‘You wouldn’t even know where to look without me.’
This is Meghan Markle, giving her love interest a good dressing down.
In this case, however, her glassy-eyed ire is aimed not at a supposedly hen-pecked Harry, but instead at her co-star, Mike (played by Patrick J Adams, who has all the macho heft of a daffodil), in Suits.
The TV legal drama, which first aired a decade ago and ran for nine steel and glass seasons, has been snapped up by the BBC in a curious move, given it’s been available on Netflix for over a year, becoming the most streamed show of 2023.
Meghan Markle got her big break when she joined the cast of Suits in July 2011
The BBC have snapped up Suits even thought it has been available on Netflix for more than a year, becoming the most streamed show of 2023
Meghan, playing Rachel Zane, does her valiant best but, as a reviewer commented when the BBC announced its scoop: ‘Beneath all the smart-ass dialogue there isn’t a lot of real depth.’
The Suits wedding scene in which Meghan’s character Rachel says ‘I do’
Meghan was in Suits before she married into the Royal Family, but she only became well-known in the UK when she she met Prince Harry – and ‘paraded in a cream coat around the gardens of Kensington Palace’
We all know that Meghan was in Suits before she married into the Royal Family (well, we know now – I’d never heard of Meghan until she paraded in a cream coat around the gardens of Kensington Palace.)
And it’s no longer a pre-requisite for royal brides to have never had a life, a previous husband, or even gainful employment.
It’s not even particularly awful that the Duchess of Sussex is seen in her bra on screen. Having fictional sex! We are all grown up enough to separate fact from friction.
No, my problem with Suits is that it’s humourless trash, although we can’t blame Meghan for that.
She will have taken the job on the strength of a pilot.
These series are always a gamble. I’m certain that when was cast in the role of Rachel Zane, the pencil-skirted paralegal who has a huge chip on her shoulder, given she hadn’t gone to Harvard, Meghan saw it as a chance to portray a strong black woman who takes no prisoners, a feminist confident enough to expose her Victoria’s Secrets.
She won’t have been able to develop character or story arcs, and was doubtless happy, before she met Harry, to be tied into a contract with a dependable, lucrative salary.
The arrival of Suits airing on the BBC iplayer some time soon will do nothing to help the rest of the Windsors – and will only reinforce fact that our Royal Family has turned into a compelling soap opera along the lines of Dynasty.
Were you waiting, when Meghan and Catherine emerged to greet mourners ahead of the Queen’s funeral, for them to start wrestling before falling into a Windsor Park lake, a la Alexis and Krystle?
Suits is just not on a par with with the work of another actress-turned-royal in, say, Rear Window or High Society.
The quality of those movies only added sheen to the stuffy, mostly unknown Grimaldi family into which Grace Kelly had married.
Those big screen, Oscar winning roles slicked her with a veneer of class, even though, in accepting Prince Rainier’s millions, she retired from acting.
The bald (sorry, Haz) fact is Suits is leaden, with convoluted story lines and corporate chicanery: LA Law it is not.
Sadly, there is none of the likeable ditzy-ness of an Ally McBeal.
Rachel Zane is as prickly as a porcupine: ‘Do you think this is a year-round tan?’ she snaps.
She is always threatening to sue anyone who slights her. If I’d been Harry, sharing a family subscription to Netflix, despite the fact on screen she looks incredible, I’d have run a country mile.
He should have worried the lack of humour, of even an ounce of self awareness, wasn’t in fact a brilliant piece of Method acting. She was merely playing herself.
Meghan does her valiant best but, as a reviewer commented when the BBC announced its scoop: ‘Beneath all the smart-ass dialogue there isn’t a lot of real depth.’
For me, she has all the dramatic nuance of something King Charles might plant to tackle climate change. She tries valiantly to convey, as Dorothy Parker put it, ‘The gamut of emotions from A to B.’
If the Sussexes had stayed as senior working royals, the BBC would not have touched Suits with a barge pole: to screen it would have been tantamount to airing the final season of the Crown directly after the King’s Christmas message.
I imagine on hearing this news at home in Montecito, Meghan must have been thrilled at what she will see as a piece of corporate, mainstream validation.
Meghan’s real wedding was a little more high profile and took place in Windsor, not on screen…
I don’t agree.
The BBC merely wants to attract female viewers who are tired of endless sport on our terrestrial channels and are in need of a spot of mind-numbing, retro rogering in the stationery cupboard…
Having given myself an ice cream headache speed watching all 134 episodes, right up to the scene where Rachel Zane gets married, I can reveal that her highlights take just 12 minutes on Youtube.
If you do actually have a life.