Markle’s enjoyably soapy acting elevated Suits and was an intrinsic part of its mind-blowing popularity
Ever since she left Suits, Meghan Markle’s screen career has been a load of pants. For that reason, the decision by the Duchess of Sussex to move away from lifestyle television and return to her first love of dramatic acting – with a cameo in a new rom-com – might be the most significant move she’s made this side of marrying a Prince.
Nobody would claim Meghan is the next Meryl Streep – not even Harry during their loved-up early days of spontaneous safaris and tea with the Queen. However, Suits fans will know all about her natural screen presence – not the same thing as being a good actor but an invaluable talent nonetheless – and she will surely be more than capable of holding her own as cameras roll this week on Close Personal Friends.
If Meghan is good at anything, it is at elevating a frothy binge-watch. That seems to be what we are getting in Close Personal Friends, in which she will appear opposite Lily Collins, Brie Larson, and Jack Quaid (son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid).
The only caveat is that she will be playing herself in this tale of two couples – one famous, one obscure – whose lives are changed after an unlikely run-in. But then, her Suits character of Rachel Zane was really just Meghan in office-formal wear, so portraying an exaggerated version of herself should not be much of a stretch. She will probably also have the opportunity to poke fun at all the caricatures of Meghan (as is the standard with celeb cameos) – which will allow her to show the world that she has a sense of humour.
Suits devotees are, of course, already in on the secret about the screwball quality she brings to her acting. In the long-running, mind-blowingly popular legal drama, she played an ambitious paralegal (a sort of trainee solicitor) and love interest to the central character, Mike Ross (Patrick J Adams). Mike was a natural-born charmer who skated by on his people skills and generally made up things as he went along – any resemblance to Harry is purely coincidental.
Markle quit acting eight years ago after arranging to have Rachel written out of Suits. At the time, a long career of royal bliss seemed to stretch ahead. But tension with the in-laws has led her to take a different path – though sadly for her, her attempts to build her lifestyle empire have run aground on the fact that she just isn’t much good at being a millennial Martha Stewart.
To be fair to Markle, she already had aspirations to be a cosy lifestyle influencer even before she met Harry, when she would occupy her non-Suits hours on her lifestyle blog The Tig. However, that was before she became a polarising A-lister, and her recent attempts at rebranding herself as an influencer have stuttered. Her first mistake was lumbering her brand with the atrocious name of American Riviera Orchard, which sounds like a sparkling wine sure to inflict a three-day hangover. She later renamed it As Ever, by which point people had already lost interest and decided that one Gwyneth Paltrow flogging over-priced scented candles was quite enough, thank you.
The biggest disaster of all, however, has been her atrocious Netflix offering, With Love, Meghan, in which she struggles to portray herself as an artisanal homemaker and relatable mom-next-door. Audiences certainly haven’t bought it, and viewership for the show is understood to have collapsed during its second season (reviews were vicious from the start). She will sign off on that chapter of her career with a Christmas special in December – but with her Netflix deal having run out (replaced with a non-committal, “first look” arrangement between the two parties) Meghan is clearly eying new opportunities.
Or, to be more accurate, she is looking once again at old opportunities. In her acting career, she has come a long way from her humble background in Los Angeles, scraping by with lots of ambition and modest levels of talent.
Suits was, let us be honest, always a guilty pleasure. But it was – and remains – scarily bingeable (which is why it has had a remarkable second life on streaming), and Markle’s soapy acting was part of the charm. She will never win an Oscar – but in a world where everyone is trying to knock her down, acting is the one place where she can stand on her own two feet. After all the vitriol that has come her way since marrying Harry, a cameo in a rom-com might be her overdue opportunity to have the last laugh.
