Meghan Markle's secret diary revealed
The anonymous internet diary was fearlessly candid. Penned in a confessional style, its author — an aspiring young Hollywood actress with a salty turn of phrase and a keen eye for detail — chronicled her triumphs and tribulations as she ‘hustled’ in search of stardom.
Some entries exposed the darker side of Tinseltown. The tyrannical casting directors and ‘ bitchy’ rivals with whom she vied for roles, for example, and the hard-driving producers who treated the cast like ‘ show ponies’, enlisting a doctor to inject them with vitamins so they stayed fit for work. She laid bare her ‘ roller-coaster’ emotions, which swung back and forth with success and failure. When she passed an audition, her confidence soared and the champagne corks popped; when she was rejected, she would spend the day ‘sobbing in bed with a bottle of wine and a box of biscuits’.
Then there were the daily indignities and the financial hardship she endured as she clawed for recognition. ‘I’ve had to freeze my [acting] union membership, borrow money, work jobs that I hated, endure being treated like s**t on a set, kiss actors with smelly breath and cry for hours on end because I just didn’t think I could take it any more,’ she wrote.
The young actress also described, in less than delicate terms, how awkward it felt to act out a love scene with an actor whose passions had run away with him. Quite clearly, she couldn’t risk putting her name to such a nakedly candid blog, which first appeared in January 2010 and became a ‘must read’ for budding actors, according to one entertainment industry website. To do so would have been tantamount to committing professional suicide.
For as the long-hidden predations of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and others have since demonstrated, the Hollywood establishment guards its secrets closely and would not have taken kindly to an upstart performer turning the spotlight on the industry. So she simply called herself ‘The Working Actress’ and used a silhouette of an empty director’s chair as her logo, declining to identify herself.
She remained incognito and wrote her final piquant post, in the summer of 2012, whereupon she signed off from the internet without a word of explanation or farewell. By then, she had described the thrill of landing her big break, a starring role in a new TV series, and her abrupt departure inevitably caused her disappointed readers to speculate about her identity. But the guessing game started again after it came to light that the diary had been removed from the internet. Given the position that she is about to assume, we can well understand the possible motive for this cloak-and-dagger image-polishing operation. So step forward, out of the shadows, Meghan Markle.
The revelation that Prince Harry’s fiancee was the diary’s author comes from impeccable sources in California. ‘It was a way for her to vent her frustrations and try to have a voice in the industry. I think it was also a way to inspire other struggling actors — and herself, too — to keep going,’ one said.
By recovering some of the entries and matching them with events that occurred in Meghan’s life, and also with remarks she later made in interviews, I have uncovered more evidence to con- clusively prove that she is the mystery Hollywood whistleblower. In truth, the task wasn’t all that difficult, for Meghan became rather reckless towards the end of her time as a secret diarist, leaving many clues as to her identity.
‘Yeah, it was definitely Meghan who wrote it,’ responded Lance Carter, a Hollywood actor who has appeared in films and TV shows. However, being named ought not to cause her embarrassment, for the advice and inspiration she gave in her columns was invaluable to acting newcomers. Her observations — by turns poignant, insightful and ribald — were also enormously entertaining. Furthermore, since Meghan described her experiences and thoughts in the form of a personal diary — ‘as if no one was reading’, as she put it — it is what historians would call a ‘primary source’: an intimate firsthand account of the extraordinary ascent that began in the showbiz backwaters.
A Kensington Palace spokeswoman for Miss Markle said there would be no comment. However, according to a well-placed source who knew Meghan, she put a great deal of thought into the blog, and it was very much a reflection of her character. The source added: ‘I think this shows a side of Meghan people might not expect. It is not the image she likes to portray. It doesn’t fit the image of a royal.’ Indeed it does not. But then, as her fascinating secret diary shows, Meghan is a free-spirited woman, and she promises to be a highly unconventional duchess.