Meghan Markle made to feel like a ‘bimbo’ on ‘Deal or No Deal’

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It was a deal Meghan Markle wished she said no deal to.

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The Duchess of Sussex has opened up on her time as a briefcase girl on Deal or No Deal in a conversation with socialite Paris Hilton on the latest episode of her Spotify podcast, Archetypes.

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“I ended up quitting the show. I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage,” Markle, 41, said, per PEOPLE.

The former Suits star said she took the job on the game show to help make ends meet while she was auditioning for various acting roles. But Markle admitted that it was hard to reconcile the work with her academic past.

“I had also studied international relations in college, and there were times I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina in Buenos Aires and being in the motorcade with the security of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain. Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite,” she said.

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Her brains and interests “wasn’t the focus,” she continued.

“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.’”

Her emotional reaction to her time on the show back in 2006 and 2007 was sparked after she was channel surfing and came across the program.

On the series, contestants vied for a chance to win a $1 million prize hidden inside one of 26 sealed briefcases — all of which were held by attractive women.

“This brought back a lot of memories,” the mother of two recalled.

Markle said most of the other women holding briefcases were intellectual, but show producers only wanted the focus on physical beauty with the panel often being told to “suck it in.”

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“When I look back at that time, I’ll never forget this one detail — because moments before we’d get on stage, there was a woman who ran the show and she’d be there backstage, and I can still hear her. She couldn’t properly pronounce my last name at the time and I knew who she was talking to because she’d go, ‘Markle, suck it in! Markle, suck it in!’”

Markle said she decided to exit the show because she didn’t like how it made her feel. “I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there. I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage.”

After quitting, Markle, who is married to Prince Harry, landed the part of lawyer Rachel Zane on the Toronto-shot legal drama Suits in 2011. She quit the show — and acting altogether — after her wedding in 2018.

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Meanwhile, Howie Mandel, who hosted Deal or No Deal from 2005 to 2019, told Piers Morgan last year that he had no recollection of Markle being on the show.

“I have absolutely no memory of her. I did not remember until she was dating Harry and people started saying ‘what can you tell us about Meghan?’ and I would say ‘who’s Meghan?’”

Mandel said she failed to leave an impression. “I didn’t know — I didn’t remember. I did not know her and I don’t remember her to this day. But maybe that’s the beauty of it.”

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