The Duchess of Sussex’s single season on the NBC game show has become a talking point in recent days, after she spoke of feeling “objectified” while serving as one of its briefcase models.
Back in 2006, while in the early stages of her acting career, Meghan joined the game show as one of the several glamorous women who stood by and opened briefcases for contestants hoping to guess their way into riches.
However, during a recent episode of her Archetypes podcast—titled “Breaking Down the Bimbo”—Meghan, 41, shared less than glowing memories of her single season on the NBC show, saying: “I ended up quitting the show. Like I said, I was thankful for the job but not for how it made me feel which was not smart.”
Comparing the TV experience to her time working as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina “and being in the motorcade with the Secretary of the Treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain,” Meghan said that the TV job was “solely about beauty and not necessarily about brains.”
A number of former Deal or No Deal models have responded to Meghan’s statement, including Tameka Jacobs, who told Newsweek: “If they were looking for women’s rights activists, [Meghan] would have gotten the job. And the fact that she’s beautiful, yeah, that’s why you got the job! Yeah, you’re smart. Like she said, everyone [on Deal or No Deal] was smart.”
“She feels like she was reduced [to her looks],” Jacobs said. “I feel like we were admired. And then where does that perspective come from? I don’t feel at all I got treated [badly], and I didn’t feel like a bimbo. Come on, man, it’s a frickin’ game show!”
Jacobs, who has worked as a photographer for more than 15 years, has also revealed that Meghan didn’t socialize with the other models during her time on the show, where she served as one of two alternates, or stand-ins, alongside Teigen.
“She didn’t click with us. She kept to herself, she always [did],” Jacobs, 42, told Newsweek. “She was always trying to book something better and bigger, as we all were. But she didn’t hang out with us at all.
“After filming, we would go eat together, everybody. We would have fun… We would be sitting in a nice restaurant, and everybody’s pulling off their eyelashes and taking out their extensions… We were a rowdy bunch. And I know she’s not.
“We partied so hard. We went to clubs and we went out at night and she just was never interested in that scene. You know, she wanted to stay home, she wanted to go over her lines. She wanted to study, she wanted to book the next job. And she was just always very focused. And nothing is wrong with any of that at all.”
While Meghan did not mingle with the other models, fellow California native Jacobs added that she couldn’t find a bad word to say about the budding star.
“People always ask me and I don’t have a bad thing to say about her,” Jacobs said. “She doesn’t swear, she never got drunk. I’ve never seen her be mean or cruel to anyone. She was always very polite, always well-spoken and just very driven.
“And that was it. Deal or No Deal was a stepping stone. She knew where she wanted to go, had her path, and wanted to get there.”
Jacobs shared a contrasting recollection of Teigen, who, along with Meghan, was one of the alternate models on the set who would fill in in case one of the other models was absent.
“Chrissy was awesome. She was fun,” Jacobs enthused. “She’s always been fun. Lots of laughing, lots of just mischievous [behavior]. I don’t think Chrissy would ever say bad things about Deal or No Deal. Like I said, it was a great job.
“We had fun, it paid us well. I couldn’t imagine Chrissy saying, ‘I wish I was never on that show.’ If she weren’t on the show, she wouldn’t have met John [Legend].
“She would show up a little bit [to party with us]. Like she would at least come out with us, and then everybody would trickle home. Chrissy was cool. She’s hilarious. She likes to eat. She likes to cook. She stands up for herself. She’s confident, she’s all these things.
“I couldn’t imagine her saying that she felt objectified. But then again, she was a swimsuit model. And then again, none of us book anything in Hollywood with looks. Period.”
When asked whether Meghan kept in touch with her after leaving the show, Jacobs responded: “Oh, gosh no! I mean, I don’t think she kept contact with any of us from the show. We were the co-workers.”
With Meghan spending much of her time “on the bench” as an alternate, Jacobs said that she “would be back there with scripts getting ready for an audition. So it was paid time for her to study her scripts. Like it was a perfect setup.”
Meghan would eventually go on to land her career-defining role as Rachel Zane in the hit legal drama Suits, before quitting the show following her November 2017 engagement to Prince Harry.
Was it surprising to see the quiet and reserved Meghan go on to marry into British royalty? “No, [because] she’s driven,” said Jacobs. “She knew she wanted. She knew what she wanted to be. And she wasn’t dating knuckleheads.
“She wasn’t dating like silly L.A. knuckleheads. She was dating men who already had very established careers, who were also very driven… And she takes her life seriously, and I guess it paid off.”
