[News article] Why Meghan Markle was underrated as an actress

[TallerSally]

Rare praise from the i:
https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/a-suits-revival-wouldnt-work-without-meghan-2556238

The legal drama Suits is having a surprise moment in the spotlight 12 years after it first aired. The key to its success? Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex

I imagine that’s true, but can you imagine the memes if Rachel had said “poppycock”? Meghan would never live it down.

As soon as she became known as Harry’s girlfriend her past love scenes on Suits got uploaded to P*rnhub, so in some respects was quite reasonable caution.

I didn't say it wasn't. I am referring to their motivation, it is for the institution, not her.

how odd that the "palace" would do that. then to tell her she could continue acting. yet her not doing it is a stick that is used to beat her with by the haters.

I am quite skeptical about this story!

Firstly M was not a principal at the time so the palace didn’t work for her. Why would they care?

Secondly in the internet age avoiding anything that can be clipped out of context is just good advice. It’s also pretty normal for actors or their agents to request revisions to scripts.

Thirdly there is a difference between advising against and forbidding. The palace advisors are there to advise the principals they don’t tell them what to do. As is her agent.

And finally, he can’t say how the palace got the scripts or who from the palace contacted who. He even speculated they were passing it through her agent.

I think there are two very boring possibilities for what is true:

• The palace never saw the scripts, her agent was just doing their job
• M sought the palace’s advice, that’s what they advised her, she took the advice.

I would have totally used ‘the palace says’ as an excuse for anything I wanted to do or not do in that position.

Especially to Americans who don’t know much about how things work and what power the ‘palace’ wields anyway.

Or if I was an agent and wanted some extra leverage for my client.

Who knows - either way it seems to be a very minor revision - hardly changing the storyline which seemed to be implied earlier.

It’s the best excuse ever

She was competent. Not the best, not the worst. Competent. It's not a bad word.

Especially when the example given was to the change the word "poppycock" to the word "bullshit". That doesn't change the storyline or the character arc in anyway.

It's not really censorship, and tbh, in an American show the word bullshit makes more sense.

I do wonder who gave the Palace the scripts to review. They would have zero power to demand them and if they had would have rightly been refused.

No one did. Let’s be real.

It’s strange it wasn’t mentioned in Finding Freedom, given that one of the major themes of that book was how the Palace attempted to control Meghan’s life and activities.

Omid Scobie did write in Finding Freedom about how Meghan felt “frustrated and emotional” when the Palace press team advised her once the relationship became public that wearing a necklace with H&M on it was likely to fuel the market for paparazzi pictures of her. I’m guessing the description of her mental state came straight from Meghan, as we now know she was directly giving Omid notes for his book. But not a word about script interference?

The idea the palace was demanding scripts and vetoing what she could say is BS but she may well have ran them by the comms team for advice

They told her not to be pictured wearing it and also not to parade around with her dog in a Union Jack jacket. Definitely someone intent on privacy.

Omid never met Meghan (except afterwards), all his contact with her was via Jason Knauf, who likely would have vetoed or steered her away from anything that made the Palace look bad.

I don't know why people are soooo invested in defending the palace that they'll make up all these conspiracy theories and claim that everyone and their grandma is lying;Harry's lying, Meghan's lying, all the cast are lying, the creator of Suits is lying, Tom Bowers is lying, literally everyone is conspiring to promote the same weirdly specific lie for no particular reason, just to make the Palace look very slightly interfering.

I just can't understand this The Palace Can Do No Wrong mentality and anyone who criticises them or says anything bad about them, ever, is a liar.

Exactly.

Everyone is lying, from according to some: the Archbishop, the judges in Harry and Meghan's court cases, the show creator, all the way down to the writers on the other side of a different country...except the Palaces (and their sources) or the tabloids. 😂

Omid never met Meghan (except afterwards), all his contact with her was via Jason Knauf, who likely would have vetoed or steered her away from anything that made the Palace look bad.

Actually, the only contact that we know about for sure is via Jason Knauf, who was present at the very start of their relationship, and acted as a go-between (we know this from his emails from the time he was working for the Sussexes). He stopped working for the Sussexes late in 2018 however.

It is quite clear, however, that the relationship between the Sussexes and Omid continued after Knauf’s departure (Omid had the exclusive about their intentions around titling Archie after his birth, for example, and the judge in Meghan’s case against ANL made it clear how close Omid was to her team - being sent copies of court filings to tweet out immediately after they were filed). So personally think it’s very likely that the relationship developed and deepened considerably after Jason Knauf left the Sussexes employment.

Folks, Suits has continued to dominate Netflix in the US for the SEVENTH week in a row:
https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/nielsen-top-10-ratings-streaming-1235693657/

I also enjoyed listening to this, which helps explain why...
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/22/1195187324/why-suits-we-dive-into-this-summers-streaming-hit

Between Suits and Heart of Invictus, the Sussexes seem to be really delivering for Netflix this summer! 😅...

I keep meaning to watch it again!

That's awesome @TallerSally

Awesome! The show is great!