If the loss of her closest and oldest friend bothered Meghan, she gave no indication. This was a time of great change for her, and the likelihood is that she was so busy growing into her new life that she barely had time for that alone, much less regrets about those she had left behind or who had dropped her. From January 2010 she had been writing a revealing blog called The Working Actress, about her experiences being unemployed then employed. It was time and emotion consuming. She graphically described the anguish she had suffered as she failed to land parts. ‘When it’s good, it’s fucking awesome. The other 300-plus days of the year, it’s harder than most would think. Humbling. Gruelling. Sometimes mind-numbing. But at the end of the day it’s all worth it. People often describe actors who pop onto the scene as “overnight success stories”. Here’s the reality - it’s more like years of hustle…welcome to the hustle.’
Meghan imparted penetrating insights into her psyche and the effect her years of rejection and occasional dollops of success had had upon her, writing about how she tricked herself via self-hypnosis into believing that she would succeed, endlessly repeating the mantra ‘I’m a booker. I book all the time’ in an attempt to give herself enough courage to audition and face failure again and again. ‘Point is: sometimes when you trick yourself, it actually works. I believed my silly little mantra and well…it came to be.’
During Suits’ first year she continued pouring her heart and soul into the blog, inadvertently giving the reader insight into how success was changing her. In March 2010, before her breakthrough, she confided that ‘I loathe walking the red carpet. It makes me nervous and itchy, and I don’t know which way to look. I just revert to this nerdy child that I once was. I hate it. I get off the carpet and have to shake it off. Sounds dramatic, but it’s really nerve-racking for me.’
Meghan remained an unspoilt hopeful appreciative of a chuckle from Donald Sutherland when her path crossed his during her half minute appearance on the Jennifer Aniston 2011 black comedy Horrible Bosses. But success was having an effect. Although she was by no means a major star once Suits was underway, she was already positioning herself to cope with fame in such a way that Meghan the Individual would not be swamped by the demands of fame. To do so, she had to adopt an attitude of disdain, so she started to denigrate fame and its demands from the lofty height of self-awareness. She wrote, ‘I am part of the horse and pony show this year. The scruffle has already begun with production and PR - the outfit I will wear, the hotel I will stay at, the parties I will attend.’ She also alluded to ‘the first-class flights the studio sends me out on,’ as if she had been brought up in a world of private jets and first class travel was an inconvenience to be decried rather than a luxury she was barely used to. Instead of frankly embracing the whole experience the way she had embraced the pain of failure, she distanced herself from the very thing she had sought all her life by disdaining the perks and demands of success. ‘They roll out the red carpet in a major way because they want me (‘the talent’ as they call us) to show up looking and presenting in the best possible manner. This is the ultimate “dance monkey, dance”. Now let me say this - as much as some people might hear this description and feel nauseated by it (that inner monologue of “but I am an artiste”) I say this to you, dear friend: Get over yourself.’
The difficulty with that admonition was, the audience to whom she was speaking was in reality an audience of one, and her injunction was nothing but one part of herself speaking to another. It was obvious she adored being on the road to fame, and was mesmerised by her new-found success. She had striven for the better part of a decade to get where she was, and who could begrudge her how she felt about her success? ‘This is part of the job, and it’s fucking awesome. It’s fancy and it’s cool, and it’s the business of what it takes to make it in this business.’
However, Meghan’s next statement showed that somewhere in the deep recesses of her being she had not entirely given up on her old dream of being a Broadway star or a serious actress who was way above movie or, God-forbid, TV stardom. ‘If you are pursuing television, then realise that you have already sold out, and take your big fancy pay check to produce your “artiste”-driven plays on hiatus. Because you can now. ‘
She then revealed how she could not help intermingling delight in her good fortune, self-congratulation and disdain as she continued, ‘Because flashing those pearly whites (ahem, veneers) and working the red carpet with your sexy little body (ahem, Spanx) is part of the job description you jumped on board for when you were lucky enough to sign on the dotted line that day you were testing.
‘This is what we call a high-class problem. And compared with the problems of what feels like many moons ago (not having money to fill up my gas tank, Scotch-taping my headshots as CVs because I ran out of staples, crying because I couldn’t get a call back, or even an audition - when I knew in my core that I was the best possible one for the part), I will take this any day.’
As if that had not been revealing enough, she also gave the first hints of the schizophrenic attitude to recognition she would later exhibit once she became truly famous. When the handyman who came to fix her dishwasher recognised her and asked her to pose for a
