Meghan Markle to actresses who play her: Find my ‘softness’

Meghan Markle has a lofty message to any future actresses who might play her on-screen: they must dig deep into her many layers.

“I hope that in preparing for that role, she finds the softness and the playfulness and the laughter,” Markle told Variety about any actors who might depict her on screen.

“The silliness. I just hope she finds the dimensions. Also, she can call me!”

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, was an actor for years before she married Prince Harry in 2018, most famously starring in the US legal drama “Suits.”

Markle recently complained on her “Archetypes” podcast that her breakout role as a “suitcase girl” on “Deal or No Deal” made her out to be a “bimbo.”

“It was solely about beauty, and not necessarily about brains,” she told guest Paris Hilton of her 2006 stint.

She added that she was “thankful for the job, but not how it made me feel, which was not smart.”

Clearly any actress who plays her in the future will need to bring intellectual heft to the role: On her podcast, Markle noted she was once a college intern at the US Embassy in Argentina.

Now, as a member of the royal family — who dramatically walked away in 2020 — she’s on the other side of that divide, having retired from acting and becoming a public figure. 

“It’s weird. You have to compartmentalize,” she told Variety. “Anyone talking about me or casting an actor to play me, that will be a caricature of me that has been created for a business that makes people a lot of money. Once you can separate that out, it’s much easier to go: ‘OK. That actually has nothing to do with me’ … It’s a hard lesson to come to grips with.”

Markle, who recently had a Netflix docuseries reportedly postponed after backlash relating to “The Crown,” has already been depicted on-screen by several actresses, including Parisa Fitz-Henley (in Lifetime’s 2019 movie “Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal”) and Sydney Morton (in Lifetime’s 2021 movie, “Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace”). 

Nobody will play Markle in “The Crown,” however, since that series will end with six seasons, and creator Peter Morgan has previously stated, “I’m much more comfortable writing about things that happened at least 20 years ago.”