Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(45)
She waxed rapturous over the Los Angeles–inspired maxi-dress, trilled over the Rachel Zane–esque “little black dress,” and gushed about the white flouncy dress with an asymmetrical hem. The maroon date night dress made Meghan feel “fashion-y and Frenchie.” The day before the April 27 launch of her collection, Meghan hastened to New York to the taping of the finale of The Fashion Fund, a Vogue-sponsored event where designers battle it out to win sponsorship and funding for their line. She was mixing and matching with fashion luminaries, the perfect lead in into the launch of her collection. Meghan was also traveling alone.
In news that shocked none of her friends, she and Cory decided to go their separate ways—as they had been doing in effect for most of their relationship. Nonetheless the breakup still had an effect, a friend of Meghan’s remarking that she felt “down, vulnerable and hurt” by the split. Though there were hints that Cory was seeing other women, the root of the issue was the plain fact that neither side was prepared to make any commitment.
She put on a brave face, grabbed a glass of champagne, and enjoyed the launch of her first fashion collection. It was an immediate hit.
Thanks to Meghan’s dedicated selling and her star power, the Meghan Markle Collection virtually sold out on day one. Eat your heart out, Kate Moss. Meghan was thrilled especially as the company were so enthused about sales that her second capsule collection, to be released in the fall of 2016, was a done deal.
The actor barely had time to finish her glass of bubbly before she was one of the celebrity guests at luncheon to honor ten game-changing women under the age of twenty-five. Meghan along with Olympic athletes and successful internet startup founders were designated mentors of the finalists at the fifty-ninth anniversary of the Glamour College Women of the Year. Now a grizzled veteran, Meghan was asked about the most common misconception about college girls. “You realize there is so much depth, there is so much incredible inspiration, and that young women are thinking outside of the box in a way that we haven’t seen before. It is the biggest sign that we are in good hands, that our world is going to be just fine, and that these are the women who are going to be the players changing the game.”
She wasn’t so confident of the future a couple of weeks later when she agreed to appear on Comedy Central and join a panel discussion on Larry Wilmore’s The Nightly Show.
With the presidential election just six months away and Republican candidates dropping like flies, Donald Trump looked like the front-runner. On the night she appeared, his endless attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, calling her “sick” and “overrated,” had finally engendered a response from the Republican-leaning channel. In a statement backing Kelly, they said: “Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks against Megyn Kelly and his extreme, sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate who wants to occupy the highest office in the land.”
Wilmore asked his guests: “Do you think the momentum surrounding Mr. Trump could be stopped?” Meghan joined in the banter with the host and his correspondents, laughing wryly, “It’s really the moment that I go, we film Suits in Toronto and I might just stay in Canada. I mean, come on, if that’s reality we are talking about, come on, that is a game changer in terms of how we move in the world here.”
A few minutes later she jumped in to make other points, “Yes, of course Trump is divisive. Think about just female voters alone. I think it was in 2012, the Republican Party lost the female vote by twelve points. That’s a huge number.” She went on to label Trump a “misogynist” and suggested that voting for Hillary Clinton was made easier because of the moral fiber of the man she was up against. “Trump has made it easy to see that you don’t really want that kind of world that he’s painting,” she argued.
It would not be long before Trump’s long shadow would affect her life in ways that she could never have contemplated even in her wildest dreams.
9
When Harry Met Meghan
Sometimes timing is everything. If Meghan Markle had met the man standing before her, casually dressed, hand outstretched in greeting, a couple of years earlier, she would have smiled, made friendly small talk, and moved on. Prince Harry would not have impressed—except as an anecdote to tell her friends.
Of course she would have noticed his ginger hair and beard—her father, half brother, and former husband, Trevor Engelson, are all strawberry blonds—and that at 6 foot 1 he is not far off her father’s height, although skinnier and fitter, with the rangy, loping gait of a young man who’s spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. But Meghan would have found the early Harry hard work, something of a lost soul.
Looking back, Harry would be the first to admit that during his twenties, his life had descended in to “total chaos,” the prince struggling to process the black cloud of grief that had enveloped his life since the moment he had been awakened from his bed in Balmoral in the summer of 1997 and was told that his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, had died in a car accident.
Though millions of tears had been shed as people around the globe watched the prince, then only twelve, walk behind his mother’s coffin in the televised funeral, only he had been left to pick up the pieces of his life. Not even his brother, Prince William—sober, pragmatic and sensible—had been able to reach him at times.
Without a mother, without a steadying, nurturing influence in his life, Harry had gone off the rails. He became notorious as an angry drunk who lurched out of London nightclubs, ready to throw a punch at the loathsome paparazzi who dogged his every footstep. For years he was carefully protected by highly paid public relations professionals who smoothed over his public escapades. So when, in February 2004, Harry was branded a “horrible young man” by influential columnist Carol Sarler over his late-night escapades, Prince Charles’s communications director, Paddy Harverson, swung into action, defending the prince’s behavior during this gap year.