Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(39)
Meghan was excited. While she wasn’t that into art, preferring fashion, food, and wine, she welcomed the opportunity to network with a wider range of members and guests who were arriving at the Soho Beach House, a repurposed vintage hotel on the sand. She tried not to gawk as rap mogul Russell Simmons and actor and activist Rosario Dawson strolled by or take too much interest when Goldie Hawn’s daughter Kate Hudson waved at friends from a terrace. Ah, the thrill of arrival, of belonging. She had worked hard, she was on a top-rated show, and her blog was considered one of the best on the web. Miami Art Week, or at least the Soho Beach House version of it, would be hers!
Her great friend Markus Anderson, Soho House membership director, casually dressed in flip-flops and shorts, wandered over to say hello and brief them on the next few days of dancing, cocktails, and luxurious beauty treatments. This was life. A Bombay Sapphire gin gift basket awaited Meghan and Cory in their room, along with a fully stocked bar. The celebrity tent would a have full selection of tropically themed gin drinks. And then there were the sparkling wines and champagnes…
Markus Anderson is a great fixer and mixer. He has an instinct for putting strangers together who he thinks might gel. At lunch he placed Meghan next to Bahrain-born fashion designer Misha Nonoo. At the time she was an up-and-coming designer known as much for her marriage to art dealer Alexander Gilkes, friend of Princes William and Harry, as her maverick designs. Meghan and Misha got along famously, lunchtime drinks extending into evening cocktails. During the course of the afternoon they got to talking about her new collection, which was going to be unveiled at New York fashion week. Meghan would be on break from Suits. She would be there.
Hours later, Meghan was once again on a plane, this time headed for Spain, one of five countries she was due to visit on a whirlwind tour. This time there were no luxury hotels or smart cocktails. Instead, Meghan was taking part in the USO Holiday Tour, visiting American military bases in Spain, Italy, Turkey, Afghanistan, and England. Joining Meghan were eight-time USO tour veteran and country star Kellie Pickler and her songwriter husband, Kyle Jacobs; comedian Rob Riggle; Glee costar Dianna Agron; former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher; Washington Nationals pitcher Doug Fister; and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff army general Martin E. Dempsey and his wife, Deanie.
When the traveling troupe, who were joined by USO president J. D. Crouch and his wife Kristin, met at the Joint Base Andrews passenger terminal in Maryland on December 5, Deanie Dempsey told the assorted celebrities. “Embrace this experience. You will be so proud of our service members and their families.” Meghan was excited and a little apprehensive. Not only would she be flying aboard Air Force Two, specially commissioned for this tour, she would be meeting thousands of service members and their families during the trip. While she had done fan meet and greets before, it had never been on this scale or at this intensity.
After arriving in Rota, Spain, Meghan and her USO group toured the USS Donald K. Ross, an Aegis missile–equipped destroyer. They performed before an audience of two thousand service personnel and their families in a hangar on the base. Meghan, in a blue hardhat, posed with servicemen before going into her routine. She knew that she, Kelly Pickler, and Dianna Agron were carrying on a time-honored tradition, following in the steps of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, and Jayne Mansfield who had entertained the troops, providing a sweet taste of home, a reminder of why the troops did their jobs. Now things were rather different. There were women in the military and families on the bases, so goodbye cheesecake, hello folksy and funny. On stage she did one of her routines, giving a lighthearted talk about Suits before showing off her five-inch heels as Pickler and her band performed the signature song “Red High Heels.”
The USO tour group repeated their act in Vicenza, Italy, to soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and US Army Africa before heading to the air base at Incirlik, Turkey. Even though the base was several hundred miles from the battles raging in neighboring Syria, the atmosphere was tenser, the security tighter. Meghan smiled and tried to say more than “thank you” as she passed out cupcakes to the several hundred who gathered to watch Pickler and Jacobs perform country hits and the troupe do various comedy sketches.
The next morning the USO performers and their “chaperones” gathered on the tarmac to head to their most challenging gig, Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. This was the most isolated outpost, home to forty thousand military personnel and service members. “Bureaucrats, administrators, logisticians and thousands of International Security Assistance Force civilian contractors live at Bagram air base,” said British photographer Edmund Clark, who spent ten days there in 2013. “Unless you go out on patrol, you exist only on base.”
Surrounded by fencing and barbed wire, and reinforced by sandbags, with ground penetrating radar used to make sure enemy fighters don’t use tunnels to break into the coalition base, Bagram was relatively safe. Except for the occasional Taliban rocket that made it over the walls.
Meghan and her fellow performers joined service members for a holiday meal before they took to the stage. Meghan turned her back to the audience and snapped a quick selfie of the uniformed military members, then went into her inspirational speech: “I’ve never wanted to be a lady who lunches, I’ve always wanted to be a woman who works…”
Once again cupcakes were passed out, as fighter jets and C-130 transport planes taxied outside. Meghan and the others posed with groups of service members in front of a netting-draped wall. While the celebrities put on their practiced smiles for the cameras, the troops could barely muster a grin between them. Unlike the stars who had swooped in for a couple of days, they had months more of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by bursts of frenzied action to look forward to. It was a poignant interaction.