During her years at Immaculate Heart, Meghan threw herself into dramatics more than into anything else. Her ambition, as Nikki has stated, was to be a star. This was an ambition her father shared and fostered. Known at the school as an Emmy award-winning lighting director who was nominated virtually every year, the dramatics department was only too pleased when Meghan delivered him up as the technical director of every production in which she was involved. One cannot help thinking that even at that early age Meghan was learning the benefits of one hand washing the other, of how much of an additional advantage it was when you had something else aside from mere talent to help you along in achieving your ambitions. And of how those ambitions could be further enhanced by the skill of knowledgeable people such as her father.
While Thomas Markle Sr’s technical abilities undoubtedly improved the quality of each production Meghan was in, he also used each opportunity to further enhance his daughter’s knowledge of what would, and would not, work on stage. He taught her all about finding the light, or the importance of light and shade, of where to stand on stage, even what angle to deploy for maximum effect. He would also take an endless stream of photographs of her, so that she could see for herself what he meant when he told her to do this and not do that. This technical knowledge was invaluable, for he was teaching her at the cradle what most actors only learnt when they were approaching the grave after a lifetime of trial and error.
The former child actress Gigi Perreau taught acting at her alma mater as well as helped with the staging of plays and musicals. She remembered that she never had a problem with Meghan, who was ‘spot on, learnt her lines’ and was ‘very dedicated, very focused.’ Because of Meghan’s dedication, she ‘knew she would be something special.’
Meghan, however, wanted to be a star both on stage and off. By the time she was a teenager, she had had enough attention from boys to know that they found her attractive and that she liked them as well. Thereafter, she would be the female lead in many a real-life romance, starting out simply enough with the boys from the masculine counterpart of her school: St. Francis High School in nearby La Cañada Flintridge. Founded by the Capuchin Friars of the Western American Province of Our Lady of Angels in 1946 on lands bought from the Flintridge Country Club, its students interacted with the Immaculate Heart girls on the basis of equality. Like most institutions whose ambition was to turn out a superior form of human being, both schools were eager to restrict the activities of their students so that they focused on what was desirable and life-enhancing, rather than opening them up to undesirable influences. Chief amongst these restrictions was fraternisation with anyone who was not a peer. It was an accepted feature of both schools that their students could mix with each other, but that they should exercise caution with outsiders. There was something old-fashioned about their desire to protect the students against undesirable influences. While this played well in a society like America, where there is frank acknowledgement of the desirability of people of status sticking together as they assist one another on the path to greater success, in Europe such attitudes were already viewed as not only dangerously old-fashioned and damagingly restrictive, but as snobbish. It really was a case of a new society keeping up the lines of demarcation while an older society was intent on bringing them down, at least enough for there to be greater mobility between the classes. This difference in cultural attitudes would prove to have a defining effect upon Meghan and Harry’s relationships not only with each other, but also with everyone else.
In the meantime, the young Meghan availed herself of a series of willing beaux from St. Francis, and at the age of sixteen, narrowed them down to Luis Segura, her first serious boyfriend. A Latino who had a reputation as a natty dresser, they were together for two years. She was friends with the whole Segura family, and was encouraged by all of them to put herself forward as St. Francis’s Homecoming Queen. Although unknown in Britain, in the US Homecoming Queens were and remain big deals in high schools, and Meghan went all out to win, writing an essay on her work at the Hippie Kitchen and charming as many people as possible to vote for her. She won, and, bedecked in a pale blue strapless satin gown and tiara, Queen Meghan was accompanied by a phalanx of courtiers to the ball by Luis’s younger brother Danny, natty in a tuxedo with a wing-collared shirt and a ready-made black bowtie.
Meghan took her success in her stride. Some girls might have changed their demeanour, but she remained the same sweet, charming, accessible but refined girl who was fun to be with and nice to all. According to friends, it was almost as if she was using this success as practice for what was to come, as if it was no big deal, because it was really what she deserved and was entitled to. She intended to be a great star, and this was but the first taste, and therefore of no real significance.
In the 1997 programme notes for Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods, in which Meghan
