Copyright

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

FIRST EDITION

Text © Sean Smith 2020

Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

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Source ISBN: 9780008359577

Ebook Edition © November 2020 ISBN: 9780008359607

Version: 2020-11-18

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Also by Sean Smith

Spice Girls

Ed Sheeran

George

Adele

Kim

Tom Jones: The Life

Kylie

Gary

Alesha

Tulisa

Kate

Robbie

Cheryl

Victoria

Justin: The Biography

Britney: The Biography

J.K. Rowling: A Biography

Jennifer: The Unauthorized Biography

Royal Racing

The Union Game

Sophie’s Kiss (with Garth Gibbs)

Stone Me! (with Dale Lawrence)

Dedication

To the Queen of Boop

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Note to Readers

5  Also by Sean Smith

6  Dedication

7  Contents

8  Introduction

9  PART ONE: THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY

10  1 Moments of History

11  2 Loving Day

12  3 People are Fighting

13  4 With a Sparkle

14  5 Star-To-Be

15  6 At the Hollywood Bowl

16  7 North by Northwestern

17  8 A Sense of Self

18  PART TWO: ACTOR TO ACTIVIST

19  9 Pity Parties

20  10 You’re Enough

21  11 I Won’t Stand for Racism

22  12 Networking

23  13 The Tig

24  14 Embracing the Experience

25  15 The Lion’s Roar

26  PART THREE: TO BE CONTINUED …

27  16 The One

28  17 Africa Calling

29  18 A Week in Hell

30  19 Time for India

31  20 The Clean Slate

32  21 A Labour of Love

33  22 Vogue

34  23 The End of the Fairy Tale

35  24 The Deft Goodbye

36  25 Rebuilding

37  Last Thoughts

38  Meghan’s Stars

39  Life and Times

40  Acknowledgements

41  Select Bibliography

42  List of Searchable Terms

43  Picture Section

44  By the same author

45  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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Introduction

Meghan Markle looked up, wide-eyed, lips quivering and said her now-famous words: ‘It’s not enough to survive something, right; that’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive; you’ve got to feel happy …’

Like thousands of others I probably only watched Harry and Meghan: An African Journey because of all the advance publicity the programme had received, the headlines written and the opinions voiced about Meghan’s decision to sue the Mail on Sunday.

The documentary by broadcaster Tom Bradby, a long-time friend of Prince Harry, was riveting as it lurched between triumph and despair – the jubilation of Meghan dancing with young African girls being given the chance of a better life thanks to wonderful local charities, and the darker, private moments of introspection, admitting that while she never thought her new life would be easy, she had thought it would at least be fair.

I decided then and there to write a book about Meghan, chronicling her journey up to this point in her life – little realising that within three months she, Harry and their baby, Archie, would leave the UK, perhaps never to return.

Up until the moment the couple announced that Meghan was taking legal action against the newspaper for publishing part of a private letter to her father, the trip to Africa had been described as a ‘textbook royal tour’, full of waving and cheering as a posse of royal reporters and photographers enjoyed an expenses-paid escape from a dull British autumn.

There was plenty to fill the pages of the newspapers and dominate the news channels back home. Meghan gave an empowering speech to the women of the Nyanga township in Cape Town, which ended in stirring fashion: ‘I am here with you as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of colour and as your sister. I am here with you and I am here for you …’

For the first time the world was introduced properly to Archie; not in the dull, traditional way of posed pictures of tired mum and baby leaving hospital, but in a gloriously uplifting meeting between the new parents and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the legendary figures of South African history alongside Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid activist assassinated in 1977.

Meghan and Harry chatted with the Archbishop for half an hour at the headquarters of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town. They met at the Old Granary, a beautifully restored building in Buitenkant Street that was originally built by slaves in the early nineteenth century. It used to be a symbol of colonial expansion but now houses a collection chronicling the acclaimed cleric’s life.

Meghan explained, ‘It’s not lost on us what a huge and significant moment this is.’

Archbishop Tutu, approaching his eighty-eighth birthday, could not conceal his delight at meeting five-month-old Archie and planted a kiss on his forehead. Meghan said proudly, ‘I think Archie will look back in so many years and understand that right at the beginning of his life, he was fortunate enough to have this moment with one of the best and most impactful leaders of our time.’

An African Journey tellingly contrasted the affluent present-day, largely white suburbs of Cape Town with the black township of Nyanga, where women face a daily threat of violence and rape and more than three hundred murders a year, making it one of the most dangerous places to live in the world. Meghan and Harry visited an initiative run by The Justice Desk, a human rights charity in southern Africa, where they saw for themselves young women being trained to defend themselves.

Harry, perhaps understandably, was a little overshadowed on the tour by the megawatt star quality of his wife (and son!), but he has charm and charisma in his own right. He is also undeniably sensitive and endures private inner struggles, which he movingly admitted to Tom on a solo trip to Botswana and Angola, countries that brought back sad memories of his mother. Harry strolled purposefully through a minefield in Angola, retracing Diana’s steps for a photographic opportunity, although the actual field through which she famously walked is now a paved street in the middle of a new development.

Behind those poignant pictures was the painful story of Harry’s reality, as he revealed to Tom how he really felt about photographers: ‘Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back.’ His mother’s death is a wound that will not heal. The photographers are still the ‘worst reminders of her life’ and, presumably, her death. He openly discussed his mental health issues with Tom, who has also been candid about his own need to take five months off work in 2018 because of severe insomnia.

Meghan had stayed behind in Cape Town with Archie. While Tom and his camera crew and most of the press corps were following Harry, his wife paid a visit that would have been high on Diana’s list of things to do. She took a bag of baby clothes that Archie had already outgrown to a mothers2mothers centre, a charity that offers counsel and mentoring to young mums living with HIV.

On another occasion, Meghan quietly visited the memorial for the murdered 19-year-old South African student Uyinene Mrwetyana. She had been raped, tortured and killed at Cape Town’s Clareinch Post Office in August 2019. Her brutal death sparked demonstrations throughout the country against gender-based crimes of violence in South Africa. Meghan tied a yellow ribbon there that bore the message ‘we stand together in this moment’, written in the local language of Xhosa as a further mark of respect.

Meghan expressed her concerns for women and her desire to encourage change and progress: she said, ‘In a world that can seem so aggressive, confrontational and dangerous, you should know that you have the power to change it.’ In particular, she made a connection with people of colour in a way that nobody else in the Royal Family could. She had a natural ease with everyone, whether giving a warm hug to a young African boy in the crowd or having a laugh with Graça Machel, the widow of Nelson Mandela. Only Harry came close to demonstrating such rapport.

So much positivity turned to dust, however, when she was reunited with Harry in Johannesburg. His return coincided with their announcement about her legal suit and the unequivocal statement from Harry released on their website in which he said his wife had become ‘one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences.’

The legal action, he explained, involved the ‘contents of a private letter’ being ‘published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner’. He also referenced Princess Diana: ‘I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.’

It was strong stuff but it did not seem to be met with anything resembling contrition or apology from those ‘powerful forces’ – far from it. The general consensus was that Harry’s outburst, for that was how it was viewed, had ruined the tour. The couple had made it all about them. The wish-you-were-here postcards home, designed to depict a wholly varnished scene of local life and typify the self-congratulatory royal tours around the old Empire had been replaced with a giant slice of bitter reality.

Meghan, it seemed, was not playing the game as the media wanted her to do. But who are the so-called royal experts and columnists shouting the odds about how she should behave at every opportunity? And what exactly is this media invention of a ‘royal expert’ – someone who knows the correct way to bow or curtsy when you meet the Queen? It strikes me as a truly meaningless label, especially since Harry and Meghan were shining a light on such important global issues.

What, I wondered, had Meghan done to deserve all the negativity – the ‘bullying’, as Harry called it – that surrounds her? Was she really a victim of rampant racism, sexism and xenophobia because she’s American, or was it just old-fashioned British snobbery at her being an actress?

When I had watched Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 – less than eighteen months earlier – the most memorable elements for me were her mother Doria’s quiet grace, the exquisite playing of cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the Kingdom Choir singing ‘Stand By Me’ acapella and the long, passionate sermon by the Most Rev Michael Curry on the power of love. As he spoke, the reactions from the Royal Family that we were allowed to see were priceless: Prince Charles read and re-read the order of service as if it was the latest fascinating issue of Country Life magazine; his wife Camilla and Kate Middleton were desperately trying not to make eye contact with each other; Prince Andrew looked as pompous as ever. Prince William adopted a superior smile, Princess Beatrice seemed to be on the verge of laughing out loud, while, best of all, Zara Tindall appeared gobsmacked. The Queen had the familiar look of grim determination that was never going to waver. Harry, meanwhile, held Meghan’s hand.

Meghan, it seemed, had been determined to recognise her heritage as a woman of colour on the most important day of her life so far. So, was the Royal Family itself fundamentally racist or just bogged down with stuffy traditions and protocol? And as a society, are we, the UK, really as tolerant as we like to proclaim?

There seemed so many questions for me to answer on my Meghan adventure. In particular, I wanted to find out more about her quest for female empowerment. Was feminism of fundamental importance to her or something she had adopted as a fashionable cause? And what about racism? How badly has she been affected by prejudice in her life? Watching Tom’s documentary a second time, I was struck by the words of a biracial woman in Cape Town: ‘It is quite a struggle when you grow up as a mixed-race child – either you are not white enough or you are not black enough, so you are in the middle; and you have to find your identity based on the middle – and with Meghan creating awareness about this, it makes people feel that it’s ok to be me.’

For me, that begged the question: did Meghan have that same struggle with identity growing up in Los Angeles? I wanted to follow her journey from Hollywood to the balcony of Buckingham Palace and back again and answer the questions, is she misunderstood? And if she is, why?

PART ONE

1
Moments of History

The eyes of the entire world were on Meghan Markle as she walked serenely and gracefully down the aisle of St George’s Chapel in Windsor. They have remained on her ever since.

Her wedding to Prince Harry was an occasion of great joy, representing happiness at last for the Queen’s grandson, who had captured the hearts of the nation when he disconsolately but bravely followed his mother Diana’s coffin on that eternally sad day twenty years earlier. Now he was marrying a breathtakingly beautiful woman in a story that the screenwriters of Hollywood, where Meghan had made her name, could scarcely have imagined.

At least her mother Doria was there, the only member of her family to take a place at the ceremony. She had sat beside her daughter in the Rolls-Royce as she set out on the nine-mile drive that would take her from the luxurious Cliveden House Hotel to the steps of the chapel. They were two strong women strangely unsupported in a foreign land on this grandest of May days. As always, they had each other, sharing an unshakeable bond.

A crowd estimated to be in excess of 100,000 had poured into the Berkshire town to celebrate the day with flags, bunting, laughter and cheers. Doria could have been forgiven for punching the air with exuberant joy as if her beloved daughter had just won an Olympic gold medal.

Instead of drawing attention to herself, though, Doria sat quietly in a pew across from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Her eyes glistened with pride and excitement but she stayed composed, watching a woman of colour, her ‘Flower’ as she still called her, hammer loudly on the door of stuffy tradition and protocol.

There is nothing traditionally royal about Doria Loyce Ragland, memorably described by her daughter as a free spirit with dreadlocks and a nose ring. Her yoga class back in Los Angeles would scarcely have recognised the demure, stylish lady in a pale green Oscar de la Renta dress and coat. Her long hair was styled and partly hidden beneath a matching hat.

What a journey it has been for a family that historians and genealogists have eagerly traced back to the shameful days of slavery in America’s Deep South, where the persecution of the black population did not stop with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865 that officially freed all slaves. Meghan herself has admitted that trying to unravel her family tree is a bewildering task but she is intensely proud of her biracial heritage, describing herself as a ‘strong, confident, mixed-race woman’.

Her maternal ancestors continued to face poverty and persecution for generation after generation, battling against the oppression of the Jim Crow laws, the legislation that enforced racial segregation in the southern states until 1965, two years after Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Then, he implored, ‘My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.’

The first known records of Doria’s family show that they were slaves working on the plantations of Georgia around the town of Jonesboro, the setting for the epic novel Gone with the Wind and the famous film of that name. Fittingly, perhaps, Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress at the 1940 Academy Awards for her role as the maid ‘Mammy’, the first black winner of an Oscar.

While that was a win to be celebrated, the ceremony itself was, in retrospect, an appalling indictment of racism and segregation at the time. Hattie would not normally have been let into the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles where the ceremony was held, in its Coconut Grove nightclub; it had a whites-only policy. The film’s famous producer, David O. Selznick, called in a favour to ensure that they let the great actress in, but, even then, she had to sit at a small segregated table at the back and well out of sight.

The role of Mammy represented a dreadful white stereotype of black servants, but Hattie’s emotional acceptance speech would have inspired both Doria and Meghan. Herself the daughter of two black slaves, she said, ‘I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry.’

The sad reality was that by the time she died, in 1952, she had played a maid seventy-four times. Big roles did not come her way after her Oscar win: ‘It was as if I had done something wrong.’ Her dying wish was to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery alongside the great stars of the golden age, but that was also denied by a ‘no-blacks’ policy. It would be a further seven years before racial discrimination was outlawed in California. The controversy over recognition for black actors continued into Meghan’s lifetime.

Discrimination was rife in Tennessee when Doria’s ancestors moved further north and settled in Chattanooga, a deeply racist town little deserving its place in musical history as the title of the jaunty Glenn Miller classic, ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. As recently as 1980, five black women were murdered there by members of the Ku Klux Klan in a drive-by shooting.

Meghan’s ancestors did not face such life-ending hatred but they still had to battle for a better life for themselves and their families. Meghan’s great-aunt Dora, for instance, was the first Ragland to go to college and became a teacher. Dora’s elder sister Lillie ran a successful real-estate business in Los Angeles and was listed in the African–American Who’s Who. She was married to Happy Evans, a famous black baseball player in the 1930s, a time when that sport was still segregated and there were separate ‘negro’ leagues.

Doria’s grandmother, Netty Arnold, worked as a lift operator at the upmarket apartment block called the Hotel St Regis in Cleveland, Ohio, where she met and subsequently married James Arnold, a bellhop. They were both black, working in a place where only whites were allowed to live.

In Cleveland, one of their daughters, Jeanette, married twice. First to a local man, Joseph Johnson, a professional roller-skater, then, following her divorce, to Alvin Ragland, who would become Meghan’s much-loved grandfather. The surname Ragland is actually one that his family took from their slave owner following emancipation.

Growing up, Meghan Markle was constantly fascinated by her family history, trying in vain to untangle its web and confessing that she was in ‘awe of her past’. Her principle problem in trying to cast light on the ‘blurred lines’, as she called them, was that black slaves were not properly documented until they officially registered. In 1870, a sharecropper called Stephen Ragland, Alvin’s great-grandfather, had become the first black Ragland.

Meghan gave a different account of that important landmark in her family history when she spoke to Elle magazine in 2015 – before she met Prince Harry: ‘Perhaps the closest thing connecting me to my ever-complex family tree, my longing to know where I came from, and the commonality that links me to my bloodline, is the choice that my great-great-great-grandfather made to start anew. He chose the last name Wisdom.’ He may well have done so informally but genealogists poring over Meghan’s ancestry have failed to find a thread linking the last name Wisdom to her family tree. Often family histories become confused by the telling and the retelling.

The Ragland family’s life changed forever when they made the 2,300-mile trek from Cleveland to Los Angeles soon after Doria was born in September 1956. There were five of them in a borrowed car: Alvin, Jeanette, her two children from her first marriage – Joseph Jr and Saundra – and baby Doria. While it wasn’t exactly an epic story matching the trip west of the Joad family in Steinbeck’s magnificent novel of the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, the trip did become the subject of countless stories told to Meghan as a little girl.

Uncle Joseph, who was some seven years older than Doria, was chief storyteller. One of the most vivid of his tales was when they pulled into yet another small redneck town in the middle of nowhere. There was a blizzard of biblical proportions and, rather aptly, they were searching for a room for the night. They had no luck, sent packing back to the highway by the locals who would not welcome any blacks on their white-only streets or, heaven forbid, in their white-only beds.

And then there were the countless times when they stopped for food at a diner and had to use the back door for ‘coloureds’. This was practically a daily occurrence as they shuffled in, trying not to draw attention to themselves.

Eventually they made it to Los Angeles, which, while not exactly the Promised Land, gave everyone a chance of a better life. Jeanette found work as a nurse, while Alvin, who had a strong entrepreneurial streak, started off working for his Aunt Lillie before finding his niche buying and selling bric-a-brac and curios in flea markets. Eventually, he opened his own antique shop called Twas New. By all accounts, he loved the objects for sale more than the money he might make from them. His pride and joy was his collection of vintage American cars.

Alvin was also a charismatic man whose company women enjoyed. His marriage to Jeanette did not last long in the California sunshine. They divorced and she became a single mum to the three children while he moved in with Lillie in the prosperous LA neighbourhood of View Park–Windsor Hills. The family remained close, however.

Meghan’s maternal line is full of strong women, and Doria was no exception. She grew up with a committed sense of social justice, perhaps an understandable reaction to the hardships her family had faced down the generations. She went to Fairfax High School in Hollywood, which during her teenage years was still a hotbed of racial tension.

At that age, Doria, known as Dodi at school, was a member of the Apex Club, a class for exceptionally smart pupils. She was a purposeful teenager, a trait she would pass on to her daughter. She was also part of a group of black students who would protest rigorously about the continued injustice and inequality faced by their communities. One of her friends from those days, Jennifer Caldwell, recalled, ‘She was a beautiful girl both inside and out. She had this beautiful afro hairstyle she was very proud of and she was always into fashion. She was whip smart, always smiling and sociable.’

Her parents may not have made a fortune but they were certainly comfortable. Doria lived a typical teenage life. She was the designated class driver when she passed her test and could borrow her mum’s car. They would all head off, with Marvin Gaye songs blaring out, to their favourite hangout place, called Tico’s, where they joined the queue for one of the restaurant’s famous tacos.

Doria was a free spirit and didn’t rush to engage in a career after school, preferring a relaxed, bohemian lifestyle in northern California for a while before she returned to LA. She found work as a temporary secretary, then as a trainee makeup artist at the Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, where they filmed the long-running soap General Hospital.

There she met a lighting director called Thomas Markle.

2
Loving Day

Doria couldn’t miss Tom Markle. He was six foot three, well-built with a shock of red hair. She, on the other hand, was slim and striking. Meghan would later comment, ‘I like to think he was drawn to her sweet eyes and her afro, plus their shared love of antiques.’

He had also come from a relentlessly white background in his home state of Pennsylvania. Meghan described it as a ‘homogenised’ community where the ‘concept of marrying an African–American woman was not on the cards’.

Coincidentally, his ancestors had also made a dramatic move in search of a better life. In their case, they left their mining community in Yorkshire during the reign of Queen Victoria, in 1869, in pursuit of the American Dream. His great-grandmother, Mattie Sykes, was just a baby when they crossed the Atlantic.

News that Meghan may have had British connections caused a flurry of interest in her family tree when she was first linked to Prince Harry. It was even worked out that the couple were themselves seventeenth cousins, due to a tenuous link she had with King Edward III, who ruled England for fifty years from 1327 to 1377.

When she joined Harry on an official visit to Dublin in July 2018, it was established that she had an Irish connection as well. Highlighting the family tree of an important visitor to Ireland has become a common practice. Meghan was presented with documents showing she was descended from a Belfast girl.

The American connection began in the mining community of Mahanoy City, which despite its grand name has a population of less than 4,000. It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere, some eighty miles from Philadelphia, and not exactly a step up from the north of England in Victorian times. It was a harsh environment and Mattie’s father, Thomas Sykes, died from heart failure at the age of 43, leaving his widow to raise five children.

Meghan’s ancestors hadn’t moved far by the time Tom Markle was born, in July 1944, as World War II was drawing to a close. He grew up in the borough of Newport, Pennsylvania, seventy miles away from Mahanoy City, where his father Gordon worked for a time at an air force base in nearby Harrisburg before winding up in admin at the local post office. Tom’s mother Doris worked at the J. J. Newberry’s five and dime store in Newport. She would eventually be acknowledged as the matriarch of the family and someone loved and respected by Meghan.

The royal author Andrew Morton, who wrote the groundbreaking Diana: Her True Story, described Tom’s childhood as being like something out of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The family, including his two older brothers, lived in a modest white clapboard house on Sixth Street that was conveniently near woods and a river where the three boys would fish for catfish. Doris was a superb cook, filling her sons with homemade pies and making jam from the blackberries they picked in summer.

Such an idyllic-sounding youth was not enough to persuade any of the brothers that they wanted to stay in Newport, however. They all moved away. Meghan painted a less sentimental view of her dad’s roots, who, she said, ‘came from so little in a small town in Pennsylvania, where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges and dinners were potatoes and Spam.’

The eldest of the three brothers, Mick, joined the United States Air Force and worked for many years in communications for the government, prompting speculation that he in fact had a job with the CIA. Understandably, he’s never confirmed that rumour but he would prove helpful to his niece in the world of diplomacy some years later.

The middle brother, Fred, moved to Florida and found religion. He became the self-proclaimed leader of a little-known order called the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church and was known as Bishop Dismas F. Markle. The unusual ‘Dismas’ comes from the Greek and is generally acknowledged to be the name of the good thief, the man who repented on the cross next to Jesus. It’s not clear how many followers his church actually had, but some reports suggest it was about forty. Bishop Dismas has seen little of Meghan over the years – apparently she was aged six the last time they met – but to his credit has had nothing to say to journalists and very little to his friends about his family connections.

Tom, meanwhile, had grown into a strapping young man, but even he could not match his giant grandfather Isaac ‘Ike’ Markle, who stood 7 foot 2 inches tall and worked as a fireman on the railways. Tom was a popular figure at Newport High School. One of his contemporaries there, Loretta Strawser, who also lived on the same street as the Markle family, recalled that he was ‘a nice person to be around.’ Others remembered him as being laid-back and down to earth. He took an interest in the visual arts but it was only after leaving school that a hobby became a career.

First, though, he drifted from job to job, earning some going-out money. He set up the pins in a local bowling alley while he decided what to do next. He soon realised that he was never going to amount to much in Newport and needed to try his luck elsewhere. Although he didn’t go on to college, Tom spent the equivalent of his gap year in the Poconos, the mountainous resort area in the north of the state. He found work at a local theatre where he had to muck in helping with everything, including the important technical tasks backstage.

Tom didn’t return to Newport. Instead, he tried his luck in Chicago and found a job as a lighting technician at the WTTW television studios. He had to manage one potential problem with his career; he was colour-blind. It was testament to his dedication that he succeeded in keeping that hidden.

Instead, he thrived in his new direction in life, climbing his way up the ladder from the bottom rung. As well as his work at the TV station, he did extra shifts at the Harper Theater on Chicago’s South Side in the Hyde Park neighbourhood of the city, ten minutes down the road from where the family home of Barack Obama has become a tourist attraction.

Tom’s particular skill was lighting, and his flair soon grabbed the attention of the Harper’s new owners, newspaper proprietor Bruce Sagan and his wife Judith, who was particularly influential in the world of dance. It was a golden age for the playhouse and as well as prestigious productions of Chekhov and Pirandello, Tom was on hand to help with the first Harper Theater Dance Festival, which swiftly became one of the highlights of the arts calendar in Chicago.

Tom worked hard, but it was the sixties and he liked to play hard as well, hanging out with college and television friends and enjoying a free and easy lifestyle. He was nineteen when he met a young clerk at the Illinois Railroad Company. Roslyn Loveless was an elegant eighteen-year-old and they clicked immediately. She thought him ‘tall and handsome’ with a ‘great sense of humour and charming smile’.

Roslyn was soon expecting her first child and she and Tom moved into a one-bedroom apartment, got married and celebrated the birth of a daughter, Yvonne – who would later change her name to Samantha – in November 1964. Cracks in their relationship appeared soon after.

Roslyn gave a devastating account of those days in an interview with the Daily Mirror, a version of events that Tom has strongly denied, describing her accusation as ‘not valid’. According to Roslyn, he had a bad temper: ‘He would scream, “Fuck you”, “Fuck off”, “Leave me the fuck alone”, or “Get the fuck out of here.” Everything was fuck.’

An addition to the family, Tom Jr, in December 1965, did not improve things between the couple. For a while she moved to Newport, Pennsylvania, and lived with Tom’s mum and dad, Doris and Gordon, who were very kind but could not meet the financial demands of supporting a young mum and her two small children.

Back in Chicago, Roslyn claims that Tom lived the life of a single man, mixing in circles where cocaine was commonplace and enjoying the company of other women. She said he did not give her the money she needed even to feed the children properly and she was reduced to shoplifting in the local store just to get enough food.

A friend came to her rescue and said she could stay with her, so Roslyn and the children took flight from the family apartment. She refused to sign divorce papers in which it was said he had been a ‘true, kind and affectionate husband’.

They were eventually divorced in 1975, although by this time Tom had made the journey across country in pursuit of his personal dream to work in Hollywood. While he continued to work hard to make progress in his career, Roslyn and the children moved to Albuquerque in New Mexico to start a new life, encouraged by her brother Richard, who already lived in the city.

Tom didn’t completely forget his Pennsylvanian roots, returning every year for family and high school reunions in Newport. After struggling for eighteen months to get a start, he had carved out a good life for himself as a lighting director on General Hospital. The famous daytime soap began in 1963 and is the Coronation Street of American television, so it was a prestigious job.

He was living close to the beach in Santa Monica where his daughter Yvonne, a restless and ambitious teenager, joined him when she was fourteen. She had her sights set on a Hollywood career as an actress or model, or both.

When he became a teenager, Tom Jr joined the household as well. He had decided that high school in laid-back California would suit him better than New Mexico. They moved to a large and very comfortable four-bedroom family house on Providencia Street in Woodland Hills; down the road from an exclusive country club, it was a property that would probably fetch more than $1 million if sold today.

Yvonne and Tom Jr were typical teenagers – bickering and squabbling and preferring the company of their own friends and social lives. Their father kept out of things, immersing himself in his work. And then he met Doria on the set of General Hospital. She was undoubtedly a ray of sunshine in his life, a thoughtful and calming presence in the household, except, it seemed, for Yvonne, who apparently referred to her dad’s new girlfriend as ‘the maid’, which at best was the sort of casual racism that masqueraded as a joke, or at worst was blatantly racist.

Doria was twelve years younger than Tom, so, ironically, she was much closer in age to Yvonne, but that did not encourage any bond between them. One highlight in the uneasy household was when Doria invited them all to join the Raglands for Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ house. Jeanette, Alvin, Joseph Jr and Saundra were all there and Tom Jr was impressed by the sense of family they had, something that seemed to be missing from the Markle clan.

Six months after they met, Doria and Tom married, two days before Christmas in 1979. She chose a venue and ceremony that reflected her growing interest in yoga and alternative religions. The Self-Realization Fellowship Temple on Sunset Boulevard stood out with its faux Moorish entrance, including gold orb-topped turrets and stone elephants. The Fellowship was founded in 1920 by the charismatic Paramahansa Yogananda, regarded by many as one of the twentieth-century’s most important spiritual figures and described by the Los Angeles Times as the first superstar guru.

He embraced the value of meditation and of Kriya yoga – influences that help give Doria an inner strength that has been of huge benefit to her daughter. Perhaps his most famous follower was the late Steve Jobs, the billionaire co-founder of Apple who would read Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi at the start of each year. He made sure everyone attending his memorial service was presented with a copy.

Doria and Tom’s ceremony was presided over by Brother Bhaktananda, a much-respected Buddhist priest in Los Angeles who followed Yogananda’s philosophy for a simpler, more thoughtful life. In 1979, an interracial marriage was still a big deal in the US. While in the UK, the drawbacks might have been based on social stigma and entrenched attitudes, in America there was a long history of legislation to overcome. Amazingly, that had only happened in 1967, little more than a decade earlier, when The Beatles were singing ‘All You Need is Love’.

In the US, what was really needed was ‘Loving’, the name of the couple that bravely took on racist laws and won. They had married in Washington, DC, in 1959 but were arrested when they returned home to Virginia, pleading guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth’. They were offered one year in prison or a suspended sentence if they chose to leave their home state.

They left but were rearrested in 1963 when they visited family, triggering a legal battle which they eventually won four years later at the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice concluded, ‘To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications … is to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty.’ Now there’s a national Loving Day every June in the US to celebrate the end of this absurd prohibition.

On her wedding day Doria wore a simple white dress with flowers in her hair, while the groom put on a sports jacket, shirt and tie and carried a bunch of orange blossoms. It was a lovely afternoon and Doria, surrounded by her family, looking like a teenager in love, sparkled with happiness.

They had been married for eighteen months when their daughter, Rachel Meghan Markle, was born before dawn on 4 August 1981 at the West Park Hospital in Canoga Park, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley just north of where the family lived in Woodland Hills. She was and will always be a California girl.

Tom, now thirty-five, was at the hospital and was ‘thrilled to tears’ when his baby was handed to him to hold for the first time. This time round he threw himself enthusiastically into the role of dad. She was, he declared, his ‘pride and joy’. His son, Tom Jr, confirmed that he was a changed man: ‘Before then, Dad’s work took priority over everything, but she became his whole world. She was her daddy’s princess.’

He was still working all hours, though, a dedication that was more than paying off when his work on General Hospital was being more widely recognised within the industry. After being nominated twice, he and his fellow crew on the soap won a daytime Emmy for ‘outstanding achievement in design excellence’. This was big news. Before his retirement, Tom would end up being nominated nine times, testament to his ability in a crowded marketplace.

Meghan was a very cute baby and her delighted father was always happy to be the first to pick her up if she was crying. One big difference to becoming a dad now than when he was a younger man back in Pennsylvania was that he was making good money and could properly afford a child. She became the ‘most special thing in his life’.

3
People are Fighting

Doria, twenty-three when Meghan was born, was not faring so well. She had to cope with not only looking after a small baby but also maintaining the peace in such a fractious household. The two older siblings, who have been paid many times for interviews, have often changed their accounts of life in the Markle household, but one fact is clear: they were teenagers and Meghan was a newborn.

Woodland Hills was a pleasant, middle-class, predominantly white neighbourhood in the Valley, as it was called. Meghan summed it up: ‘It was leafy and affordable. What it was not, however, was diverse. And there was my mom, caramel in complexion with her light-skinned baby in tow, being asked where my mother was since they assumed she was the nanny.’ While they have never publically acknowledged how difficult it was for them being an interracial couple in Woodland Hills back then, it’s easy to imagine it was a constant battle. Meghan herself has said that she was too young to understand that they were living with institutional prejudice. With hindsight, this was not the best location for them.

The Markle household was one where everyone seemed to have their own set of friends. Doria relied on her own mother, Jeanette, who had been at the maternity hospital with her, as well as friends interested in practising yoga, which had become a passion that would last a lifetime. When he wasn’t working, Tom liked to socialise with his TV circle and would bring his little daughter downstairs to proudly show her off when they went back to the house.

Elder daughter Yvonne was often out on the town with other budding actors. Her father had helped her secure a walk-on, uncredited part in General Hospital but her career wasn’t going anywhere and she didn’t seem at all interested in helping with Meghan. Tom Jr was happy to smoke weed with his pals, although his father insisted they didn’t indulge around the new addition to the family.

Perhaps inevitably, the presence of a young baby in such a fraught environment put a strain on Tom and Doria’s relationship. Some family friends have hinted that Tom found fault with everything – something a strong-minded woman like Doria was not going to tolerate for too long. He admitted that he just wasn’t home enough.

Doria moved back to her mother’s house and took Meghan with her. For the sake of their young child, they stayed on reasonable terms and there was never a question of Tom not being fully involved with their Flower’s upbringing. Meghan proudly states, ‘I never saw them fight.’ Although Meghan was just two when they split up, her parents did not divorce until 1987, when she was seven and at primary school. Whatever their feelings towards each other, they were determined that their daughter’s world would be a safe and happy one.

Tom tried his best to ensure she felt no different from any other little girls her age. Meghan revealed in her now-famous blog, The Tig, that when she was seven she had her heart set on a family set of Barbie dolls for Christmas. They were called the Heart Family and consisted of a mum, dad and two children, but there was a problem: the ‘perfect nuclear family’, as Meghan described it, was only available in all black dolls or all white ones.

Tom was not happy with that so he marched into a Toys “R” Us store in West Hollywood and carefully customised a set just for his daughter. As he saw it, he was not going to allow her to be disadvantaged by the colour of her skin, even if it was just a Christmas present.

Meghan recalled Santa’s gift: ‘On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, I found my Heart family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll and a child in each colour.’ The new family ‘echoed her reality’. It was a sweet gesture for his daughter but also a serious one that she never forgot. The question of her racial identity was one that would absorb Meghan as a child and as an adult.

Meghan’s first school was well-known and an important influence on her even at such a young age. The Hollywood Schoolhouse was founded in 1945 as a private nursery school that welcomed and encouraged ethnic diversity during the post-war years when many other private schools did not.

The renowned founder and first headmistress, Ruth Pease, had her own inspiring story. She herself was the only child of deaf parents and from a very young age would communicate with the hearing world for her parents. She would be teased about it by other children and grew up understanding the hurtfulness of casual and thoughtless remarks and prejudice.

During the war, she and her husband took in a little boy whose father was Chinese and mother was white. His parents had trouble finding day care for him, almost certainly because the locals thought he was Japanese and the US was at war with Japan. Ruth’s daughter, Debbie Wehbe observed, ‘My mother wanted no part of that attitude. To her, children needed someone to take care of them: Period.’

The school just off Highland Avenue was originally known as the Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse simply because Ruth’s husband Robert painted the original building that colour. They added a distinctive bell tower that made the school’s appearance seem like something out of a fairy tale or nursery rhyme. It was welcoming to nervous children and uncertain parents.

At Ruth’s school, all children were accepted and nurtured for who they were as individuals. It was a perfect fit for Meghan as far as Tom and Doria were concerned. Ruth had officially retired in 1970 and her daughter had taken over, but she was still part of the furniture of the place, living to the grand age of 96. She would wave to the children from her balcony as they came into school and they would call up ‘Good morning Miss Ruth’ or ‘Hello Grandma’.

Back in the early days the most famous former pupil at the school was the fifties’ bombshell Jayne Mansfield. Now, it’s Meghan Markle, although in Hollywood terms it remains to be seen whether Johnny Depp’s daughter, the actress Lily-Rose Depp, becomes a household name. Despite one or two well-known alumni, this was not a celebrity or elite school.

Doria had moved into a spacious second-floor apartment on South Cloverdale Avenue, three miles from the school. It may not have been as leafy as Woodland Hills but the street was wide, clean and tidy with small front lawns dotted with flower borders and palm trees. It was a pleasant, safe neighbourhood in midtown LA.

To help pay some bills and also because she didn’t want to be stuck at home all day, Doria started looking for work. Under the terms of the divorce agreement, Tom had joint custody and agreed to pay $800 a month towards Meghan’s upbringing. While Tom could afford the school fees at the Hollywood Schoolhouse, pupils whose parents could not meet them could apply for assistance grants. The school was quite liberal-thinking in its attitudes at a time when it would not have been derided as ‘woke’.

Intriguingly, it was during her time at elementary school that the first signs of the two passions in Meghan’s life began to form: standing up for what was right and wanting to be a performer. For the former, Debbie Wehbe, who was headmistress while she was a pupil there, gives credit to both Tom and Doria for encouraging her ‘belief systems’.

Meghan’s love of performing was evident at the annual end-of-year shows when all the children were encouraged to make the best use of their talents. When she was five, Meghan took centre stage to sing the old favourite, ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. Right from the start, Tom would be there proudly taking photos of his daughter. He literally took pictures of her every day.

Importantly, Meghan found a best friend at the school. Ninaki Priddy, known as Niki, would turn out not to be a friend for life, but growing up they shared many memorable moments. For Niki’s ninth birthday party, Meghan took a leading role in a jokey, spontaneous show where she pretended to be a queen surrounded by her servants. The whole thing was captured on video by Niki’s mum Maria and was just some back-garden fun, but it did reveal how much the camera loved Meghan and, even at this age, she could be the centre of attention in any group. Over the years, Niki collected almost as many shots of Meghan as Tom Markle did, diligently sticking into albums happy photographs of the two girls at home, at school or on trips abroad.

From an early age Doria encouraged Meghan to be aware of the whole world and not just her little patch of Los Angeles. She was working for a travel agency that opened up opportunities to take her daughter with her on some wonderful holidays. While there was sun and beaches, culture and laughter, there was the occasional more sobering experience of those less fortunate.

She took her to see the slum areas of Jamaica, a genuine eye opener for a little Californian girl who could scarcely comprehend the unbearable poverty of what she was seeing. Her mother had soothing words: ‘Don’t look scared, Flower. Be aware but don’t be afraid.’

In Oaxaca City, in southern Mexico, she saw for herself poor street children selling sweets to earn a few pesos to buy food. It was a stark dose of reality that illustrated the unfairness in the world. Doria had taken Meghan there for the famous Day of the Dead Festival – ‘Día de los Muertos’ – which is nothing like as grim as it sounds. The celebration, which begins on Halloween, marks the three days when the spirits of lost loved ones visit the living and is infused with a sense of fun and a carnival atmosphere: truly a party spirit.

Meghan fell in love with Mexico – the people, the culture and, perhaps best of all, the food. But she never forgot her mum’s life lessons. In one of her essays for Elle magazine, she wrote, ‘My mum raised me to be a global citizen with eyes open to sometimes harsh realities.’

Doria also encouraged Meghan from about the age of seven to join her for ‘mommy-and-me’ yoga sessions. Meghan was not keen: ‘I was very resistant as a kid but she said, “Flower, you will find your practice – just give it time.”’ As with many things, Doria would be proved right in the end.

It’s too easy to say that it was Tom who encouraged her acting while Doria was more serious. She spent most of her time with a mum who had more boundaries and limits in place, but Doria still liked to have fun and would dance carefree around the apartment to her favourite music. She loved the mellow soul of Al Green. And Tom was there when needed to lend a hand and support her ideals. Generally she would spend the week at her mother’s and weekends with her father. When he dropped her back, the three of them would usually sit down, eat dinner from a tray on their laps and watch the game show Jeopardy! together.

Both parents strengthened her social awareness and they were both givers, much more so than takers. They would deliver meals to people in hospices, dig out the coins in their pockets for the poor living on the streets and at Thanksgiving they would buy a turkey or two for the homeless shelters. These gestures helped to form Meghan’s character.

A grim period in modern Los Angeles history also had a lasting effect on her. In 1991, when Meghan was ten, police officers in the city were caught on film giving a savage beating with batons to a black motorist called Rodney King. His injuries included skull fractures, broken bones and teeth and permanent brain damage.

The following April, a predominantly white jury with no African–Americans found four police officers not guilty of using excessive force, even though the beating had continued for fifteen minutes. Los Angeles erupted into five days of rioting and violence. It seemed that everywhere in South Central LA something was being set on fire and the whole area resembled a war zone. There was nothing remotely Hollywood about this.

Meghan and her schoolmates were sent home for their safety. She remembered there was ash everywhere, settling on lawns and porches. Meghan shouted, ‘Oh my God, Mommy, it’s snowing.’ Doria responded firmly, ‘No, Flower, it’s not snow. Get in the house.’

Meghan’s social conscience was well-developed for her age. The current headmistress of the Hollywood Schoolhouse, Ilise Faye, observed: ‘She had a voice. She was one of those children that would stand up for the underdogs. She would stand up for what she believed in, and she was the leader among her friends.’

That leadership was evident when she heard that one of her classmates was upset about the Gulf War. The boy in question was in tears because his elder brother was in the military and was due to fly out to the Middle East. Meghan helped to organise a protest at her school against the conflict, carrying a homemade placard that stated, ‘Peace and Harmony for the World’.

The following year, at the age of eleven, Meghan’s class had a social studies assignment that involved watching and commenting on various advertisements. First up was one for Robitussin cough syrup, which suggested it was ‘Recommended by Dr Mom’. Meghan’s response was what about ‘Dr Dad’?

The commercial that had the biggest effect on her, however, was for Ivory clear dishwasher liquid, a kitchen product from corporation Proctor & Gamble. She couldn’t help but notice that it began, ‘Women are fighting greasy pots and pans …’

She was angry at the blatant sexism: ‘I said “wait a minute, how can they say that?!”’ She was even less impressed when two boys in the class piped up, ‘Yeah, that’s where women belong, in the kitchen.’ That evening she told her dad all about it and he suggested that she write to the company in person. She sat down and composed a letter in her already immaculate handwriting urging them to change the wording of the commercial to ‘People are fighting greasy pots and pans’.

Tom also suggested that she write to some powerful people as well, so she sent a letter to the new First Lady, Hillary Clinton, the renowned civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred, and to broadcaster Linda Ellerbee, host of Nick News W5 on the Nickelodeon cable channel. The long-running news programme for school-age children had only recently started in 1992.

Meghan secured a famous victory and the advertisement wording was changed to ‘People are fighting …’ just as she had hoped. She appeared on Nick News to talk about it: ‘I don’t think it’s right that kids grow up thinking these things – that mom does everything.’

And she had a message to other children: ‘If you see something you don’t like or are affected by on television or any other platform, write letters and send them to the right people and you can really make a difference – not just for yourself but lots of other people.’

Linda Ellerbee did not forget the gap-toothed, freckly, articulate youngster and recalled, ‘It was absolutely clear that this young woman was strong in her belief. It didn’t matter that she was eleven years old. She believed in women and in her own power. She wasn’t afraid to reach out and say “I want my power. I want my rights.”’

Not everything worked out that well. Sometimes she would send a letter of injustice and be ‘rewarded’ with a bag of sweets or candy in the post. She would usually take them into school, which at least helped with her popularity rating.

Meghan was never a latchkey kid returning to an empty house. Her grandmother Jeanette would look after her if her parents were working – although when she was old enough she would visit Tom at the ABC Studios a mile from the school and wait for him to finish work. He had secured a second significant job as a lighting director on Married … with Children, a slightly risqué sitcom that was first broadcast in the spring of 1987 and ran for ten years. She would later recall, ‘There were lots 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-colour for your 11-year-old eyes.”’ Ironically, Meghan wasn’t allowed to watch the show at home, even if she had been in the studio during recording. Her mum would call her to watch the end credits, though: ‘I could give the screen a kiss when I saw my dad’s name go by.’

Meghan was more interested in the show’s dog than in guest stars such as the renowned former porn star Traci Lords. The hound in question was a shaggy coated Briard called Buck, a canine superstar and arguably the most popular character in the show – appearing in 177 episodes. One Friday night before the show was being recorded, she noticed Melba Farquhar, the wife of one of the producers, feeding Buck some leftovers.

The next Friday, Meghan turned up with her own leftovers. Melba remembered, ‘She had saved some of her dinner to give to him and wanted to know if it was ok if she fed the dog this time. She was just so sweet.’ Meghan doted on Buck and would always seek him out for a pet and a cuddle. The dog’s trainer, Steven Ritt, remembered her gentle manner with Buck: ‘Meghan was always kind of an old soul, a little more mature than some of the children around the set at her age.’

Her maturity for someone still at elementary school was evident in her kindness to a girl called Elizabeth McCoy, who was one of those unfortunate pupils who was shunned and bullied principally because she suffered from petit mal seizures, a mild form of epilepsy characterised by a fleeting loss of consciousness. They are better described these days as ‘absence seizures’. She stood out as different, which often makes the child an easy target for other children – the ‘mean girls’, as Elizabeth called them.

Sometimes Elizabeth would be just sat there as if in a daydreaming trance. If Meghan saw her, she would be the first to go over, hold her hand and sit with her until she was sure she was ok. Meghan was a couple of years older but would happily chat to the younger girl about the things that she found important and interesting. Elizabeth thought she was very cool.

Portraying the young elementary school Meghan as a serious-minded geek intent on saving the world is simply not how she was, though. She could enjoy herself as much as any other sociable young girl, like the time she dressed up as Elvira, the Queen of Halloween, complete with black wig, and pretended to try out various coffins for size.

For one end-of-year school show she joined her classmates to give an exuberant performance of one of the cooler seasonal songs, ‘Christmas in Hollis’ by the New York rap trio Run-DMC. She also narrated a performance by her friends of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Dr Seuss story that had become one of the most popular films of the time, starring Jim Carrey with narration by Anthony Hopkins. The show ended with everyone singing the Spanish Christmas song ‘Feliz Navidad’ before a rousing rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’. The concert was a snapshot of the school’s diversity.

The shows often had a theme: one year it was Dick Tracy, when the Madonna and Warren Beatty movie was doing the rounds. Another time, a show was based around Japan. In June 1992 Meghan and her friends performed ‘Broadway comes to Hollywood’ at the annual end-of-term show, dancing to ‘Greased Lightning’ from the musical Grease and to the show-stopping ‘America’ from West Side Story.

The absolute highlight, though, came a year later at her graduation. She was still a couple of months short of her twelfth birthday when she put on a white mortar board to receive her ‘Elementary Diploma’. Then she stood in front of the school, watched by teachers and beaming parents including both Doria and Tom, and introduced the entertainment that she and Niki had devised. She told them, ‘We’re here to thank all the people who have made us feel really special over the past nine years.’

She and her friends then launched their entertainment tribute. Meghan wore denim shorts, a stripy t-shirt and Easy Rider shades for some enthusiastic moves to Chuck Berry’s timeless ‘Roll over Beethoven’. Perhaps the highlight was the class’s rendition of the 1957 doo-wop hit ‘Mr Lee’ by The Bobbettes. They changed Mr Lee to Mr T to show their appreciation of a favourite teacher, Mr Teryl.

And so it was time to cut the graduation cake and say goodbye to her first school, where she had been a big fish in a small pond, as the old cliché goes. Now, she would have to navigate the demands that middle and high school made on a teenage girl. She had shown some promise on stage and demonstrated a mature social conscience in someone so young. Moving forward, could she successfully marry the two?

4
With a Sparkle

Just like any other day at the Immaculate Heart High School for girls, the morning began with a prayer. The students did not have to cram into church or kneel in corridors, they just had to stop what they were doing, stand still even if they were late and hurrying to class and think quietly for a minute or two, listening to the words coming from the loudspeakers dotted about.

The greeting was familiar. ‘Good morning Immaculate Heart!’ It was the voice of Christine Knudsen, who chaired the theology department. Occasionally she would recite a formal prayer that might end with an Amen – after all, Immaculate Heart had been founded as a Catholic school – but more often than not she would choose some words of inspiration. Sometimes she would talk about a film or an important sporting event; she might mention Gandhi if it was 2 October, his birthday. She used an Eleanor Roosevelt quote to great effect: ‘You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’ She encouraged the girls to think of the qualities that mattered in life, such as compassion, acceptance, fairness and personal integrity.

And she would always conclude with a rallying cry. If it was the start of the week, she would declare, ‘MAKE IT A GREAT MONDAY!’‘The idea is that we just take a moment to compose ourselves and reflect. It’s a great way to stop and be free to start class,’ explained the current school president, Maureen Diekmann.

On one particular morning, census forms were being handed out to the seventh graders in middle school during their English lesson. It was the usual kind of thing – just tick the box and move on. But for twelve-year-old Meghan Markle, it immediately presented a problem. There were four choices for ethnicity: white, black, Hispanic or Asian.

Meghan didn’t know what to do. She asked the teacher, who looked at her light-toned skin and told her to check ‘caucasian’ because that was how she looked. But Meghan was uncomfortable with that advice because, in her eyes, it was choosing one parent over another. Imagine looking Doria in the eye if she had done as suggested. She told Elle magazine, ‘I put down my pen; not as an act of defiance but rather a symptom of my confusion. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to picture the pit-in-the-belly sadness my mother would feel if she were to find out.’

Instead she just left it unanswered, heartbreakingly: ‘I left my identity blank – a question mark, an absolute incomplete – much like how I felt.’ That evening she told her dad what had happened. Tom was clear and clearly angry: ‘If it happens again, you draw your own box.’

The school prided itself on its diversity. Neither race nor religion was of paramount importance. Although it was founded by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1906, little more than fifty per cent of the pupils were Catholic by the time Meghan enrolled. She would have been thought of as Christian while other groups included Buddhists, Muslims and Hindi, as well as those who didn’t have a religion at all.

Even in the early days when all the teachers were nuns, the mindset was to be as welcoming as possible. The girls who did not share the Catholic faith were never told they were wrong. Despite being on one of the busiest junctions in the Los Feliz neighbourhood – Franklin and Western – the campus of Immaculate Heart was a tranquil urban oasis with plenty of space for conversation, laughter or some private moments. In the centre of the grounds was an inviting swimming pool that would have graced many of the movie-star mansions of Beverly Hills. Across the road was the building that housed the American Film Institute, just in case the pupils needed reminding that Hollywood was near.

Although the fees at the private school were expensive for those that could afford to pay the full amount, Immaculate Heart was not full of the children of millionaires; nor was it packed with celebrity offspring. Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, for instance, went to Marymount High School, another all-girl Catholic school on Sunset Boulevard; Jake Gyllenhaal and Ayda Field attended the Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City.

You can usually find at least one notable celebrity at any school in LA. Immaculate Heart was no exception. Until Meghan featured as an alumna, the best-known actress through the gates was probably the much-loved television and film star Mary Tyler Moore, who died in 2017.

Following her death, the president of the Screen Actors Guild, Gabrielle Carteris, said, ‘At a time when independence for women was not the social norm, both the fictional Mary and the real-life Mary set an example, showing that women could take control of their lives and their careers.’ It was an example that Meghan Markle would follow.

Mary Tyler Moore was a role model for the girls at Immaculate Heart, although more so probably for the mothers and grandmothers of Meghan’s generation. An alumna more relevant to Meghan was Tyra Banks, who had graduated just a couple of years earlier. Tyra had shot up by three inches when she was eleven and had to contend with negativity and name-calling from bullies who would call her ‘giraffe’ and ‘light-bulb head’, but she had the last laugh. While she was still at the school she embarked on her successful career as a supermodel.

Tyra launched her TV career in 1993, just as Meghan started at Immaculate Heart, playing Will Smith’s childhood friend Jackie Ames in seven episodes of his popular sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She was only nineteen when she found fame. Meghan would have to wait far longer.

In some ways, Tyra has become a younger version of Oprah Winfrey, branching out into the world of broadcasting and philanthropy, and boasting a fortune estimated to be more than $90 million. As long ago as 1994, when Meghan was in eighth grade, Tyra started the Tyra Banks Scholarship so that disadvantaged African–American girls could attend Immaculate Heart. She recognised at a young age that not every girl of colour was going to become a supermodel.

In 1999, the year Meghan graduated, Tyra also founded TZONE, an annual seven-day camp designed to improve the leadership and life skills of similarly underprivileged girls in and around Los Angeles. Tyra wanted to build the self-esteem of pre-teen and teenage girls and help them to overcome gender stereotyping and body issues. The concept went nationwide in 2005 as the Tyra Banks TZONE Foundation.

For Meghan, her own confusion about her identity was not something that was going to disappear overnight. Despite the worthy philosophy of the school, she had to confront basic problems every day, including where to sit in the canteen at lunchtimes. Inevitably, there were cliques. Should she spend the hour with the black girls or the white girls, with the Filipino or Latino girls? Mostly she avoided the issue by joining every group or society going, making do with a sandwich during French club or giving her views on the next important question for the student body. It helped that she was intelligent and articulate, although there was a chance she was becoming a little earnest.

The girls at Immaculate Heart were encouraged to get involved in the community. In these early teenage years they were educated in the school’s ideology values ‘to become women of great heart and right conscience through leadership, service, and a life-long commitment to Christian values.’

In middle school, they were expected to volunteer for worthwhile projects in the Los Angeles area. Meghan, aged thirteen, chose a particularly challenging one, working at a place that was on Doria’s radar as something worth supporting.

The enterprise in the heart of downtrodden, downcast, downtown LA was run by a remarkable couple, Jeff Dietrich and Catherine Morris, a former nun, who is in her eighties now but still turning up two or three times a week to do her bit at the ‘Hippie Kitchen’, as the locals named their community kitchen back in the day.

Skid Row, fifty-four blocks of relentless misery, is not a place for a night-time stroll past the trolleys full of crumpled clothes and cardboard boxes, past the homeless men and women huddled round an oil-drum fire waiting for the sun to rise on another day; waiting for the soup kitchen on the corner of 6th Street and Gladys Avenue to open.

Jeff and Catherine met as volunteers there in 1974, four years after the kitchen opened in an old Victorian house. They were part of an organisation called the Catholic Worker movement that aims to help the most vulnerable members of society. The three hundred or so homeless people queuing for their only meal of the day were not fed religion as part of the deal.

Instead they were treated to an hour or so of respect where they could eat some freshly cooked food – vegetables, rice and beans or some salad with hunks of bread – in the tranquil, sunny courtyard dotted with palm trees and parrots, and chat about this and that and nothing in particular before stepping back into the harsh reality of their world. Perhaps best of all, it was a place of safety where they knew your name.

The kitchen was open in the mornings and the police were never too far away, patrolling the sidewalks where crack cocaine and bad alcohol were in competition to drag the Skid Row residents down even further. Meghan had been apprehensive, even fearful, of volunteering. She had seen the grim streets of Mexico and Jamaica, but here she was making a connection and becoming personally involved: ‘The first day I felt really scared. I was young and it was rough and raw down there, and though I was with a great volunteer group, I just felt overwhelmed.’

Meghan was more her confident self when she gave her first serious speech; she spoke at her middle school graduation ceremony at Immaculate Heart in June 1995. It was a masterful effort for someone not yet fourteen. Wearing the traditional white cap and gown, she showed no sign of outward nerves when she began, ‘Good evening parents, friends, faculty and fellow classmates …’

She thanked the school graciously for the previous two years, singling out the religious lessons that had helped her and others to ‘develop spirituality in our lives’ and the classes that had taught them ‘a deep compassion to those who suffer from the Aids virus’.

She concluded in a mature way: ‘We will graduate from high school in 1999 and begin college in the next century, taking many different paths. Some of us will go into politics, finance, entertainment, education and many other fields. But no matter what field we choose, we will always carry the spirit of Immaculate Heart with us. And always and forever as women of great heart, dedicate ourselves to making it a better world.’

Not for the last time in her life, a Meghan Markle speech was greeted with a rapturous round of applause. The last sentiment was one she has endeavoured to follow throughout her life and that she could have included in almost any speech she has made since.

Doria continued to nurture her daughter’s empathy by taking Meghan with her to weekend meetings of her church, the Agape (Greek for unconditional love) International Spiritual Center in Santa Monica. These were very popular across a wide spectrum of ages and ethnicity. Dismissing these gatherings as an exuberant, exclusively black gospel event is completely wrong.

Of course the hall resonates with some glorious, uplifting singing, accompanied by the Agape house band of musicians, but there’s also the chance to meditate, spending time in soothing silence and quiet reflection, that particularly appealed to Doria and her embrace of yoga culture.

The centre was founded in 1986 by the Rev Dr Michael Beckwith, a charismatic advocate of the New Thought movement that promoted positive thinking as a modern way of dealing with the universal problems of today – feeding the homeless, preserving the environment and helping children whose lives have been shattered by war and disease. They are the virtues that Doria and Meghan already followed and ones that would become even more important to them in the years to come.

These were religious gatherings and God did not take a backseat, but they were a world away from a draughty Sunday service at Crathie Kirk, next to Balmoral. A celebrity or two might drift in, happy that they were not going to be photographed or disturbed. The Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank was a particular devotee and would often be there when Doria and Meghan attended.

In the school holidays, when Meghan was thirteen going on fourteen, Agape started a summer drama camp for some of the members’ children. The camp, which met every day, was called Agape’s 38 Flavours, because that was the number of children who signed up for it. They were from different cultures, all encouraged to share their experiences of life.

Meghan was one of thirteen or fourteen young teenagers, alongside a pocket of pre-teens and a group of little children. Another girl was known as Meg so Meghan adopted her own special jingle: ‘Meghan Markle with a Sparkle’ and everyone called her that.

Generally, Doria would be the morning taxi, dropping her off at 8am, then Tom would pick her up at 4pm. Meghan’s domestic arrangements had changed. Tom and Doria had swapped roles to a certain extent. One of the popular myths about Meghan’s childhood and beyond is that her mum and dad remained great friends. That was not the case, but like many parents, they made the best of it for the sake of their child.

Meghan was faced with the tricky dilemma of keeping both parents happy and including both in her life. During the week she lived with her father. The Woodland Hills home had proved far too large for one person after both Yvonne and Tom Jr had moved out, so instead, he found a second-floor apartment in an unassuming West Hollywood street called Vista Del Mar, conveniently near his work and the school.

At weekends she was back with Mum. Doria was following in her own dad’s footsteps by setting up in business for herself and becoming a store owner. She found premises for two businesses in a modest shopping mall on La Brea Avenue, just a five-minute drive from home; one was a gift shop called Distant Treasures and the other, catchily named A Change of a Dress, included some of her own designs. Understandably, the stores required a lot of attention so there was little time for the school run, so Tom’s place seemed a sensible option for Meghan during the week.

Tom didn’t go to the Agape church but he was happy to do his share of parental chauffeuring for camp. This was the first time the teenage Meghan had come into contact with boys. She went to an all-girls school so the opportunities had been thin on the ground. That changed when she met Joshua Silverstein, a year older than her and just as keen on theatre.

Like her, Joshua was mixed race. His father David was Jewish and his mother, Beverly, African–American. His parents, who divorced when he was eleven, went to high school with Michael Beckwith. Some years later David bumped into Michael, who invited him to come along to Agape. He loved the sense of community there and would take his son to the services, often twice a week.

Joshua did not need to see which box Meghan might or might not have checked to understand her ethnicity: ‘When I saw Meghan, I saw a lighter-skinned brown person with curly hair and freckles and fuller lips. And I was like, that person is a person of colour.’

Meghan and Joshua got together in a time-honoured way. He recalled, ‘It was very typical of what kids do at that time. A friend told me Meghan thought I was cute and then I told my friend I thought she was cute. That was really the impetus we needed to become a couple. I took a day to think about it and figure out what to do. It was camp and we would be seeing each other every day so it was a big commitment to show up as a couple.

‘So the next day I made my move and we just fell into it. It was very innocent and very cute. And everyone took it that we were together. If she was doing anything acting-wise, I was very focused on it and very, very interested in what she was doing.’ Even though they were young, they talked about the black experience from the perspective of someone who had a white parent. They weren’t overly serious conversations but ones in which they discussed what it might be like to be a person of colour in the entertainment industry.

The new couple also had the more traditional teenage problem – how to find any privacy. They would sit together at lunch but the other campmates would always be around. Joshua explained, ‘It was this awkward and uncomfortable thing – like you are sitting with us and infringing on our space. But they were like – “Are you guys going to kiss? Kiss now.”’ They did kiss, making sure they practised a lot at every opportunity during camp.

Having been together most of the day, Meghan and Joshua would spend much of the evening on the phone to each other. He would be on the floor of his mother’s bedroom and she would be in a closet upstairs – both of them trying to keep the conversation away from parental ears.

Camp was an enjoyable way of spending the summer holidays. The Agape theatre programme was different in that it combined theatre games and practice with a sense of spirituality. There was nothing overtly serious but it just seemed natural to take a break with some guided meditation or ‘visioning’, where you think about your goals for the future, or to end a day of fun with a prayer.

Meghan celebrated her fourteenth birthday at the beginning of August and was given a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday Meghan Markle with a Sparkle’ at the camp. Her memorable summer ended with a spectacular show in the Sanctuary, Agape’s main hall on Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica. It was a culmination of all the various stories and presentations, improv games and sketches that they had worked on for six weeks. They each had to perform a monologue in which they created a new and totally original character. Meghan made sure her hair was at its wildest, smeared lipstick on her face and wore clothes that didn’t really fit. Joshua remembers it as being ‘quirky’. She loved the applause – the cheering, screaming and laughing that stays with you. The big finale was a huge, choreographed dance number entitled ‘Agape’s 38 Flavours’, in which every boy and girl took part.

After camp was over, the group got together and met up at the promenade next to Santa Monica beach. Everyone was relaxed, just hanging; Megan and Joshua held hands as they walked along before they all went into the local cinema to watch the film Clueless, a big summer hit in 1995.

The movie, set in Beverly Hills, is loosely based on Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma. The heroine, Cher Horowitz, played by Alicia Silverstone, is a high-school matchmaker who eventually falls in love with the Mr Knightley character (Paul Rudd), who in the film is rather coincidentally called Josh.

Unfortunately, the other, real-life Josh was unimpressed. He observed, ‘I wasn’t a fan. I was a young African–American boy watching a film about white women. It revolves around a shopaholic white woman and I was not relating to any of that.’ When his guy friends said they were leaving, he went too and told Meghan that he would see her outside. He left just before the tender kiss between the two lead characters: ‘I left my teenage, romance-driven beautiful girlfriend in a theatre while the kissing scene happened. What a dummy! I didn’t understand back then that you don’t do that. You don’t leave – that’s when you kiss the girl in the movie theater.’

That evening, Meghan let Joshua down gently during their long evening phone call. She explained to him why he shouldn’t have done that. She was, he acknowledges, a little ahead of him in understanding how a relationship works. He recalled, ‘I listened to her and I understood and I felt bad.’ Meghan also observed, sensibly, that they were both moving up from middle into high school next term and would inevitably see little of each other. She told him she wanted to enjoy the high school experience, the next stage of growing up. ‘So it was like “Oh heartbreak – but you are probably right,”’ observed her now ex-boyfriend.

And that was that, although Meghan always remembered Joshua and she told chat show veteran Larry King in 2013 that he had been her first kiss.

They didn’t keep in touch, although over the years he would still see Doria at Agape. When the church moved to new premises in Culver City, the entrance hall would be filled with various book, bric-a-brac and clothing stalls. Doria had one for her vintage lines and Joshua would stop to chat and discover how ‘Meg’, as her mother called her in public, was doing.

Joshua has become a well-known name in Los Angeles performing arts. He mentioned Meghan in his one-man show and later was a resident performer, the expert beat-boxer, on the Drop the Mic spot that proved so popular on The Late Late Show with James Cordon. As Meghan would also do, he has given back to the community; in his case with workshops and residences in local schools that have provided a safe and non-judgemental environment for boys and girls to realise their creative potential.

Meghan had enjoyed her first romantic interlude, but perhaps just as importantly she couldn’t wait for the next show at Immaculate Heart; another step on her Yellow Brick Road.

5
Star-To-Be

Meghan could still be found most days after school on the set of Married with Children. She was part of the furniture, but she herself was becoming more aware of the world of television. Her interest in performing that had been nurtured at elementary school, inspired at the Agape camp and encouraged by Immaculate Heart, was becoming increasingly important. She wasn’t just turning up to give Buck a cuddle – the much-loved dog retired in 1995 – but to watch what was going on and study the actors. One of them, Amanda Bearse, who played Marcy in the show, remembered Meghan as ‘quiet’ and ‘respectful’.

Life at the studios, however, wasn’t all about acting. Meghan became fascinated with food and the beautiful dishes that were served every day to the cast and crew. Sometimes Tom, who was popular on set, would suggest she help out in the craft services department where all the food was prepared. She explained, ‘That’s where I started to learn about garnishing and plating. I saw the appreciation of the food. I started to learn the association between food and happiness and being able to entertain.’ She was happy to take over the cooking duties back at the apartment on Vista del Mar.

Meghan’s first job as a young teenager involved food but there was nothing to interest Michelin at the wittily named Humphrey Yogart, a frozen yoghurt store in the Beverly Connection shopping mall on La Cienega Boulevard. The owner, Paula Sheftel, shrewdly realised that the youngest member of staff was a big asset, popular with the customers who appreciated her ‘outgoing personality’.

Although she didn’t earn much – just four dollars an hour – Meghan had her own money for the first time. Of more long-term significance was an encounter in the car park next to the parade. She was taking out the bins when she spotted an off-duty Yasmine Bleeth, famous for playing Caroline Holden, one of the swimsuit-wearing babes in Baywatch – not exactly a show at the forefront of female empowerment.

Meghan, however, was star-struck and blurted out, ‘Oh my God, I loved you in the Soft and Dri commercial.’ The ad for an anti-perspirant was all over the television screens at the time and featured Yasmine purring into the camera, ‘What’s the most important thing you put on?’

The star smiled at Meghan, shook her hand lightly and said, ‘Ok, thank you!’ She made a point of asking Meghan her name. Her gracious reaction would set a benchmark for how Meghan would react to her own fans and well-wishers in the future – look them in the eye and be kind. She never forgot Yasmine.

Meghan’s own acting career at school was progressing steadily. In many ways it would mirror the path of her professional career – a collection of minor roles while waiting for more recognition. When younger, she had no expectation of becoming the next Shirley Temple. She did, however, strike lucky – a real-life former child star was in charge of the drama department. Her name was Gigi Perreau and she had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

From the beginning in middle school, she noticed that despite being ‘very green’, Meghan was one of those students who could absorb ideas. Gigi had plenty of them, as well as a lifetime of experience in Hollywood that began when she was just two years old and was cast as the baby daughter in the 1943 biopic Madame Curie that starred Greer Garson as the famous Nobel Prize-winning scientist. She clinched the role because unusually for someone so young, she could speak both French and English; or at least, gurgle in both languages. Gigi called it a ‘beautiful film’.

She had made thirty-six films by the age of twenty. Her favourites, other than Madame Curie, are Enchantment, a war film in which she played the role of Lark as a little girl – portrayed as an adult by Oscar-winner Teresa Wright; and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, in which, more grown up as a teenager, she acted alongside screen legends Fredric March and Gregory Peck. She was awarded her star on Sunset Boulevard in 1960.

In between making movies, Gigi – short for Ghislaine and pronounced with a hard g – attended Immaculate Heart, so always had affection for the school, wanting to give something back to her alma mater. She returned as a member of the faculty in 1986, only forty-five and still acting. ‘It’s kind of wonderful to share,’ was her simple philosophy, although it always made her laugh when she told friends about her career change. ‘What are you teaching?’ they would ask. ‘Nuclear physics,’ was the reply.

The drama group at Immaculate Heart is known as the Genesians, named after Genesius of Rome, the patron saint of actors. Gigi had been happy for Meghan to become involved in drama in middle school even though most of the roles in school productions went to older pupils. ‘Meghan was just so eager,’ she recalled. ‘She had such a really dynamic personality, even as a child, that she just kept growing and growing – each play, each class, everything.’

Immaculate Heart was not a renowned theatre school, so Gigi was given carte blanche to shape classes as she saw fit. Her idea wasn’t to make drama lessons just about plays and musicals: they were also about speaking and presenting yourself in the best possible light; and about listening. They would act out one-to-one scenes just as you might in real life at a job interview or an audition.

Singing was the one aspect of drama class that Meghan did not enjoy. For someone so very open in the other aspects of performance, she was shy about singing and not too keen on auditioning for any of the musicals. Right from the start, Gigi told her she had to push herself a bit and try out for one.

Gigi cast her as a porter in the production of George M!, the show based on the life of the legendary Broadway star George M. Cohan. Meghan was on stage for the showstoppers ‘Give My Regards to Broadway’ and ‘The Yankee Doodle Boy’. The title role was played by Joseph Leo Bwarie, later to become an acclaimed Broadway performer as Frankie Valli in the Tony award-winning Jersey Boys.

Joe, as everyone called him, handled most of the choreography for Gigi’s productions even though he was still at high school himself. Typically, she insisted that he audition for the role of Cohan even though it was his original idea to do the show. He had a quality that Gigi would also recognise in Meghan – an inbuilt professionalism. When they went off stage they weren’t grabbing a soda and reading Variety; they were running lines with other people.

Gigi cast Meghan again as Delilah in Back County Crimes, in November 1995. The drama with music was written by the prolific post-war American playwright Lanie Robertson in 1980. It’s the story of life in a small town called Duty as told by the local doctor and features love affairs, sordid murder, comic misunderstandings and tragic events – quite grown up for a school production.

Meghan shared a place on the cast list with Luis Segura, a pupil at St Francis High School, in La Cañada Flintridge, a city in Los Angeles county, about fifteen miles from Immaculate Heart. These cities, such as Malibu and Pasadena, are dotted all around LA. Meghan and Luis dated on and off for a couple of years.

It was common practice for Immaculate Heart to call on all-boys schools if there were male roles that needed to be filled. The arrangement was reciprocal and girls could audition for female roles at St Francis and other similar schools in LA. Luis was a couple of years’ older, which might have been an attraction for a teenage schoolgirl. Meghan was already a mature, well-travelled young woman. She had enjoyed a trip to Europe in the summer holidays with Ninaki Priddy, her parents Dalton and Maria and sister, Michelle. While Niki was not involved in drama, she was in Meghan’s class at school and they remained close.

This was a dream trip for anyone, taking in Belgium, Switzerland, Paris and London, where the two girls posed for photographs in front of Buckingham Palace. Much corny significance would be made of this picture many years later when Meghan actually met the Queen, but for now she was just another tourist taking in the sights of the capital as millions of others have done. At this point in recent history, by far the most interesting and charismatic person within the Royal Family was Princess Diana, who was much loved in the US.

Meghan was readily accepted by the Priddy family, a common theme throughout her life – until she met Prince Harry. She was also well liked by the Segura family and was a regular visitor to their Pasadena home while she was dating Luis. It helped that his sister Maria was at Immaculate Heart, in the year below. Meghan also got on well with his younger brother, Danny, encouraging him to try his hand at acting, too.

Meghan’s own acting was progressing; she came more into her own in her next role in the perennial favourite, Annie. She played two parts – the quiet orphan, July, and Star-To-Be, an up-and-coming Broadway performer, which was exactly what Meghan hoped to be. In the latter role, she had a small solo in the song ‘NYC’.

For each production, Gigi would audition something like fifty girls for maybe no more than twelve roles. She was what she termed ‘colour blind’ in that she cast on the basis of ability and audition – not on ethnicity or the colour of someone’s skin – a way of thinking that TV and the motion picture industry is only now coming around to. The role of Annie herself, for instance, was secured by Meghan’s friend, Danica Rozelle, a young African–American girl.

Gigi kept it as professional as possible, with proper callbacks before she made a final decision. For Meghan, it was good practice for what would become her life as a working actress. After she had cast each role, Gigi checked to see if any of those who missed out would like to be in the crew. Everybody involved would then be called for a reading – the cast on chairs around a long table with the crew sat right behind, listening so that they too would really get to know the play or musical.

Gigi gave all her girls with acting ambitions one important piece of advice – she told them that there were no small parts. Gigi explained, ‘I wanted everyone to know that they were part of the whole. If they just had three lines, they needed to know that those three lines were very important.’ Meghan would remember that advice during the years when she struggled to get substantial roles.

After casting, it was six weeks of intensive learning of lines, songs and then rehearsing. Meghan’s dad turned up to watch one evening and was swiftly enlisted as Gigi’s technical advisor. She observed, ‘I am very grateful to him. Very honestly, he was my right-hand person for many years.’ Tom’s involvement was an encouragement for Meghan during high school. ‘Theirs was a very warm and very special relationship,’ continued Gigi.

The week before opening night was a frantic one, with rehearsals starting right after school at 3.30 and continuing until 6pm. Tom would slip out to McDonald’s to fetch much-needed fuel for the troops. He was at the helm for tech run-throughs while the musical numbers came under the watchful eye of Joe. On the Thursday before the Saturday opening, the all-important dress rehearsal would go on late into the evening. This was crucial for Tom, because the lighting was different after dark.

Annie ran for four nights in March 1996 when Meghan was fourteen. As a school tradition the programme had lots of thanks and little notes and best wishes. Meghan’s ‘biography’ said ‘she loves singing, smiling and dancing, and hopes to shuffle off to Broadway some day. Meghan is proud to have two roles in this year’s musical and wishes to thank everyone who helped and supported her (especially Ashley, Danica and, of course, Yasmine).’

Tom received special thanks for ‘parental sweat’. He wrote, ‘To my ‘Star-To-Be’ and the cast and crew of Annie. I’m proud of you all. BREAK A LEG. Love Tom Markle (Daddy).’

As part of Gigi’s preferred policy of alternating a musical with a more conventional drama, Meghan was cast as one of the would-be actresses in a production of Stage Door, the successful play that had been a memorable film in the thirties starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Luis was in it, too, which was a bonus.

Meghan had the role of Judith Canfield, played in the film by Lucille Ball who, coincidentally, had donated to Immaculate Heart the stage on which they performed. Her daughter, the actress Lucie Arnaz, is another former pupil of the school; fittingly Meghan’s favourite TV show as a child had been Lucille’s classic comedy I Love Lucy.

It was time for Meghan to make more of an impact. She had her most substantial role yet in the Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods, the clever interweaving of favourite fairy tales. Meghan was cast as Little Red Riding Hood and, in Gigi’s opinion, ‘just stole the scenes that she was in; she was really adorable’.

Meghan worked very hard in rehearsal, especially singing ‘Hello, Little Girl’. She needed to; Gigi would sit at the back of the hall during run-throughs and bellow out that she couldn’t hear her, encouraging her to project her voice to the four corners of the auditorium.

The spring term production ran for four nights in late March 1997. This time the programme notes made fascinating reading: ‘Meghan is happy to be skipping on stage as Little Red Riding Hood. Meghan wants to pursue acting at Northwestern on her way to Broadway. Meg wishes to thank her supportive parents, her loving boyfriend, and the always encouraging Becca and Michelle. I love you all so much.’

Her father gushed, ‘Congratulations and Best Wishes to my Wonderful Daughter Meghan and the entire fantastic and hard-working cast and crew of Into the Woods. You are all just great! Break a Leg … Tom Markle.’

Meghan may have been only fifteen but she was already clear about what lay in store for her – Northwestern University in Chicago followed by the bright lights of Broadway. In her junior year, the conventional play was The Women, the famous all-female comedy of manners by Clare Boothe Luce that was first performed in New York in 1936. Renowned as a passionate public speaker, the writer was a figure to inspire any ambitious schoolgirl – the first American woman to be appointed an ambassador abroad when she headed the US Embassy in Rome.

The film had become one of the most famous films of the thirties, starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell as Sylvia Fowler, the role that Meghan would play. She followed that with the part of Maisie in the Sandy Powell musical The Boy Friend, a vivacious homage to the 1920s. Meghan had gradually worked her way to close to the top of the cast list in school productions. This time the Segura family was represented by Danny.

Drama at school was very much Tom’s domain. He even continued helping after Meghan had graduated. Gigi only remembers meeting Doria once or twice during the whole time that Meghan was involved in productions at Immaculate Heart. Her mother was still encouraging her caring side, however; she supported her decision to return to Skid Row and help at the Hippie Kitchen, three years after her first visit.

Meghan was inspired by Maria Pollia, who had been her theology teacher as a junior. They talked about the teenager’s misgivings. Maria, who herself volunteered at the kitchen, was able to reassure her that those feelings were perfectly acceptable and understandable but that she should remember ‘to put the needs of others above your own fears’. Maria was herself an alumna of Immaculate Heart and had been given the same advice when she was a student.

Meghan went back to dish out plates of food and clear tables with fresh resolve. She remembered the names of the people she served. She began to properly understand the meaning of community spirit – something that would serve her well when she connected with the women of The Hubb Community Kitchen following the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017. She was continuing to develop her personal empathy.

That became even more apparent when she was the first to be chosen as a team leader at a Kairos Retreat organised by Immaculate Heart at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in the upmarket neighbourhood of Encino. These four-day breaks were popular throughout Catholic schools and colleges in the US. While Kairos originally comes from the Greek for the ‘right time’, in biblical terms it is better translated as ‘God’s time’.

The principle purpose of the four-day retreat was to build empathy, giving the young women time and space to talk openly about their problems and concerns without having to worry about dashing off to the next class or what grade they might be given for their homework.

Meghan was one of six seniors leading groups of eight in daily discussions, trying to make sure every girl had the chance to express themselves. She also had to give a half-hour presentation in front of everyone in which she talked in a mature way about her own life journey. It was a chance to share some personal feelings about her parents’ divorce.

Theology teacher Christine Knudsen, who organised the retreat, observed, ‘Any young person struggles when their parents are divorced, even though I think she knew that both of them loved her, and they were both in her life.’ Meghan was an ideal choice to be a leader because, added Christine, ‘she had a lot of depth, probably because of her own experience of her parents’ divorce. She’d take conversations to a deeper level.’

Meghan’s ability to share thoughts and feelings was of particular benefit to one girl, who struggled with her shyness and was the quietest and most reserved of her group. Meghan wrote her a note in her distinctive and immaculate handwriting: ‘You are so strong and so wonderful – your courage and strength in times of hardship is as admirable as your optimism and friendly nature. Never stop sharing your beautiful spirit and always remember how special you are.’ She ended the letter: ‘I am here if you ever need me. I love you. Meghan.’

Meghan was fortunate that three of her classmates and closest friends were also team leaders: Susan Ardikani, Erin Carr and Michelle Blade, who would go on to become one of the best-known artists on the West Coast. As well as their responsibilities to the Kairos Retreat itself, the classmates had the chance to talk late into the night about their aspirations. Meghan was aiming big, declaring that she was going to be president one day.

6
At the Hollywood Bowl

Like many teenage girls, Meghan was finding life with dad a little constricting. He seemed to be always around – at home, obviously, but also at school, and not just for drama; he was the man called in to help with sound and lighting for important events. Having dad lurking in the background changing a light bulb was not the ideal scenario. He still doted on her but perhaps she needed a touch more freedom.

He was involved, naturally, in what would turn out to be her last show at Immaculate Heart. She had to dust off some of the tap-dancing steps she learned when younger for Stepping Out. Originally a London stage play, it was transformed into a star vehicle for Liza Minnelli in a 1991 movie in which she played a former dancer teaching a weekly tap class to a group of women. Meghan was the abrasive Vera, memorably portrayed in the film by Julie Walters.

Meghan wanted to stretch herself dramatically, so she decided to audition for a role in a play at St Francis High School. It would give her more independence. Luis had left school by this time and they had drifted apart. He would have a startlingly successful career as a realtor in and around Pasadena and has never talked about their teenage times together. Danny was still at the school, though, and they continued to be the best of friends.

The first production she went up for was also the first involving the new director of drama at St Francis, Manny Eulalia. He wanted to come in with a bang and stage something demanding so he chose Oedipus Rex, the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, which his English class were already studying. This was a million miles away from Annie and she was the only girl from her school auditioning, hoping to be cast among forty or so other budding actresses.

Meghan tried out for the leading female role of Jocasta, the Queen of Thebes, who marries her son Oedipus and subsequently hangs herself in the last act. Manny saw a lot of hopefuls but Meghan stood out: ‘There are people who just walk in and they have that presence.’ Manny was also impressed with the work ethic that Meghan brought with her from Immaculate Heart. As it was his first production, he wanted the process to be disciplined and she did not disappoint him.

Meghan encouraged Danny to audition as well and he was cast as Creon, Jocasta’s brother, another of the leading roles. In return, Danny nominated Meghan to be Homecoming Queen at St Francis, a big deal in US school culture. Usually, co-ed schools or all-boys schools hold Homecoming Dances on the same weekend as the Homecoming Football Game (American Football). Since all-girls high schools like Immaculate Heart don’t have football teams, they don’t hold the dances.

At seventeen, she had blossomed into a stunning young woman who cast a spell over the boys of St Francis. By now the gradual process of sorting out her teeth had paid off. Dental work was a rite of passage for American teenagers. Gone was her trademark gappy grin and in its place she had a million-dollar smile.

The competition to be Homecoming Queen was fierce. Such a contest did not sit easily with Meghan’s feminist views, but she was a teenager enjoying her social life and the attention of boys. The first stage was an essay listing her achievements and accomplishments to date. Meghan sailed through that, largely due to her impressive charity work on Skid Row. Next she was interviewed by four boys, the committee, who were members of the student body. They were impressed.

The winner was announced in November 1998 at a special red-carpet ceremony during the Homecoming game between St Francis and another school team called the Chaminade Eagles from neighbouring West Hills. A school football game is a raucous event so, at half time, the Homecoming court was greeted with much hollering and cheering as they made their way onto a makeshift stage in the middle of the field.

The girls were given a guard of honour onto the red carpet by boys brandishing swords. Each one was announced over the loudspeaker and then Meghan was declared the winner. After she had been crowned by last year’s Queen, Carla Suarez, the entire court was applauded as they were driven away in a fleet of classic convertibles.

Danny was Meghan’s escort for the big dance that night. Meghan loved dancing and wasn’t usually much bothered about posing for official pictures. This evening she was a little more careful because she was wearing her Queen tiara and didn’t want to send that flying across the dance floor.

Dressed in an elegant strapless ivory ballgown and carrying a bouquet, she already looked like a Hollywood star. Her broad smile was entirely natural, however, and not one of those weary ones celebrities manufacture for the cameras as they are snapped for the thousandth time that night in the name of publicity. Danny stood proudly at her side with his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. They never dated – she had, after all, been dating his elder brother.

Meghan’s popularity was boosted by becoming the Homecoming Queen of an all-boys school. They could all see how attractive she was. One of her admirers was Nema Vand, a year younger than her and very handsome. He admitted, ‘Meghan was amazing, a woman among girls. Everyone was in love with her. She was sweet and very kind.’

Nema, who would later become one of the stars of the reality show Shahs of Sunset, still enjoys telling the story of the time when he was at the same party as Meghan and she came over and sat on his lap. Then she spoke to him in the Persian language, Farsi: ‘You are so beautiful, she purred. Nema recalled, ‘I asked her, “How do you know Farsi?” She said, “I learned it for you.” Then she walked away. She played with our hearts masterfully,’ he sighed

When word got round that Meghan was in it, tickets for the three-night run of Oedipus Rex in early January 1999 sold out rapidly. Manny Eulalia remembered that Meghan’s first entrance on stage was greeted with a round of applause, which was not exactly in keeping with such a moving and powerful tragedy.

The play was held across the road from St Francis in Flintridge Preparatory School. Its theatre held 250 people so the standing ovation the cast received was quite something. Meghan was exceptional in the role of the despairing mother who eventually kills herself when she realises she has committed incest with her son.

She did not have Tom in her corner – or more precisely, in the wings – which was perhaps a blessing as she was now seventeen, but she thanked him in the programme notes, alongside ‘Mommy’, Danny Boy, the ‘beautiful, amazing sweeties of St Francis’ and one boy in particular called Gabriel Stewart, known to everyone as Gabe. He and Meghan dated a few times and kept in touch for a year or two until, as he put it, ‘her life took a different direction’.

Her school stage career was not over. The best was yet to come. She auditioned for the annual musical at the Loyola High School in downtown Los Angeles, another all-boys school with close ties to Immaculate Heart. She was cast as the devil’s sidekick Lola – Señorita Lolita Banana – in a production of Damn Yankees, a dream role for Meghan.

The Adler and Ross musical from 1955 had practically swept the board at the Tonys, winning seven awards including one for the legendary Broadway star Gwen Verdon as Lola.

The show, a rough reworking of the Faust legend in a baseball setting, ran for more than a thousand performances on Broadway. Gwen had the stand-out number ‘Whatever Lola Wants’, which she reprised in the Hollywood version of the film. She was a tough act for anyone to follow.

Meghan didn’t disappoint. Though experienced in school drama, it was still a big step to parading around the stage in a sequinned leotard, suggestively purring the lyric ‘I always get what I aim for’. She was still at high school, so it wasn’t exactly Pussycat Dolls but, as the idiom goes, Meghan brought the house down.

Gigi Perreau was in the audience, sitting beside Tom Markle. She was impressed, ‘I was so thrilled to see her because it seemed like everything she had worked for. It was very exciting, I must say.’

Meghan was now in her final year, twelfth grade, at Immaculate Heart. She had her first taste of modelling on a catwalk at the annual mothers and daughters fashion show in March 1999. Meghan showed off her legs in a short skirt and some very high heels that would become something of a trademark in her acting career.

As Gigi observed, ‘She was a cute little kid in eighth grade and then by the time she was Lola she was absolutely gorgeous.’ Understandably, she attracted a degree of envy from the other girls. Gigi noticed it, ‘There were some girls who were very jealous of her. It happens in a high school situation.’

That situation might have been even worse if Meghan had been crowned Prom Queen at Immaculate Heart in April 1999. She had to settle for being one of a very glamorous prom court, alongside friends including Niki Priddy and Susan Ardakani escorting the Queen, Camille Townsend. The event, called that year Midnight Masquerade, was held at the swish InterContinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Her date this time around was a handsome young student at Loyola called Giancarlo Boccato. They looked like a Hollywood couple and dazzled on the dance floor. The pictures of the night showed just how much the camera loved Meghan. It always had. The hundreds of shots that her dad took of her growing up revealed that she lit up any photo and one’s eye was always drawn to her in a group picture.

The Immaculate Heart photographer John Dlugolecki wasn’t at all surprised, therefore, when Meghan turned up at his studio in Burbank for her official school senior portrait meaning business. Most of the girls would just have the required white cap and gown shot and then disappear, not Meghan. She drove out in her mum’s station wagon with the personalised number plate ‘MEGNMEE’ with a bag of clothes on the front seat.

Normally it would be just ten or fifteen minutes and a goodbye, but John allocated her an hour. She brought a black v-neck sweater and wanted to pose for an atmospheric shot against a black background. It was her first proper professional session. John was delighted to have a subject keen on trying something different. He decided to use rim lighting to highlight the edges around her hair.

While she posed, they chatted about her plans after leaving high school. John was an alumnus of Notre Dame, the prestigious university in Indiana. Meghan wanted to broaden her horizons away from Los Angeles and told him she was keen to go to college in the Midwest, so he encouraged her to try for his alma mater, although it had no special connection with Immaculate Heart.

Meghan had talked many times with John’s wife, Vicki Conrad, who usually accompanied him as co-photographer on important school nights to share the load. Meghan had one big concern that played on her mind: ‘What can you do with a degree in theatre?’

Vicki was herself a theatre major, so was speaking with authority. She told her, ‘You can do anything you want.’ Meghan was uncertain so Vicki added, ‘You learn how to act with people. You learn teamwork; being on a budget; being on time; meeting deadlines. That’s what jobs in the world involve.’

Vicki was an example of what she was explaining. Her ‘day job’ was as the manager of one of the largest shopping malls in southern California. She strongly encouraged Meghan to try the Chicago university Northwestern, whose drama department had a growing reputation in the late nineties. Vicki told her she would give anything to go to Northwestern right now.

Meghan still wasn’t sure. She won a place at Notre Dame, even earning a small scholarship. But in the end she chose Northwestern, which had been her preferred choice throughout her teens. Unexpectedly, her intention was to major in English and concentrate on developing her own writing skills. She was an avid reader and had been totally absorbed studying some of the great writers at school – it was one of the reasons why she had auditioned for Oedipus Rex.

She studied classic English literature including Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters, as well as some of the greats of twentieth-century American literature, such as Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salinger. For the present at least, drama was on the back burner. She did not want to become that cliché – the Los Angeles teenager who dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star. Her earlier intention to tread a path to Broadway also seemed a distant dream.

She still had one pleasant task to undertake before closing the chapter on her school days – graduation at the Hollywood Bowl. Immaculate Heart was one of only two schools in the Los Angeles area allowed to hold their big day at the iconic venue that normally played host to some of the biggest stars in music. The only time the school’s graduation was ‘bumped’ in recent years was when they had to change their date because it clashed with a Paul Simon concert – although, inevitably, in 2020 it was cancelled owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

Traditionally, the girls wore white satin dresses that were rather plain and unflattering, so they would all frantically try to customise them into something a little more Givenchy. They stood in line, each carrying a bouquet of red roses, to have their name called to enthusiastic applause. Meghan collected many awards that afternoon in June 1999, testimony to Maria Pollia’s opinion that she was one of the top five students she had ever taught. They included one for drama, a service award for mentoring younger students, the Bank of America Fine Arts award, the Notre Dame Club of Los Angeles achievement and perhaps, most interestingly, she was commended in the National Achievement Scholarship Programme for outstanding black students – a recognition of her identity at last.

After the ceremonial duties were concluded, she joined the others to sing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and ‘I Will Remember You’, the timeless and poignant break-up song by Sarah McLachlan. It was a day never to forget.

Meghan’s graduation photograph hangs with all the others in one of the main corridors at Immaculate Heart. To accompany it, she chose an empowering quote usually attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘Women are like teabags; they don’t realize how strong they are until they’re in hot water.’

Meghan intended to earn some money in the summer break before travelling to Northwestern, at least to make sure she had the right wardrobe – not just for looking good but also keeping warm during the bitterly cold Chicago winters. She sent off the best headshot from her session with John Dlugolecki to various casting agents in the hope of finding some work as an extra.

She soon struck lucky with a tiny part in a video for a new single by Tori Amos called ‘1000 Oceans’. The singer-songwriter is one of the most thoughtful of modern avant-garde artists: Meghan’s tastes were more traditional, preferring old-school performers such as Joni Mitchell, although she did have a soft spot for Mark McGrath, the lead singer with US rock band Sugar Ray, who she thought was ‘hot’.

‘1000 Oceans’ is a haunting ballad about love and loss, crying a thousand oceans to come to terms with grief. Blink and you miss Meghan. She is seen briefly at thirty-nine seconds and fifty-nine seconds, one of a crowd staring at Tori in a glass container that is reminiscent of an exhibit in a museum or a zoo. A day spent filming in a far-from-glamorous disused car park was worth it to be able to pop a couple of hundred dollars in cash in her purse at the end of it.

Another shoot, this time for a new Shakira single, promised to be even more lucrative: $600 for two days’ work. The Columbian singer was on her way to becoming one of the biggest-selling artists in the world. Meghan had to audition to be one of the crowd dancing wildly to the track, ‘Ojos Asi’.

The day of the audition was chronicled on film by her friend Niki Priddy as the young women drove around Beverly Hills shopping for outfits in a station wagon with the number plate signature ‘Classy Girl’. As they make their way to the famous shopping street, Melrose Avenue, they point out some of the stores they wouldn’t be visiting on Rodeo Drive – Chanel, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Valentino and Tiffany.

The girls drive down Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and point out that it is known in this neighbourhood as Boystown because of the local homosexual community. Meghan observes, ‘We could walk around naked here and they wouldn’t care.’ Before the audition, they stop off at Meghan’s house for chocolate croissants and iced milk and to cuddle her mother’s cats, Bella and Maria.

She had moved back in with Doria because she wasn’t getting along with her father. She had given up popping in to see him or even collecting her mail. She admitted, ‘My dad and I are not on the best of terms.’ She still had a picture of him on the fridge, though, taken during last October’s fathers and daughters picnic at Immaculate Heart, so perhaps it was a temporary falling out. The photograph was a lovely shot of Tom with his arm around his smiling daughter but, like a million and more young women, Meghan was no longer Daddy’s little girl.

The audition, which we don’t see, went ‘pretty well’, she thought. She had to dance crazily. Afterwards, driving over to Niki’s house, she admitted that her principal worry during the audition was that she was going to fall out of her top. She didn’t get called back for filming, which was disappointing, but it was something she would get used to in the future.

The day ended with her trying on some of the outfits she had bought during the day. The film was by no means a masterpiece and Meghan could never have imagined that Niki would store it away and make it public for the whole world to watch. That would be many years later. In the immediate future, Meghan was leaving her safe and secure world in Los Angeles and setting out on the next stage of her life.

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