Meghan Markle slammed as embarrassing scene resurfaces; Harry makes surprise appearance
An embarrassing TV scene featuring Meghan Markle has remerged as a major US celeb slammed the Duchess and Prince Harry made a surprise appearance.
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Hollywood is turning on Meghan Markle after the Duchess slammed her big break into the industry, with The View host Whoopi Goldberg exclaiming: “That’s TV, baby”.
It came as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the Beverly Hills 90210 reboot resurfaced showing Ms Markle playing a character giving oral sex two years after she quit Deal or No Deal for being objectified as a bimbo.
“What did you think you were going to do? You know that’s what the show was,” said Goldberg on an episode of The View.
“I don’t know that the people who are sitting there [watching] are thinking about you like that. They’re thinking, ‘I want the money,”’ Goldberg added.
“The objectification might be coming from you and how you felt about how these women were being portrayed, and that’s what you have to change, because we’re performers,” Goldberg continued. “When you’re a performer, you take the gig.”
The Sister Act star added that Ms Markle’s comments were insensitive to the other briefcase girls and viewers alike, adding she shouldn’t make other women feel bad.
“They’re trying to make a living, too,” Goldberg said.
“You left, and that was your prerogative. I feel bad, because I don’t think people were looking at these girls like this, I think they want the money,” she added.
After Ms Markle made new waves with the objectification claims on her “Archetypes” podcast, online sleuths went searching for more roles that appeared to contradict her reluctance to play the role of the bimbo.
Two years after quitting the game show in 2006, Ms Markle made a brief appearance in the 2008 reboot of Beverly Hills 90210 in which the then-27-year-old plays “Wendy”.
A clip of the scene shows Wendy jumping up from the lap of Ethan, played by Dustin Milligan, as his girlfriend catches them frolicking in his car.
Ethan adjusts his clothing as Wendy flicks her hair away to look at the stunned girlfriend Anne, played by Shenae Grimes.
The director of the episode, Wendy Stanzler, told The Daily Mail that she barely remembered Ms Markle in the minor role.
“We had a lot of great young actors in that show who went on to get breaks and she was among them,” Ms Stanzler said.
HARRY’S SURPRISE APPEARANCE
The controversy surrounding Meghan Markle’s latest podcast comes as Prince Harry made a surprise appearance at a mental health summit in San Francisco.
The Duke of Sussex appeared at the Masters of Scale Summit alongside the founder of mental health platform BetterUp, Alexi Robichaux and podcaster, Reid Hoffman, to talk about the “power of therapy.”
The 38-year-old has previously revealed he has been participating in “serious therapy” for the past six years after an incident involving the Duchess of Sussex.
Discussing his struggles with mental health in the documentary, The Me You Can’t See, Prince Harry claimed after an argument with his wife he sought therapy to save his relationship.
Fox News reported the father of two told the audience he has a coach but “I wish I had two”, according to quotes on Financial Times Correspondent David Lee’s Twitter.
Program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Doron Weber, also tweeted insights into Prince Harry’s commentary.
“Prince Harry says growing up in the royal family & and then spending 10 years in the military, he never heard the words ‘therapy’ or ‘coaching,’” Weber tweeted.
“Then the blinkers came off and his life changed.”
The Duke of Sussex currently holds the role of chief impact officer at the BetterUp platform.
FORMER NO DEAL CO-STAR FIRES BACK
A former Deal or No Deal “briefcase girl” has hit out at Meghan Markle’s claims of being “treated like a bimbo” while on the game show.
Claudia Jordan, of Real Housewives of Atlanta, starred alongside Ms Markle in the mid-2000s and has taken to social media to air her thoughts on the subject.
The Duchess of Sussex revealed in a conversation with Paris Hilton on a new episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes that she felt objectified and “treated like a bimbo” while working as a briefcase girl.
She provided an insight into what the job was like: “It was solely about our beauty. And not necessarily about brains.”
To which Ms Jordan wrote on her Instagram story: “Deal or No Deal never treated us like bimbos. We got so many opportunities because of that show”.
“That’s the kind of opportunity that IS (sic) what you make it … If you show up and seize your moments then there’s no limits to what you can do with the opportunity,” Mr Jordan wrote.
“I actually enjoyed my experience working on Deal or No Deal.”
The former Deal or No Deal star said being on the show led “so many opportunities”, such as Celebrity Apprentice, a breast cancer awareness campaign, co-hosting the 2009 miss Universe pageant.
She said her opinion was no about “attacking” Meghan but defending the show and people involved.
‘I WAS TREATED LIKE A BIMBO’
Meghan Markle has discussed being objectified and “treated like a bimbo” on a new episode of her Spotify podcast in a conversation with Paris Hilton.
The Duchess of Sussex’s sixth instalment of her hit podcast Archetypes dropped on Tuesday.
To discuss the subject “Breaking Down the Bimbo”, Meghan invited the reality TV star to share her experiences with the stereotype before detailing her own.
“The other night I was flipping through the channels on TV,” Meghan told Paris.
“This, by the way, is a rarity when you have two children under the age of four – but I saw an episode of a game show called Deal or No Deal.
“This brought back a lot of memories.
“I had a short stint as a briefcase, girl on the US version of the game show.
“Now my experience on the show – which included holding said briefcase on stage alongside 25 other women doing the same – it was for me, fascinating.”
Meghan held briefcase number 24 during her time as a model on the US version of Deal or No Deal in 2006 – years before she met Prince Harry. She left the show midway through the season in 2007 and later landed a role on Suits.
The royal went on to discuss the difference between her job on the show, which focused on the way she looked, and her time spent as an intern at the US Embassy in Argentina, which focused on her abilities.
“Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite,” she said about the game show.
“I had studied acting in college at Northwestern University and, like a lot of the other women standing on stage with me, acting was what I was pursuing,” she continued.
“So while Deal or No Deal wasn‘t about acting, I was still really grateful as an auditioning actress to have a job.
“That could pay my bills. I had income, I was part of the Union, I had health insurance, it was great.
“And yet, I had also studied international relations in college.
“And there were times when I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the US Embassy in Argentina Buenos Aires and being in the motorcade with the Secretary of Treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain.
“Here. I was being valued for something quite the opposite.”
Meghan went on to “paint the picture” of what working on the show was like.
“All the girls, we would line up,” she said.
“And there were different stations for having your lashes, put on, or your extensions, put in, or the padding in your bra.
“We were even given spray-tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie cutter idea, of precisely what we should look like.
“It was solely about our beauty. And not necessarily about brains.”
Meghan said there was one detail she would “never forget” about her time on the show that involved a producer who would repeatedly scream at her backstage.
“I can still hear her,” she said.
“She couldn‘t properly pronounce my last name at the time – and I knew who she was talking to because she would go ‘Mark-ell suck’.
“Mark-ell suck it in.
“I ended up quitting the show.
“Like I said, I was thankful for the job but not for how it made me feel which was not smart.
“And by the way, I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn‘t the focus of why we were there and I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach.
“Knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage.”
The Duchess revealed that it was hard for her to think about what she would talk about with Paris when so much of The Simple Life star’s identity “was about not leaning into being smart.”
Paris said she had played the role of “dumb blonde,” while her co-star Nicole Richie was the troublemaker.
“I almost got stuck and lost in the character and at some point it’s like lines got blurred and I forgot who I was,” Paris said.
“And it makes me sad because I used to be such a free spirit, not so closed off, and I think with so many things that happened to me during the years I just closed off in a way in my mind and I wish it didn’t happen. Going through trauma affects you.”
Meghan went on to say that she hopes her and Harry‘s daughter Lilibet will “aspire slightly higher” than a “bimbo”.
“I‘d be curious to hear your thoughts on this idea because when I hear the word bimbo, I have a very negative connotation to it,” she told Paris on the podcast.
“I don‘t see that as an aspirational thing for a woman, I want our daughters to aspire to be slightly higher.
“I want my Lili to want to be educated and want to be smart and to pride herself on those things.”
Paris said she doesn’t want any future daughter of her own “to think it’s cool to be a dumb blonde or to dumb herself down for society or for anything like that”.
Before the interview started, Meghan told listeners that she was anxious ahead of the recording, saying: “I’ve been the most nervous about this one”.
“Because while I’m embarrassed to admit it, I had a judgment about Paris,” she explained.
“And I don’t like having judgment doesn’t feel good.
“But I had to be real about that because when I grew up, she was beautiful, rich and famous. What could possibly be wrong with her life?”
Paris responded saying she was also hesitant about an audience with the Duchess of Sussex “cause I’m just such a shy person and we haven’t met before”.
Originally published as Meghan Markle slammed as embarrassing scene resurfaces; Harry makes surprise appearance
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