Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(40)
Their final stop in Cambridge, England, was a perfect way to decompress. Before their final show, airmen at the base gave the USO troupe a tour of the military hardware at their command, including F-15E Strike Eagles and CV-22 Ospreys, a helicopter-plane hybrid. Meghan spent her time chatting with families, paying special attention to the children. That evening, the Dempseys hosted a thank-you gathering for the USO performers at a Cambridge pub, the Anchor, with the performers in turn warmly thanking the Dempseys and the USO for the privilege of being able to entertain the troops. Before the evening ended, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serenaded the group. “If only we could have gotten him to do that in Bagram!” someone joked.
That was to be Meghan’s first and last USO tour. She expressed her feelings in an Instagram post where she showed a picture from the tour and then a heartfelt caption: “In gratitude to our troops, and the opportunity to thank them personally for their sacrifice and service. Such an honor and feeling very, very blessed.”
8
Seeing Both Sides Now
She had her passport. Check. Her bag of homeopathic remedies. Check. Her vaccines, including hepatitis A and B, typhoid, rabies, and tetanus, were up to date. Check. She had super-strength mosquito repellent. Check. A bag of long-sleeved light clothes. Check. Meghan was ready for a very grown-up journey, embarking on her first ever fact-finding mission on behalf of the United Nations. Though her visit to Rwanda in the heart of Africa was to focus on issues surrounding gender equality, it was also a chance for United Nations officials to evaluate the Suits star to see if she was able or willing to make the commitment as a Goodwill Ambassador for the international organization. A UN official pointed out that Meghan’s involvement as a gender equality advocate was at the level of an informal collaboration.
In early January 2015, when she landed in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, her first stop was to be introduced to the nation’s female parliamentarians. Almost a week of meetings had been scheduled to discuss the role of women in the nation’s democracy and the challenges facing Rwanda going forward. Time and again the point was made that only when women were treated equally in the home, at school, and in the workplace could they enjoy rich, fulfilling lives and give back to the community. The underrepresentation of women in the top jobs, a feature not just of life in developing countries but in her own nation, was an issue that always concerned her. The UN was celebrating the fact that Rwanda was the first and at the time the only country to have a female majority in the nation’s parliament, with almost two-thirds of the seats taken by women.
It was a great step forward. Meghan complimented Rwandan president Paul Kagame. “We need more men like that,” she said.
Though Kagame has his critics, this was a truly remarkable turnaround for a country which, just twenty years earlier, had suffered an appalling genocide. The figures were astonishing, with approximately 1 million people killed, most brutally hacked to death with machetes, and 2 million displaced into refugee camps. Meghan traveled to see the other side of Rwanda herself, the actor and her UN team traveling by van to Gihembe refugee camp, the sprawling collection of huts studded into the lush green hillside now home to seventeen thousand people who had fled the violence in the wartorn Democratic Republic of the Congo. She wanted to speak to the women at the grassroots and find out how they coped with a life that was meant to be temporary but had become permanent. Inevitably, every visit by a celebrity, even if the local population has no clue who they are, attracts a crowd, and Meghan posed happily with dozens of curious and excited local children.
As she traveled back over the bumpy dirt road, past the grazing goats and the lush green fields, she idly checked her emails, amazed that the signal was better here than in some parts of Toronto and Los Angeles. While she bounced along the road she learned that she had been invited as a guest to the BAFTAs, the British Academy film awards, which take place a few weeks before the Oscars.
Her management company told her that she would be sponsored by a high-end jewelry company that would fly her directly from Kigali to London, where she would be whisked into hair and makeup before being poured into a gown. “No,” screamed her gut. It had always been a dream to attend the BAFTAs, but she couldn’t shift emotional gears that quickly, from the purpose-driven work she had been doing all week in Rwanda to the polished glamour of an awards show. There would be other BAFTAs, other red carpets. But for now there was only Rwanda. As she later wrote, “This type of work is what feeds my soul.”
Of course, she was not the first nor will she be the last celebrity to struggle to reconcile the air-kissing superficiality of Hollywood with the stark reality of life for so many in the developing world. Oscar-winning actor and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie is a vivid example of a star who manages to straddle both worlds. The more she became involved with her humanitarian mission, the more she had to learn to switch off and switch on. Just like acting, but in real life.
Shortly after her return from Rwanda Meghan was front and center for New York Fashion Week in February. She was now a front-row girl, watching the models at the show of her fashion mentor Wes Gordon, but she was also photographed reviewing Misha Nonoo’s stylish collection. Her look was a revelation inspired in part by the neon swirls and scribbles of British artist Tracy Emin. The theme was Meghan’s cri de coeur: the empowerment of women. Nonoo had the models do their hair themselves, pulling it back into ponytails with a minimum of product and as many bobby pins as they liked. Meghan appreciated the symbolism and thought Nonoo’s collaboration with the orchestra Decoda “so classy and beautiful.” “It just set the tone,” she enthused.