Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(37)
One evening Meghan was curled up with her laptop and a glass of wine in hand, preparing for an evening finding stories and people to populate The Tig. Her methodology was to delve into other lifestyle blogs and online news sites, follow links for inspiration, and then maybe poke around on Instagram using hashtags to guide her to potential Tig Tales. First, though, she wanted to just peek at the Suits pages on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and USANetwork.com. The latest episode had a story line featuring Rachel Zane front and center, and it was airing that night. She was curious to know the response to her character’s dalliance with an old boyfriend. When Meghan took another sip of her red wine she nearly choked as she scrolled through to the comments. “You dirty bird!” “I’m unfollowing you! How could you cheat on Mike?” “Whore…” And it just got uglier as the episode hit different time zones and aired across the country. Meghan deleted the worst of the comments from her own page and Twitter feed and blocked the abusive users. As the night wore on she was genuinely concerned, and not a little afraid, as more and more emoji of knives and guns appeared.
Fans weren’t just angry at her character, Rachel Zane, for kissing her old boyfriend, Logan Sanders, played by Brendan Hines; they were furious at Meghan Markle. They believed that the actor was responsible for the story line, not the scriptwriters. As she pondered just how fans could become so invested in a story, which was, after all, make believe, the comments kept heating up. Now there were death threats. “Meghan Markle, you slut. I wanna kill you.” This was out of control.
The next morning she went to see Suits creator Aaron Korsh. This has to stop, she told him. “We have to scale this back.” The producers and writers had always been good to her, incorporating aspects of her own personality into Rachel’s character, making Rachel a foodie because Meghan enjoyed cooking and making her biracial because of Meghan’s own family background. This time the lines were becoming uncomfortably blurred, with fans unable to tell the real Meghan from the fantasy of Rachel. Besides, Meghan wasn’t that kind of girl. The story line going forward had Rachel more actively attempting to seduce her old boyfriend as she turned her back on Mike. That plot development didn’t feel right to Meghan, not least because it presaged a possible exit for her character, something for which she wasn’t yet prepared.
“I like Rachel, I like playing Rachel, I like what she stands for. And this feels really out of character,” she said earnestly. It was a bold move, telling the show’s creator she didn’t like the direction her character was going. But she felt she owed it to the fans and to her own integrity to speak up. Plus she had been frightened by the aggressive vitriol and threats of violence.
Editor Angela Catanzaro, who had worked on the series since the beginning, agreed with Meghan, telling Korsh, “I love Rachel, but if you put that scene on the air, I would never like her again. That’s not the kind of woman I would like working with my husband.”
Korsh saw the wisdom in their words, and within an episode, Mike Ross and Rachel Zane’s romance, much like that of their star-crossed namesakes on Friends a decade earlier, was correcting itself and gearing up to be back on track. Panic over. At least for the time being.
Meghan stared at her phone in disbelief. The inbox of her email was filling up almost faster than she could read the subject lines. Her site, The Tig, was proving to be more popular than she had ever imagined. At this early stage every email went directly to her mobile phone, and as Meghan quickly scrolled the ever-expanding list, one sender jumped out at her, the United Nations. It might just be a fund-raising appeal, but what the heck? Meghan opened the message and read the contents with growing surprise. The United Nations was asking her to consider becoming involved in their new gender equality program, #HeForShe. When Meghan dialed the number given in the email, the contact person at United Nations Women explained that they had read her short essay in The Tig regarding women’s independence to coincide with Independence Day. She had begun by writing: “Raise a glass to yourself today—to the right to freedom, to the empowerment of the women (and men) who struggle to have it, and to knowing, embracing, honoring, educating and loving yourself. On this day, and beyond, celebrate your independence.” She then went on to showcase the thoughts of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
On the back of this Tig entry, UN officials wondered if she might want to work with the international organization on a new initiative on gender equality they were promoting.
While she was honored, she also wanted to get an idea of what this project was all about, rather than blindly saying yes. “Why don’t I come and intern for you for week while we’re on hiatus?” she asked the staffer. “You know, answer phones, bring you coffee.” Within a few weeks surprised UN officials found themselves inducting Meghan into the bustling corridors of the New York–based institution. In truth it was rather more than making the coffee. She shadowed Elizabeth Nyamayaro, head of the UN #HeForShe movement to encourage men to support women in the quest for gender equality, and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, and sat in on meetings at the World Bank, the Clinton Foundation, and even the war room for UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon.
She was assigned a seat on the front row along with TV presenter Wolf Blitzer, NGO director Gary Barker, and actor Kiefer Sutherland, as Harry Potter actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson made a rousing speech for men as well as women to join the #HeForShe campaign. Watson noted that at the present rate of progress it would be seventy-five years before women were paid the same as men for the same work and that it would take until 2086 before all teenage girls in rural Africa would receive a secondary education.