28 Things You Didn’t Know About Meghan Markle
Her first name is not Meghan...
With mere days to go before the royal wedding, Meghan Markle is at the peak of popularity, with the whole world charting her every move in eager anticipation of her May 19 nuptials. Despite being the most-Googled actress of 2016, Meghan's fans still have questions about exactly where the American actress came from and her trajectory from California to Kensington Palace. Ahead, a deep dive into the Duchess-to-be's past with 30 fun facts you probably don't know—but want to—about the future Mrs. Prince Harry.
She went to an all-girls Catholic school.
Meghan grew up attending an all-girls school with a Catholic affiliation. “I went to an all-girls Catholic school for like six years during the time when kids actually had handwriting class,” Meghan explained, alluding to her early love of cursive.
The charmingly self-deprecating actress also revealed that her Catholic school days were not at all glamorous. “Just picture me with my curly hair and a gap in my teeth and my little school uniform with Keds on,” the royal-to-be recalled.
Her first name is actually Rachel.
It's now a pretty well-known fact that Meghan's real first name isn't Meghan. Harry's fiancé was actually born Rachel Meghan Markle. But you have to admit, 'Meghan Markle' has a great ring to it.
Her dad was the lighting director and director of photography on Married… with Children.
“My dad was a lighting director and director of photography for Married... with Children," the actress revealed to Esquire. "Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of Married... with Children, which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up," she said, explaining that she was sometimes asked to hide her eyes when scenes got a little too risqué. "There were a lot of times my dad would say, 'Meg, why don't you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-color for your 11-year-old eyes.'"
So, she always knows how to “find her light”
Growing up on a TV set was the perfect learning environment for a young actress. “I will always find my light. No question," Meghan said. "And if I don't, I'll know, because my dad will be the first person to call me and say like, 'You need to have him bring another 2K in,' and 'Why aren't you using this sort of lighting gel?' The crew guys know that it's where I grew up.”
A deep dive into her family tree shows that Meghan and Harry are very distant cousins.
Strangely enough, back in October of last year, the Daily Mail reported a genealogy find claiming that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are very distantly related. Though the full family tree shows that the couple's link dates fifteen generations back in time, we'll probably choose to forget this little fact.
She spoke out against sexism at 11 years old.
Meghan was an early advocate for women's rights. At the tender age of 11, Meghan was outraged by a commercial that outwardly suggested only women do dishes, so the budding feminist wrote a letter to Procter and Gamble asking them to amend the advertising language. The company agreed. Watch an interview she gave about that experience here.
She was a double major at Northwestern University.
A self-proclaimed "theater nerd," Meghan told Marie Claire that she was always interested in both performance and politics, and was compelled to double-major in college. "I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliché—a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress," she explained. "I wanted more than that, and I had always loved politics, so I ended up changing my major completely and double-majoring in theater and international relations.”
She worked for the U.S. Embassy in Argentina.
Meghan discussed her career trajectory in an interview with Marie Claire, including her gig at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina right after college and planning for a future in politics. “By my junior year I had finished most of my credits, and so I applied for an internship at the U.S. Embassy, so I ended up working in the embassy in Buenos Aires for a few months," she said. "It was their economic devaluation and our Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Paul O'Neill, was there, so I'm 20 years old, in Buenos Aires, in a motorcade, doing that whole thing. I thought for sure I would still have a career in politics.”
She was briefcase #24 girl on Deal or No Deal.
Before landing a lead role on Suits, Meghan worked multiple on-camera gigs to stay afloat. “I would put that in the category of things I was doing while I was auditioning to try to make ends meet,” said Meghan of her time as a briefcase girl on Deal or No Deal. “Definitely working on Deal or No Deal was a learning experience, and it helped me to understand what I would rather be doing.”
To make a tough time even tougher, Meghan revealed that she never even held the show's lucky case. "I would end up standing up there forever in these terribly uncomfortable and inexpensive five-inch heels just waiting for someone to pick my number so I could go and sit down,” she explained.
She has incredibly neat handwriting and even dabbles in calligraphy.
“I've always had a propensity for getting the cursive down pretty well," Meghan told Esquire of her incredibly neat penmanship. “I'm glad that in the land of no one seeming to appreciate a handwritten note anymore that I can try to keep that alive.” And her handwriting actually turned into a little side hustle when the amateur calligraphist was asked to hand-design wedding invitations for celebrities. "What it evolved into was my pseudo-waitressing job when I was auditioning. I didn't wait tables. I did calligraphy for the invitations for, like, Robin Thicke and Paula Patton's wedding,” Meghan revealed.
She sees a lot of herself in her Suits character.
As with most believable characters, Meghan felt a close connection to her Suits alter-ego, Rachel. “Rachel and I very similar: ambitious, driven, and always trying to take the bull by its horns,” she explained to Marie Claire. Meghan also citied her counterpart's sometimes-harsh self-criticism, revealing that she is always her own worst critic. “And again, maybe that's where I'm similar to Rachel, in that I'm harder on myself than anyone else might be,” the actress said.
She designed a capsule collection with a Canadian fashion label.
A clear fashion devotee, Meghan's sartorial chops were recognized long before she hit the royal stage. According to fan site, Meghan's Mirror, Canadian retailer Reitmans signed then-actress Meghan as their brand ambassador in the fall of 2015 in an attempt to re-energize the label. In 2016, the Reitmans brand launched a capsule collection of dresses co-designed by Meghan.
She’s a huge foodie.
Meghan told Marie Claire that Rachel, her Suits alter-ego, was created to be a foodie thanks to Meghan's own food-obsession. "I love to cook," the actress explained. "My character is a foodie because they know that I'm a foodie. I'm always on the quest to find amazing new restaurants and new recipes." Meghan even claims she was into fine dining and experimental cuisine before it became trendy. "I'm a California girl, right? I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation," she said. "I do think there's some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.”
She can whip up a meal using only kitchen essentials.
Along with her love of food, the royal-to-be claims to be a pro in the kitchen. "I can whip up a great snack on a whim with almost nothing,” she told Esquire. “I pride myself in figuring out how to elevate a dish with a little preserved lemon, or then a sprinkle of Maldon salt." And it seems as though the future Duchess has already showed off her amateur chef chops at Kensington Palace, where she's baked little treats for Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
She’s wore her own personal jewelry when filming Suits.
We know Meghan has a BFF and personal stylist in Jessica Mulroney, but even when she's being dressed by Jessica or others for Suits, she insisted on styling her own jewelry. “All the jewelry that I wear on the show is my own personal jewelry and family heirlooms, like my grandma's charm bracelet and my signet ring,” she told Marie Claire.
She used to run a passion-project lifestyle blog called The Tig.
Though it's since been removed from the inter-webs, Meghan used to run a lifestyle blog called The Tig, which she filled with a mix of food, travel, fashion, and beauty content, Meghan told Allure that the blog title was born out of her discovery of the difference between red and white wine. "It's named after a wine called Tignanello," she said in a 2017 interview when the blog still existed. "I had a sip of it six years ago, and it was my first aha moment. You spend years going, 'Oh, I'll just have red or white. I don't really know what the difference is.' But then one day you take a sip of something and you're like, I get it. So the Tig became this personal idea of getting it—fashion, travel, beauty, all of it."
Her nose is a major plastic surgery request.
Back in early November, even before the royal engagement announcement, E! News reported that Meghan's nose was one of mounting interest in the world of Hollywood plastic surgery. "Patients started to coming to see me about six months ago requesting Meghan Markle's nose," board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Stephen T. Greenberg, MD, told E! "As things between her and Prince Harry started to heat up, attention definitely followed. Today, she is probably one of the top—if not the No. 1—request I get. Up until recently, the Kardashians were probably the most popular celebrity cosmetic requests."
She loved playing Apples to Apples and drinking Scotch with her Suits castmates.
According to Meghan's 2013 interview with Esquire, when the cameras stop rolling on their Toronto-based set, the whole Suits cast kicked it like normal friends. “Off-camera, there we are just playing Apples to Apples and drinking Scotch into the wee hours of the night,” the American actress told the publication. Sounds like a pretty fun set.
She always travels with tea tree oil.
A travel hack courtesy of the royal-to-be, Meghan says she always keeps tea tree oil in her carry-on “The one thing that I cannot live without when I'm traveling is a small container of tea tree oil," she told Allure. "It's not the most glamorous thing, but if you get a cut, a mosquito bite, a small breakout, no matter what it is, it's my little cure-all. It's inexpensive, it's small enough to carry on, and I bring it with me all the time."
Ellen DeGeneres convinced her to adopt her two dogs.
As the story goes, Meghan Markle ran into talk show host Ellen DeGeneres at an LA dog shelter. As Meghan was playing with one particular rescue pup, the famous funny host walked in and told her to adopt him. "Now, I don’t now her, but Ellen goes ‘Is that your dog?’" Meghan recalled to Reader's Digest Best Health. "And I said, ‘No,’ and she’s like, ‘You have to take that dog.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m deciding.’ And she’s like, ‘Rescue the dog!’ It’s sort of like if Oprah tells you to do something... And so I brought him home. Because Ellen told me to.”
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