MAKING HER MARKLE
Harry’s bride-to-be has worked hard for her honey
Meghan: A Hollywood Princess Andrew Morton Grand Central Publishing Meghan Markle’s teacher remembers her as “one of the top-five outstanding students in my career.” When Markle writes on her blog: “My hair is primped, my face is painted, my name is recognized, my star meter is rising, my life is changing,” she is still years away from meeting Prince Harry, but has already bagged a hit television series and is on her way to founding a lifestyle site, launching herself as an international humanitarian and delivering a speech to the United Nations that gets a standing ovation from Ban Ki-moon. That blog was anonymous, written under the title Working Actress, but is one of the invaluable sources that Andrew Morton has plundered for this biography. Markle’s thoughts on everything from Donald Trump (bad) to holistic plant-based food delivery services (good) are available online, whether via television appearances, her Instagram feed or her (now defunct) website The Tig, an aspirational guide to living your best Californian life. Morton doesn’t unpick this carefully curated version of Markle’s life. Instead, he weaves it into a highly readable book that could come straight from the shelf marked “uplifting fiction”: a spirited heroine who overcomes life’s obstacles and conquers the world. Imagine Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance crossed with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. Morton has done the legwork speaking to people from her past — by happy coincidence he has a home in Pasadena, Markle’s hometown — and the first half of the book is the most compelling as it traces our heroine’s determined rise. After a detailed family history, including the slightly strained relationships that come with divorced parents and half-siblings, we see that her passion for good work and good publicity was forged early. She makes the national news aged 11 by writing to Procter & Gamble to complain about their sexist advert for dishwasher detergent, CC-ing Hillary Clinton; cleans tables in the Hippie Kitchen homeless shelter at 16; is crowned homecoming queen and wins awards for “intellectual, artistic and charitable work” in her last year at high school. Her stated aim, according to a friend, is to be “Diana 2.0.”
There is a touch of Becky Sharp as she sets about finding fame. Winning her first film role in an Ashton Kutcher rom-com, she negotiates her screen time from one line to five. There are years of bitparts, pilots that never get made into series, and a stint as a “briefcase girl” on Deal or No Deal. She never gives up. Finally, she lands her big break, as Rachel Zane in the legal drama Suits.
Now, briefly, we get something more interesting, when her first marriage to Trevor Engelson is on the skids.
“Meghan, a self-confessed perfectionist who was as fastidious as she was controlling,” dumps him and sends back her wedding ring by registered mail. A “networker to her fingertips,” she cuts off old friends once the Suits job elevates her to higher circles — “the Meghan chill.” But with no sources willing to dish real dirt, this idea of Markle as a ruthless social climber is not pursued.
Morton knows as much as any other Royal watcher about the intimacies of Harry and Meghan’s romance — nothing whatsoever — so must rely on biographer’s intuition.
“She understood him as a man, not a title,” he writes breathlessly of the couple’s instant chemistry, then unleashing his inner Attenborough, when the couple go on safari and are “lulled to sleep by the chirping of the yellow-throated sand grouse and the melancholy call of zebra at the water’s edge.” What do we learn about the newest member of the Royal Family? The overall impression is of a bright, caring, driven young woman who deserves everything she has. Nothing happens to her by accident — it’s the result of hard graft. The journey from soup kitchen volunteer to Kensington Palace might seem like a fairy tale, but fairy tales end when the beautiful girl marries her prince. Here, the small matter of a royal wedding is just the mid-point. Markle is the author of her own story, and she’s not done yet.