Stilettos, a skimpy dress... and £600 a shift!

For a young woman with serious acting aspirations and staunch feminist beliefs, it was the ultimate indignity. Yet at 25, Meghan was so hard up and desperate for TV work that she became a ‘briefcase babe’ on America’s version of the cheesy gameshow Deal Or No Deal.

Though she earned £600 a day for the role, it meant parading alluringly on stage in a skimpy red dress and 5in heels, brandishing a silver case which – depending on the contestants’ luck – might contain anything from a penny to a million dollars.

Behind the scenes there were worse indignities. According to Tameka Jacobs, one of the 25 briefcase girls who appeared with Meghan in the show in

2006, those with smaller measurements were made to stuff their bras with foam, while curvier ones had their bosoms held in shape with sticky tape.

Then there was the ordeal of the morning ‘inspection’, where a producer would line them up and walk along their ranks, like some leering sergeant major, to ensure they hadn’t gained weight.

‘Meghan’s aspirations were to win an Oscar or to be on Broadway, so if you’re in a minidress and high heels with your boobs taped together, when what you want to do is serious acting, then it’s tough,’ says Tameka, 38, now a photographer.

While Meghan made no secret of her lofty ambitions and would often slip away from the studio to audition for serious parts, she endured this humiliating rite-of- acting passage with good spirits. When costume-makers raised the hems of their frocks to reveal even more thigh, Tameka says, Meghan – who always carried briefcase number 24 – would amuse the other girls by grimacing, as if to say, ‘Is this for real?’

‘Sometimes we’d mess around and squeeze our breasts together, and bend over, so you could see the layers of foam,’ says Tameka.

Meghan, she adds, ‘had a great figure and filled out her dress nicely’ (despite having a secret weakness for pizza and crisps) and never seemed shy or insecure about flaunting herself on stage.

Nonetheless, after finding fame in the legal drama Suits, Meghan declared that she would rather ‘gloss over’ this period of her career.

Meghan, aged 25, giving her all as a briefcase girl on Deal Or No Deal