Had Meghan Markle’s acting career hit a dead end before she married Prince Harry? When she was written out of her big-break TV show Suits in 2017 she had no job offers for major roles to replace it – causing her income to ‘plummet’, author claims

Like many young women living in Los Angeles, Meghan Markle was always trying to get her big break and make it as a famous actress.

But like the vast majority of the thousands of wannabe starlets, she found the process far more difficult than first expected.

Despite going to private schools just around the corner from the Hollywood Walk of Fame and studying theatre at Northwestern University, the budding actress struggled.

In interviews since she has spoken about how she would drive a ‘beat up, hand-me-down Ford Explorer Sport’ from audition to audition for years trying desperately to get that one part that would make her a star.

But it was a hard road, especially when her car doors jammed shut, causing her to spend months climbing through the boot and clambering over the seats to the steering wheel because she couldn’t afford to get it fixed.

And the roles she managed to wrangle were not the most prestigious, as she often found herself trapped in characters catering to the male gaze.

She featured as a ‘briefcase girl’ on Deal Or No Deal, and in a CBS crime procedural she managed to get a few lines in while wearing a sexy maids outfit, as well as snagging the role of ‘Hot Girl’ in an Ashton Kutcher movie.

But after years of trying, she did eventually land her big break by securing the role of earnest paralegal Rachel Zane in the legal drama Suits in 2010.

Meghan Markle at Wimbledon in the summer of 2016. She would go on her first date with Prince Harry shortly after

Meghan played paralegal Rachel Zane in Suits (pictured alongside co-star Patrick J. Adams), which premiered in 2011 and came to an end in 2019, but she left in 2017 after her romance with Prince Harry took off

Meghan Markle getting emotional for her role of Rachel Zane on season six

It would mean packing up and moving to Toronto, which would be doubling as New York  because it was far cheaper to film in. Most importantly, however, it would pay her a cool $50,000 per episode.

In 2015 she wrote in a blog post about how the role changed her life forever, gushing: ‘I remember that day like it was yesterday. My cheeks still hurt from how hard I smiled.’ 

But as her relationship with Harry took off and went public towards the end of 2016, her role in Suits became precarious. 

Acclaimed biographer Tom Bower wrote in his 2022 book Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors that the writer Aaron Korsh planned to write her out at the end of the 2017 season.

Considering her emerging new life as a member of the Royal Family and the need to refresh the series, he planned on having Meghan’s character Rachel leave New York.

Bower, who claimed he had conversations with 80 individuals who were personally acquainted with Harry and Meghan, wrote that after her agent Nick Collins heard the news he was ‘not encouraging’.

He wrote: ‘No film producer was offering her any major roles and no serious Hollywood director spoke about featuring Meghan in his movie or TV series. Just as she feared, her acting career was stymied. Her income after 2017 would plummet.’

Tina Brown, another high-profile royal author who wrote about Meghan in her 2022 book The Palace Papers, also claimed life after Suits would be difficult for her.

Biographer Tom Bower wrote in his 2022 book Revenge that Suits writer Aaron Korsh planned to write Meghan out at the end of the 2017 season

It was on a trip to London in the summer of 2016 when Meghan was introduced to Prince Harry after she met his mutual friend Violet von Westenholtz at Wimbledon (pictured)

Suits was regarded as Meghan’s big break and told the story of a set of gifted lawyers in New York 

Meghan chatting with Suits writer Aaron Korsh who would go on to write her out of the show

While starring in Suits, Meghan played paralegal Rachel Zane and was the love interest of starring lawyer Mike Ross (played by Patrick J. Adams)

She wrote: ‘The film roles she managed to snag between seasons were a creative sinkhole, indicative of the crapshoot that awaited her after Suits. 

‘She played an LA party girl in the unreviewed low-budget rom-com Random Encounters; a lovelorn journalist in the Hallmark TV movie When Sparks Fly, which earned 12 per cent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes; and the girlfriend of a reluctant criminal in Anti-Social, a crime drama in which the car heists were deemed to have “all the energy of a dead battery”.’

Bower also said in an interview with TalkTV: ‘The problem is, she isn’t a great actress.’

Meanwhile Meghan was also forced to close down another of her streams of income in April 2017 after a Palace official cautioned her that her blog The Tig was not suitable for someone living in Kensington Palace.

She closed the blog, which had been a long-term source of free clothes and makeup, with a heartfelt post which read: ‘Above all, don’t ever forget your worth. As I’ve told you time and time again, you, my sweet friend, you are enough.’ 

When she met Prince Harry on a trip to London in the summer of 2016 through their mutual friend Violet von Westenholtz , things quickly grew serious. 

And according to the Suits writer Korsh, the developing relationship caused him to start planning Meghan’s departure from the show well in advance.

Meghan featured on the cast of Suits for seven years, before leaving at the end of 2017

The cast of Suits in 2014 (L2R): Chris McCumber (President of USA Network), Patrick J. Adams,  Gabriel Macht, Sarah Rafferty, Meghan Markle, Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman, Jackie De Crinis (Executive Vice President of Original Programming) and writer Aaron Korsh

The cast of Suits in 2016 (L2R): Gene Klein, Gina Torres, Patrick J. Adams, Sarah Rafferty, Aaron Korsh, Rick Hoffman, Meghan Markle, Gabriel Macht, David Bartis

Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane on her final seventh season, which was filmed in 2017

He told BBC Radio 4 in November 2017 that although Meghan had not yet announced an engagement or plans to leave the show, he had written her out a year ago.

Korsh said he ‘took a gamble’ on Meghan’s relationship with Prince Harry working out and began to write her out gradually instead of having them ‘get hit by a bus or something’.

However, beneath the surface, Meghan’s juggling her role as Rachel on Suits along with the real-life role of Duchess-to-be had been difficult for the writers.

In his book, Bower wrote: ‘Fearing the worst, from bitter experience, the Palace stepped in to control Meghan’s life. Aaron Korsh was told to submit all future Suits scripts to Nick Collins, Meghan’s agent.’

According to him: ‘Scripts were thereafter forwarded to Kensington Palace for approval. Orders for changes of words were sent back from London to Los Angeles.’ 

Harry admitted in his memoir Spare: ‘The show writers were frustrated, because they were often advised by the Palace comms team to change lines of dialogue, what her character would do, how she would act.’

In an August 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Korsh spoke about the difficulties of navigating rules from the royals while Meghan was a cast member. 

Suits creator Aaron Korsh (pictured) has returned to develop a spin-off show following Suits’ success

Many of the original Suits stars reunited at the Golden Globes earlier in January, including Patrick J. Adams, Gina Torres, Sarah Rafferty, and Gabriel Macht 

Meghan’s co-stars Sarah Rafferty, Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman on the set of Suits

He said: ‘[The royal family] weighed in on some stuff. Not many things, by the way … it was a little irritating.

‘They didn’t want to put the word ‘poppycock’ in her mouth,’ the show’s creator said. 

Korsh believed it was because of the last part of that word could have been spliced and used by internet trolls. ‘So, we had to change it to ‘bulls**t’ instead of ‘poppycock’, he said. 

It is alleged that the Palace commanded that there would be no photographs taken of Meghan wearing a wedding dress, and she was required to sport a jacket over the dress when not filming.

But eventually Meghan’s 108 episode career on Suits did end in the final episode of the seventh season titled ‘Good-Bye’, in which she goes off into the sunset to set up her own law firm in Seattle to take plucky class action cases against corporations. 

Meghan spoke of Suits again in her and Harry’s famous engagement interview in November 2017 where she said: I’ve been working on my show [for] seven years, we were so fortunate to have that longevity, and I feel like I checked that box and am very proud of the work I’ve done there.’

Although it was filmed the previous year, Meghan’s final episode was not aired until April 25, 2018, just one month before she walked down the aisle to marry Harry.

The show continued on for two more seasons before it eventually wrapped in 2019.

But eventually Meghan’s 108 episode career on Suits did end in the final episode of the seventh season titled ‘Good-Bye’, in which she married her love interest Mike Ross

Patrick J. Adams as Mike Ross dancing with Meghan’s Rachel Zane on her final episode on Suits

Since moving to California in 2020, Meghan has been seen enjoying herself with her ever-changing list of celebrity friends

But it has had enduring popularity, as in summer 2023 the legal drama unexpectedly became the most streamed show in the US for 12 weeks straight after it was added to Netflix.

Meghan reacted to her show’s resurgence at the end of last year, telling Variety that she had ‘no idea’ what prompted it but added, ‘Good shows are everlasting.’  

‘It’s hard to find a show you can binge-watch that many episodes of these days,’ she continued. ‘So that could have something to do with it.’

The comeback of the show caused the network to produce a spin-off series entitled Suits: LA which will air its first episode in February 2025 with Suits creator Aaron Korsh returning as writer – but Meghan will not return.

Despite the original Suits cast growing close over the years as they worked gruelling hours in Toronto on the show, they now seem distant from Meghan.

Many of the original Suits stars reunited at the Golden Globes earlier in January, including Patrick, Gina Torres, Sarah Rafferty, and Gabriel Macht – but she was conspicuously absent.

Gina, who was once so close to Meghan that she was among the guests at St George’s Chapel in Windsor for the royal wedding in 2018, made a shocking admission about her relationship with the Duchess during the event.

Meghan Markle looked far more celebrity than royal in December when she attended a glitzy showbiz event in Beverly Hills with her friend Tyler Perry

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s $14.7million home in Montecito, Santa Barbara, California 

The Duchess’s latest venture is a cooking show on Netflix, With Love, Meghan, promoting friendship and family as well as good food

She admitted ‘we don’t have her number, we just don’t’, adding that the rest of the cast kept in touch via a WhatsApp group.

It seems Meghan used her big break on Suits to become a famous actress, and then a royal, but is now preoccupied with her glamorous life in her $14million mansion in California.

She has been photographed in recent years at a series of glitzy showbiz events in Beverly Hills with her celebrity friends.

But the Duchess shows no sign of wanting to step down from starring on the screen and is launching a TV cooking show on Netflix, With Love, Meghan.

And because it is her own show, unlike Suits, no one will be able to write her out this time.