the role. Somewhat belatedly she realized that the plum colored spaghetti-strap top, black jeans, and high heels she wore were more “single lady lawyer on the prowl” than “attractive paralegal with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law.”