Meghan Markle has said she felt "objectified" during her stint as a "Deal or No Deal" briefcase girl early in her career.
The Duchess of Sussex revisited her experience on the game show while chatting with Paris Hilton during an episode of her "Archetypes" podcast, which aired Tuesday.
"I ended up quitting the show. Like I said, I was thankful for the job but not for how it made me feel, which was not smart," she said, according to Newsweek.
"And by the way, I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn't the focus of why we were there, and I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach, knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage," Markle added. "I didn't like feeling forced to be all looks and little substance. And that's how it felt for me at the time being reduced to this specific archetype."
Markle said she joined the gameshow in 2006 because it allowed her to get money, health insurance, and join the union. And while it was a "fascinating" experience, she also harbored complicated emotions about it.
"There were times when I was on set at 'Deal or No Deal' and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina, Buenos Aires, and being in the motorcade with the secretary of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain," she said.
"Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite. I mean, you have to imagine just to paint the picture for you that before the tapings of the show, all the girls, we would line up. And there were different stations for having your lashes put on, or your extensions put in, or the padding in your bra.
"We were even given spray-tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie-cutter idea, of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty and not necessarily about brains."
Markle previously spoke about her time as a briefcase model in the game show, saying it was something she did while "auditioning to try to make ends meet," according to saying.
"Definitely working on 'Deal or No Deal' was a learning experience, and it helped me to understand what I would rather be doing," she said.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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