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Meghan Markle trolled for playing victim over 'bimbo' act as 'Deal or No Deal' briefcase girl

The Duchess said she disliked 'how it made me feel, which was not smart' because she 'didn't like feeling forced to be all looks'

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Meghan Markle was mocked on social media after she revealed she quit her gig as a 'Deal or No Deal' briefcase girl because she felt treated like a "bimbo" and was only appreciated for "beauty not brains."

Speaking on her new Archetypes podcast with Paris Hilton -- titled 'Breaking Down the Bimbo' -- the Duchess of Sussex said she was grateful for the work as she tried to break through as an actress and "pay the bills." However, she disliked "how it made me feel, which was not smart" because she "didn't like feeling forced to be all looks." Meghan said she wants her daughter Lilibet to be valued first for her brain and not her appearance.

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"I want our daughter to aspire to be slightly higher," the duchess said on Tuesday, October 18. "Yeah, I want my Lili to want to be educated and want to be smart and to pride herself on those things'. Meghan featured on season two of NBC's 'Deal or No Deal' 16 years ago. She stood beside briefcase number 11 for two episodes and was later moved to number 24. However, she left the show midway through the season.

"I ended up quitting the show," she recalled. "I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage. I didn't like feeling forced to be all looks. And little substance. And that's how it felt for me at the time being reduced to this specific archetype the word bimbo."

The Duchess, however, was excoriated on social media for "always positioning herself as a victim." "Let me guess... she will say 'raise your hand if you ever been called bimbo... I have'... as always positioned herself as a victim," one tweeted.

"What this job entails is sashaying out on stage in a skirt that barely covers your behind while holding a briefcase: I'll take it! I can't believe they objectified me!" another joked. "She knew where she was going and exactly know her role, she accepted it. Stop blaming others for your own wishes and actions," a comment read.

"Poor little girl, she was certainly forced to sign the contract and now rightly plays the victim part, how can’t she realize she is utterly insufferable for this continuous tendency of never taking responsibility for her own free choices?" someone else offered.

"I have not heard the word bimbo in a good decade or 2. It's like she is trapped in the year 2000," another quipped.

 

The former actress revealed how she and the other women on the show were forced to "line up" for various beauty treatments that included "padding in your bra," attaching fake eyelashes, and using hair extensions. "We were even given spray-tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie-cutter idea, of precisely what we should look like," she said. "It was solely about beauty and not necessarily about brains." According to Meghan, a woman "in charge" of the show would tell her to "suck it in" before filming began -- presumably an instruction to suck her stomach in for the cameras.

The California-based royal appeared on the show before her breakthrough on the hit TV show 'Suits'. She recalled, "I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn't the focus of why we were there and I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach. Like I said, I was thankful for the job but not for how it made me feel which was not smart."

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Meghan appeared in 34 episodes of 'Deal or No Deal' between 2006 and 2007. "I was really grateful as an auditioning actress to have a job," she told Paris at the start of the podcast. "That could pay my bills. I had income, I was part of the Union, and I had health insurance, it was great."

However, she couldn't help but feel underappreciated for her brain or education. "There were times when I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the US Embassy in Argentina, Buenos Aires, and being in the motorcade with the secretary of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain," she said, adding, "Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite."