Meghan Markle has opened up about her time on infamous game show, Deal Or No Deal, on which she appeared between 2006 and 2007.
Speaking on her Archetypes podcast with guest star Paris Hilton this week, the pair shared a candid chat about being objectified as woman, as well as breaking down the “bimbo” rhetoric.
Markle explained that being a briefcase girl on the NBC show for 34 episodes didn’t make her “feel smart”.
“I ended up quitting the show. I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage. 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, the word ‘bimbo’.”
While on the show, Markle revealed she had to put on false lashes and extensions, as well as pad her 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,” she continued.
“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. Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite.”
Markle clarified that the women she worked with were smart people, but that wasn’t the focus of why they were there.
“I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach. Like I said, I was thankful for the job but not for how it made me feel which was not smart.”
The Duchess of Sussex shared her hopes for her one-year-old daughter, Lilibet, telling Hilton: “I want our daughter to aspire to be slightly higher. Yeah, I want my Lili to want to be educated and want to be smart and to pride herself on those things.”
Hilton herself also opened up about her time on an infamous show of the 2000s—The Simple Life.
In it, Hilton was stereotyped as a “dumb blonde”, with her co-star Nicole Richie was painted as the lazy trouble maker.
Hilton said she felt she “almost got stuck and lost in the character”, and that she would do things differently now.
“At some point it’s like lines got blurred and I forgot who I was. And it makes me sad because I used to be such a free spirit, not so closed off, and I think with so many things that happened to me during the years I just closed off in a way in my mind and I wish it didn’t happen. Going through trauma affects you,” she said.
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