Whether you love her or hate her, nobody has transformed their lives and brand quite as much as Meghan Markle. These days, she’s a duchess who is married to a beautiful prince. Before that, she was best-known as an actress working on the beloved legal drama Suits.
What about before that, though? Well, that was when Meghan Markle was best known (if she was known at all) as one of the “briefcase girls” on Howie Mandel’s show Deal or No Deal. Understandably, Meghan has never really said much about her game show days.
However, we couldn’t help but wonder: what does Howie Mandel think about Meghan and her time on the show? We found out, and the answer is guaranteed to surprise you!
Howie Mandel’s weird and wonderful career
While he’s no Meghan Markle, Howie Mandel has transformed his career and his brand even more than she has. Back in the day, Mandel was mostly known for standup comedy. However, he parlayed that into various movie and TV show deals, lending his voice to movies like Gremlins and voicing the main character on the cherished TV cartoon Bobby’s World.
Eventually, Mandel cracked the code: the real money for him was going to be working in different TV game shows. These days, he is probably best known for appearing on shows like America’s Got Talent. However, his most famous (or should that be infamous?) show will always be Deal or No Deal.
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Meghan’s time on ‘Deal or No Deal’
One reason Meghan probably doesn’t like to talk about her time on the show is that it was a bit demeaning. If you don’t already know, the premise of the show involved contestants opening mystery briefcases full of dollar amounts. The amounts represented how much the player could potentially win, but they had to choose between taking that amount or gambling by choosing a new briefcase.
All of these briefcases were held by beautiful women, and that included Meghan Markle. The show made no effort to disguise that the ladies were chosen to be eye candy. Still, the future Duchess managed to appear on 34 episodes of the show, though her time as a briefcase girl only ran from 2006-2007.
When Meghan does talk about her time on the show, she has very few positive things to say. She previously told Esquire, “I would put that in the category of things I was doing while I was auditioning to try to make ends meet.” And while the show helped her “understand what I would rather be doing,” she has no positive memories about standing around in “terribly uncomfortably and inexpensive five-inch heels”
Why did Meghan leave ‘Deal or No Deal’?
True to her word, Meghan left the show after about a year to focus more on acting jobs. This eventually landed her the role on Suits that arguably propelled her to fame and may have helped her catch the eye of a certain charming prince.
Deal or No Deal may have helped Meghan make ends meet, as she has previously said. But it seems she realized that what she was doing on the show was model work at best: stand there, smile, and try to look pretty. She wanted to be known as an actor, and that meant finding TV shows where she would actually be able to speak and do something other than hold a shiny briefcase.
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Howie Mandel’s shocking admission about Meghan
For many years, Howie Mandel has been as tight-lipped about Meghan as she was about her time on his show. Recently, though, Mandel broke his silence to offer up something surprising about Meghan’s time on Deal or No Deal.
As Newsweek reports, Mandel was recently being interviewed by Piers Morgan. When the topic of Meghan came up, Mandel said, “I’m going to be totally honest with you. I have absolutely no memory of her. I did not remember until she was dating Harry and people started saying, ‘What can you tell us about Meghan?’ and I would say, ‘Who’s Meghan?’ I didn’t know — I didn’t remember.” He then added that “I did not know her and I don’t remember her to this day. But maybe that’s the beauty of it.”
It really is a shocking answer. However, considering how much Piers Morgan openly hates Meghan, it’s probably a good thing Mandel gave a neutral answer that wouldn’t set Morgan off.
Howie’s earlier statement: joke or contradiction?
We were so shocked at Mandel’s claim that we had to investigate it a bit. As it turns out, Mandel had previously commented on Meghan’s Deal or No Deal time during a Television Critics Association press tour in 2018.
According to Fox News, Mandel made a quick joke about Meghan’s time on the show. “She was slightly duchessy,” he said, getting a round of laughs from the room.
It’s possible and even likely that this was meant only as a joke. You can even envision it as a low-hanging fruit punchline: someone asks what the duchess was like and Mandel says that she was “slightly duchessy.” If this was meant as a real criticism of Meghan acting royal on the show, though, then this incident may contradict Mandel’s recent claim that he doesn’t remember her at all.
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How other briefcase girls felt about Meghan
Another briefcase girl (or “briefcase beauty” as she preferred to be called) spoke up about Meghan’s time on Deal or No Deal. And her memories of Meghan may confirm why Mandel has no memories about Meghan.
Speaking with Gold Coast Bulletin, Lisa Gleave offered her memories of Meghan. She said she remembered Meghan as “quiet but very sweet.” And she remembers Meghan “being very focused on her acting career and her role as a briefcase beauty… was just a stepping stone in her career.”
So if Meghan was really quiet and looking to get out of the show as soon as possible for a real acting gig, it’s not that surprising if Howie Mandel has no real memories of her!