Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(33)

It was such a bolt from the blue for Trevor that even at a distance of five years, he can barely contain his anger, the normally affable laid back New Yorker switching gears from his usual “Hi, bro, how’s it going?” to a cold fury when her name comes into the conversation. “I have zero to say about her,” he said to inquirers. Trevor went from cherishing Meghan to, as one friend observed, “feeling like he was a piece of something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.” A wealthy entrepreneur pal claimed that the marriage ended so abruptly that Meghan sent Trevor her diamond wedding and engagement rings back to him by registered mail. Another confirmed that the decision to end the marriage was made by Meghan and that it had come “totally out of the blue.”

There were other consequences. The breakup also fractured her thirty-odd year friendship with jewelry designer Ninaki Priddy. After listening to Trevor’s side of the story, she decided she no longer wished to associate herself with Meghan. Exactly why is a close-kept secret. As she described it: “All I can say now is that I think Meghan was calculated, very calculated, in the way she handled people and relationships. She is very strategic in the way she cultivates circles of friends. Once she decides you’re not part of her life, she can be very cold. It’s this shutdown mechanism she has. There’s nothing to negotiate, she’s made her decision, and that’s it. The way she handled it, Trevor definitely had the rug pulled out from under him. He was hurt.”

Actor Abby Wathen, who had starred with Meghan in the low-budget movie Random Encounters in her pre-Suits days, had a different perspective on Meghan’s breakup. “We both went through divorce, so we bonded on that too. I was destroyed, but she was empowered. She took her power back. It wasn’t the right relationship for her, so she moved on.”

Now footloose and fancy free, Meghan spent more time exploring downtown Toronto. She could be found, glass of wine in hand, at Bar Isabel, the tapas bar where the grilled octopus and garlicky roast potatoes threw her into a “carb coma.” She also went into raptures about the pasta at Terroni, the local high-end Italian del chain, and also enjoyed poutine, a dish that originated in Quebec in the 1950s, comprising fries covered in gravy and cheese curds—where the squeakier the curds are, the better. On nights when she stayed at home, Meghan, who loves to cook, made vegetable soup in her beloved Vitamix or threw zucchini into the slow cooker with a little water and bouillon until it became what she called “a filthy, sexy mush” that she would toss with pasta.

It was her fascination with food that got her a gig with Men’s Health magazine. In 2013 they filmed an interview for their website, asking Meghan to give them the secret to a great burger and steak. It was sweet, unpolished, and very natural; as a California girl, she said, she preferred fish tacos, but for a quick meal “for her man,” she would throw a steak on the grill. She also agreed to film a racier version of the same shoot. This video, which appeared two years later, showed Meghan riffing on her role on Suits, her hair in a bun, wearing sunglasses, a short leather skirt, and power blazer. She unbuttons her sheer black top to reveal a spotted bra. “Grilling was never so hot,” screamed the film title. As the steak smoldered, so did Meghan. But there was a hesitancy in her eyes. She was playing up to the camera, but she seemed uncomfortable, conscious that she was portraying herself as a sex object to be leered at by men. She thought she had left those days behind on the game show Deal or No Deal. As far as she was concerned, this wasn’t a part she was going to play for much longer.

During the Suits hiatus Meghan took the female lead in a low-budget crime thriller called Anti-Social. The drama, which was based on a series of real-life robberies involving graffiti gangs, was filmed in Budapest and London. While the money men on the production were looking for nude scenes between Meghan and her costar, Gregg Sulkin, who is ten years her junior, to help give the picture greater appeal, writer-director Reg Traviss stuck to his guns and refused to try to exploit his star. He later explained, “It wasn’t needed for the story.”

Meghan’s stock and standing were rising with each season of Suits, which was now the highest-rated American television show in the demographic sweet spot, ages 18 to 49. She was increasingly in demand, and in November 2013 she was invited to attend the red carpet premiere of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, in London’s Leicester Square. Two days later Meghan and male model Oliver Cheshire were hosting the high-profile Global Gift charity gala, which benefited the Eva Longoria Foundation and Caudwell Children charities. Not that she was a fan of the red carpet, finding the glamorous shuffle with other celebrities an ordeal. As she wrote: “I loathe walking the red carpet. It makes me nervous and itchy, and I don’t know which way to look. I just revert to this nerdy child that I once was. I hate it. I get off the carpet and have to shake it off. Sounds dramatic, but it’s really nerve-racking for me.”

While in London, Meghan, the consummate networker, hoped to raise her public profile by discussing the last six episodes of Suits season 2 with members of the press. And she had another, more romantic agenda. Daily Mail reporter Katy Hind wasn’t expecting much when she agreed to meet Meghan on a chilly night in November, just another up-and-coming actor looking for a mention or two in the press. From what she had read, Meghan’s ambition was to become a politician, and she had fallen into acting during a holiday from her work at the US embassy in Buenos Aires in Argentina.