Meghan ends acting career
In an emotional finale, Prince Harry’s fiancee married her on-screen Suits sweetheart, walking away from her career as it was peaking
It was just too good a plot twist for the executives to resist: Meghan Markle simply had to bow out with a wedding. On Wednesday night, Prince Harry’s fiancee said farewell to Hollywood with a fairytale ending to her acting career — marrying her on-screen Suits sweetheart in an emotional season finale. Nearly a million American viewers watched her utter the words: “You are the husband I have always wanted.”
You have to wonder whether she laughed or cried when she saw the script.
The final episode of the show’s seventh series, which airs tonight in the UAE, was filmed on November 11. That she was attending an Anzac Day memorial service at Westminster Abbey with the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry on the day it was aired in the US just shows how far she has come.
Many have wondered how she will look back on her decision to walk away from her career as it was peaking. But it was always going to be thus. Aaron Korsh, the creator of Suits, revealed to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that he had begun to write Markle out well before her engagement was announced, with the writers deciding to “take a gamble” that her relationship with Prince Harry was likely to progress.
Like Grace Kelly before her, who bowed out with the aptly titled High Society before retiring and becoming Princess of Monaco, maintaining a career as an actress while a member of the Royal family would have been impossible.
Almost immediately after the final scenes were shot she packed up the Toronto home she lived in during filming and moved across the Atlantic to be with Prince Harry.
Two weeks later, they announced their engagement. The signs that this was coming were already there. In April 2017 she had shut down her lifestyle blog The Tig, likely both on advice of courtiers, and out of her own common sense.
Growing up in LA, Markle had worked hard to become an actress. At secondary school — the all-girls Catholic Immaculate Heart — her father, Thomas, an Emmy awardwinning lighting director, would do the lighting for her school plays.
“She was very dedicated. I knew she would be something special,” said Gigi Perreau, a Hollywood
film star in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, who was Markle’s drama teacher for four years.
Yet right from the start, there were hints that she would make her mark in a world beyond acting.
Aged 11, Markle was watching TV advertisements in class as part of a social studies assignment, when she was angered by a commercial for dishwashing soap, which proudly asserted that “women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”
Inspired by her determined mother, Doria Ragland, who juggled several jobs to raise her, Markle took up a letter-writing campaign to protest against the ad — writing to Hillary Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, and high-flying feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. Shortly after, the company changed their slogan to: “People all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”
At university in Chicago she studied theatre and international relations, and spent a few months working at the US embassy in Buenos Aires, where she became convinced she’d end up working in politics.
“I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche — a girl from LA who decides to be an actress,” she told Marie Claire magazine in 2013.
It is telling that Markle is said by friends to see Angelina Jolie as a role model — someone who has successfully transitioned from actor to campaigner. And it is no surprise that she has reportedly struck up a keen friendship with Amal Clooney, too. Following in both of their footsteps, she became an advocate for UN Women, giving a speech on gender equality in 2015. She is also an ambassador for World Vision, travelling to Rwanda and India to support their work.
If some saw her abandoning her career as an outdated and sad sign, Markle herself certainly doesn’t see it that way. While the Duchess of Cambridge seems content with a more traditional role within the Royal household, Markle is likely to take a different approach and see it as a way she can naturally progress towards humanitarian work. “With Harry beside her, she’s confident she would be able to have the right kind of backing to support her,” a source said.
“I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche — a girl from LA who decides to be an actress.” MEGHAN MARKLE | Actress/humanitarian