Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(34)
As they drank a bottle of prosecco at the rooftop bar of the Sanctum Soho hotel, the conversation turned to men, and, as Hind described, “her interest in British men of a certain, well, standing.” To the reporter’s surprise, Meghan took out her iPhone and showed her a picture of a handsome man on her Twitter account. “Do you know this guy Ashley Cole? He follows me and he keeps trying to talk to me on Twitter. He’s trying really hard.”
Katy kept her cool, replying, “I bet.” Meghan continued to eagerly confide, “He wants to go out on a date while I’m over here in London. What do you think? Do you know him?”
The reporter certainly knew his reputation as both an England and Chelsea football player and the husband of Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Cole. He had cheated with several women, who had in turn sold their stories to the tabloids. Once Hind had broken the bad news, the actor seemed somewhat deflated, possibly anticipating that her visit to London may have spawned a new romance. “Thanks, I appreciate it,” Meghan told the Mail reporter, adding: “Some of my friends told me to stay away from him, too. I think I’ll leave it.”
During the next three hours, Meghan continued to down glasses of the Italian sparkling wine as she and Katy, both thirty-two, discussed the difficulties of modern romance and of finding the right guy. Meghan admitted that she was newly divorced—her decree cited “irreconcilable differences”—and was now single and ready to mingle.
The tipsy talk wound down, and the two hugged goodbye, with Katy wishing Meghan good luck. “Not that she’d need it,” the reporter commented wryly as she watched Meghan, who was unwilling to call a cab, persuade the owner of the bar to drive her a few blocks through the rain to her hotel, the Dean Street Townhouse.
7
The “Aha” Moment
Feeling bloated and puffy skinned, her black leather pants a little too tight, Meghan was just a tad out of sorts as she sat alongside her Suits costars on the dais at the five-star Langham Hotel in Pasadena. She looked out at the sea of television critics in front of her and was rather glad that her colleagues were fielding the questions from the Television Critics Association in a long-planned January conference. So far she had sat silently watching the back and forth, the discussion moving on to the shifting time slot, Suits moving from ten p.m. to nine p.m. “Will that affect the cursing?” asked one critic, referring to the show’s liberal use of profanity.
Meghan popped alive and grabbed the question. She looked at the show’s creator and executive producer, Aaron Korsh, and playfully rephrased the question: “Is that going to change for us being at nine o’clock—the shits and the dammits?” “Shit, no!” responded Korsh. The audience laughed. This was classic Meghan; the good sport, the slightly naughty girl next door, the guy’s gal. Her intervention had won the crowd. But it was no longer enough. She wanted to stretch her wings; she had things to say, points to make, that went way beyond the question-and-answer format concerning all things Suits. She was a well-traveled young woman with an appreciation of different countries, cuisines, and cultures. Meghan had a take on everything from Middle Eastern politics to makeup. She felt her role on Suits was a launch pad to something more. She was not yet exploiting her full potential.
Her recent visit to London, for example, had yielded only a small mention in the Daily Mail and a photograph in the giveaway morning daily, Metro UK. She had appeared on numerous red carpets since her work on the series began, but what started out as thrilling was now routine. She was still a pretty face in the crowd.
Meghan realized that she had to do better, to expand her visibility. From the moment Suits became successful, she could see that her young audience, especially teenage girls, were listening to what she had to say. Her Instagram following was growing exponentially, but static pictures of her life, her food, and her dogs didn’t provide an outlet for her thoughts on the world at large. She had a genuine point of view about a kaleidoscope of topics; she just needed a venue to express herself.
Just a few days later, on January 22, 2014, she attended the annual Elle Women in Television Celebration, her third appearance since Suits launched. Meghan felt that she had come home. She was inspired to be surrounded by so many creative and stimulating women like cooking and lifestyle celebrity Giada DeLaurentis and multi-award-winning actor Tracee Ellis Ross, who like Meghan was biracial. Unlike Meghan, Ross came from Hollywood royalty: her mother was Diana Ross, and her father was music manager and industry executive Robert Ellis Silberstein.
Ross’s career included a stint as a model, including walking the runway for Thierry Mugler, contributing as an editor and writer for Mirabella and New York magazines, and as the star of Girlfriends, a long-running sitcom, for which she had won several NAACP awards. Her new comedy, black-ish, in which she played a biracial doctor and mother to four, was garnering rave reviews. Rubbing shoulders with Ross and others, listening to their can-do success stories, stirred the urge in Meghan to do more. She was an ambitious young woman who wanted to raise her profile but also to use her celebrity to connect with issues that genuinely caught her interest, such as gender equality. How best to integrate her multifarious interests in one coherent, well-curated platform?
The answer came indirectly and unexpectedly. In February 2014, DirecTV, the satellite television company, celebrated the Super Bowl with a huge televised pregame party the day before the big game itself. The spirited game of celebrity flag football, called DirecTV Beach Bowl, was held in a large heated tent at Pier 40 on the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. For the event they created the world’s largest indoor beach, trucking in more than a million pounds of sand.