‘If she didn’t like it, she shouldn’t have auditioned for it’: Royal experts and critics take aim at Meghan Markle over her new ‘breaking down the bimbo’ Archetypes podcast recalling her year as a ‘briefcase girl’ on US TV show Deal or No Deal
- The Duchess of Sussex was speaking on the her new Archetypes podcast, in episode released yesterday
- Meghan appeared on season two of NBC’s Deal or No Deal 16 years ago, appearing in 34 episodes
- The Duchess of Sussex said she was grateful for the work ‘to pay the bills’ – ‘but not how it made me feel’
- Royal said she and other women on the show were there for looks and had to pad their bras and get spray tans
The latest episode of Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast has been slammed by critics after the royal revealed she quit as a Deal or No Deal briefcase girl because she was ‘objectified’ and forced to have spray tans and wear a padded bra that reduced her to a ‘bimbo’.
The Duchess of Sussex was speaking on the her Archetypes podcast, in a new episode released yesterday titled ‘Breaking down the bimbo’ that also featured Paris Hilton.
Meghan appeared on season two of NBC’s Deal or No Deal 16 years ago. She first stood beside briefcase number 11 for two episodes, then moved to number 24. She left the show midway through the season.
She said: ‘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.’
The California-based royal also revealed that she and the other women on the show were forced to ‘line up’ for various beauty treatments including ‘padding in your bra’, to attach fake eyelashes and ‘put in’ hair extensions.
But reviewers and critics have taken aim at Meghan’s claims. Royal biographer Angela Levin told MailOnline that very attractive’ Meghan ‘didn’t have to take the job’, and ‘could have said no’, adding that the fact she chose to do it ‘meant that she wanted it’.
Rikki Schlott in the New York Post said that ‘being praised for your looks’ was ‘literally the job description’ on the show, and added that no briefcase girl ‘showed up expecting to be celebrated for her brains’.
Hilary Rose in The Times penned a sarcastic review noting how listeners had learnt that ‘envy can be a dangerous thing’, adding this was perhaps especially true ‘when you fancy living in a castle but get given a poxy cottage called Frogmore instead’ – a reference to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s living arrangements when they were based in the UK.
US commentator Kat Timpf said Meghan spoke as if she was ‘describing some really serious trauma that she went through’, even though she just ‘opened a briefcase’. She added that briefcase girls are ‘paid to look attractive’ and would have known that when they signed up.
Richard Madeley on Good Morning Britain asked: ‘Is there anything Meghan Markle won’t moan about’, before highlighting how the Duchess of Sussex’s Deal or No Deal co-star Claudia Jordan had refuted her claims.
And Spectator World’s Cockburn columnist said ‘we are used to Meghan’s attempts to rewrite history’, before asking if it was a ‘running theme’ for the royal to ‘walk out on a job because not every aspect of it suits her.’
Here, read excerpts from some of the reviews of the latest episode of Archetypes:
The latest episode of Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast has been slammed by critics after the royal revealed she quit as a Deal or No Deal briefcase girl because she was ‘objectified’ and forced to have spray tans and wear a padded bra that reduced her to a ‘bimbo’
Angela Levin – MailOnline
- It is extraordinary. First of all, Meghan is very old-fashioned. The word bimbo has long been out of normal speech. So why she goes back to days when women were treated in a very different way, I really don’t understand.
- She must have auditioned for it. I don’t think then she was at all known and anybody would run after her and plead with her. She obviously went for ran audition, saw the sort of thing it was, and if she didn’t like it, she should’ve not done it.
- I think when we all go out to earn money and to work, after school and any other education that you have, you don’t start at the top, you start sometimes with something that is rather banal and not very stimulating. But you realise it takes you on a ladder to more that you want to do and gives you experience.
- But why she wanted to have experience of wearing the sort of clothes that she did which were quite bimboesque and take that job… she did 34 performances of it so if she hated it and felt it was very disrespectful then she could have left.
- There were plenty of beautiful girls there and she could have just gone on. This whole thing about she didn’t want to be praised for her beauty, she would rather be praised for her brain, the thing is that is a nonsense too because again it is actually putting herself in a position that she doesn’t want to be in which when she is very clever she doesn’t have to be in at all.
Royal biographer Angela Levin told MailOnline: ‘It is extraordinary. First of all, Meghan is very old-fashioned. The word bimbo has long been out of normal speech. So why she goes back to days when women were treated in a very different way, I really don’t understand’
Meghan appeared on Season two of NBC’s Deal or No Deal 16 years ago. She first stood beside briefcase number 11 for two episodes, then moved to number 24
Rikki Schlott – New York Post
Meghan Markle used her looks to get ahead — now she’s shocked at being ‘objectified’
- ‘While the optics of scantily-clad 20-somethings standing behind Howie Mandel might be a little cringey by today’s standards, being praised for your looks is . . . well, literally the job description. I don’t think any briefcase girl showed up expecting to be celebrated for her brains.
- ‘Markle, who was on the show [Deal Or No Deal in 2006, chose to capitalize on her beauty and flaunt what she’s got —and, hey, more power to her. A pretty face was her foot in the door.’
- ‘That all makes it a little hard to sympathize with the implication that she was somehow victimized as a briefcase girl, a job she as a then 25-year-old consenting adult chose to take.’
Meghan is seen holding the number 26 briefcase on Deal or No Deal, a show which she featured on at the start of her acting career
Hilary Rose – The Times
When Meghan met Paris Hilton: I was wrong, she is a genius
- ‘She is a genius and a rare journalistic talent and, now that I too am sitting in my truth and owning my dimensionality as a multilayered human being, I can see it.’
- ‘Meghan gives the usual long preamble about herself. This week, it’s about how cursed she was to be born beautiful, and how unexpected and awful it was to feel valued for her looks, not her brain, when she was hired by a game show for her looks, not her brain.’
- ‘We learn that envy can be a dangerous thing, perhaps especially when you fancy living in a castle but get given a poxy cottage called Frogmore instead, and have to walk behind other people instead of being right at the front, like you deserve.’
US commentator Kat Timpf – Piers Morgan uncensored
- ‘The way she talks about this as if she is describing some really serious trauma that she went through. She opened a briefcase and that is all she had to do. You are paid to look attractive. That is what the job is. You know when you sign up.
- ‘To say that she was forced to do it, no you agreed to take the job. To me this makes about as much sense as accepting a job at Subway and saying it is sexist when a man asks you to make him a sandwich.
- ‘That is what you are paid to do. And plenty of women who do that job, they are grateful for it, they like it, they are fine with it, so if that is what you want to do, choose to do it… but it is not a trauma.’
Critics also pointed out that Meghan (pictured above holding suitcase 24) agreed to go on the show and was not forced into it
Richard Madeley – Good Morning Britain
- ‘Is there anything Meghan Markle won’t moan about? She’s saying that the show, which she did in 2006, made her look like a bimbo and objectified her.
- ‘And her co-bimbo who worked on the show – not! She has come out and said, ‘Excuse me, I wasn’t treated like a bimbo and neither were you actually, we weren’t objectified’.
Cockburn column – Spectator World
Meghan Markle’s meeting of the minds with Paris Hilton
- ”I am kind, I have a big heart, I’m an Aquarius. I love animals and I’m shy. I’m a tomboy. I’m an undercover nerd. I love cartoons and I’m a girl’s girl,’ says Paris Hilton at the start of Archetypes, Meghan Markle’s podcast about ‘dissecting labels’.
- ‘We are used to Meghan’s attempts to rewrite history, but now it seems that her guests are falling victim to their own ‘truth.’
- ‘Cockburn wonders if this is a running theme in Meghan’s life, walking out on a job because not every aspect of it suits her. Well, at least this time, with the help of Spotify, she won’t need to worry about paying the bills.’
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