Meghan Markle says she was ‘reduced to a bimbo’ but wants Lilibet to ‘aspire higher’: Duchess says she quit job as ‘briefcase girl’ on Deal or No Deal because she was valued for ‘beauty not brains’ in latest Archetypes podcast with Paris Hilton.

Meghan Markle has revealed she quit as a Deal or No Deal briefcase girl after 34 episodes because she was ‘objectified’ and forced to have spray tans and wear a padded bra that left her reduced to a ‘bimbo’ – the word at the heart of her latest Spotify podcast released today featuring Paris Hilton.

The Duchess of Sussex said she was grateful for the work and money as she tried to succeed as an actress – but disliked ‘how it made me feel, which was not smart’ because ‘I didn’t like feeling forced to be all looks’.

Speaking on her new Archetypes podcast with Miss Hilton, called Breaking Down the Bimbo, Meghan said she wants her daughter Lilibet to be valued first for her mind, rather than ‘beauty not brains’ as she was on the TV gameshow.

The Duchess, who appeared in Deal or No Deal between 2006 and 2007, calling it ‘a short stint’ to pay the bills, added: ‘I want our daughter to aspire to be slightly higher. Yeah, I want my Lili to want to be educated and want to be smart and to pride herself on those things.’

Meghan appeared on season two of NBC’s Deal or No Deal 16 years ago. She first stood beside briefcase number 11 for two episodes, then moved to number 24. She left the show midway through the season.

She said: ‘I ended up quitting the show. I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage. I didn’t like feeling forced to be all looks. And little substance.

‘And that’s how it felt for me at the time being reduced to this specific archetype, the word bimbo.’

The California-based royal revealed that she and the other women on the show were forced to ‘line up’ for various beauty treatments including ‘padding in your bra’, to attach fake eyelashes and ‘put in’ hair extensions.

She said: ‘We were even given spray-tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie cutter idea, of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about our beauty’.

Meghan added that a woman ‘in charge’ of the show would tell her to ‘suck it in’ before filming began, presumably an order to suck in her stomach on camera.

It came in the sixth episode of her Archetypes podcast for Spotify, which has featured her speaking to other famous women, including her friends Serena Williams, Mariah Carey and Margaret Cho where they ‘investigate, dissect, and subvert the labels that try to hold women back’.

Meghan and Prince Harry have signed a three-year podcast deal with the streaming giant for an estimated $15million to $18million. They also have a Netflix deal worth an estimated $100million but their upcoming and controversial fly-on-the-wall documentary series is yet to have a release date amid claims the couple are ‘trying to tone down’ its content about the Royal Family.

The latest podcast episode saw her come face-to-face with socialite Miss Hilton and discuss her rise to fame as a reality TV star in the 90s.

Meghan Markle today opened up on being a Deal or No Deal briefcase girl and revealed she quit, claiming she felt ‘objectified’ and like a ‘bimbo’

Meghan appeared on Season two of NBC’s Deal or No Deal 16 years ago. She first stood beside briefcase number 11 for two episodes, then moved to number 24. The royal claimed that the briefcase girls had to go to beauty stations, including one for padding her bra and there were spray tan vouchers. Meghan said that she wants her own daughter Lilibet to be valued first for her brain rather than her beauty or her body

The Duchess of Sussex was speaking on her new Archetypes podcast with Paris Hilton, called ‘Breaking Down the Bimbo’

Meghan Markle said she was ‘thankful’ to work on Deal or No Deal as a suitcase girl – but was made to feel ‘not smart’.

The Duchess of Sussex said she ‘was flipping through the channels on TV – this by the way is a rarity when you have two children under the age of four – but I saw an episode of a game show called Deal or No Deal. This brought back a lot of memories’.

She went on: ‘I had studied acting in college at Northwestern University and like a lot of the other women standing on stage with me acting was what I was pursuing.

‘While Deal or No Deal wasn’t about acting, I was really grateful as an auditioning actress to have a job that could pay my bills. I had income, I was part of the Union, I had health insurance, it was great.’

But she said she disliked feeling ‘forced to be all looks and little substance’ during her stint.

She said: ‘There were times when I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the US Embassy in Argentina, Buenos Aires, and being in the motorcade with the secretary of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain.

‘I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there and I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach. Like I said, I was thankful for the job but not for how it made me feel, which was not smart.’

Before the interview with Miss Hilton, 41, began Meghan, also 41, told her audience that she was anxious ahead of the recording, saying: ‘I’ve been the most nervous about this one.’

The frank episode saw Meghan discuss the labels of ‘Bimbo’ and ‘Dumb Blonde’, exploring why ‘brains and beauty in a woman have been historically pitted against each other’.

Meghan also admitted she ‘judged’ Miss Hilton before the interview, telling listeners: ‘I’m embarrassed to admit it, I had a judgment about Paris. And I don’t like having judgment, doesn’t feel good.

‘But I had to be real about that because when I grew up, she was beautiful, rich and famous. What could possibly be wrong with her life?’

Miss Hilton responded by saying she was also hesitant about an audience with the Duchess of Sussex ‘because I’m just such a shy person and we haven’t met before’.

The Duchess of Sussex appeared on Deal or No Deal before her breakthrough on the hit show Suits.

She said at the start of her podcast: ‘I was really grateful as an auditioning actress to have a job. That could pay my bills. I had income, I was part of the Union, I had health insurance, it was great’.

But Meghan said that she would daydream about not being appreciated for her brain or education.

She said: ‘There were times when I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the US Embassy in Argentina, Buenos Aires, and being in the motorcade with the secretary of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain.

‘Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite. I mean, you have to imagine, just to paint the picture for you, that before the tapings of the show, all the girls, we would line up.

‘And there were different stations for having your lashes, put on, or your extensions, put in, or the padding in your bra.

‘We were even given spray-tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie-cutter idea, of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty and not necessarily about brains.’

Meghan’s views on Deal or No Deal then cut to a clip of New Yorker journalist Clare Malone, who says bimbo is ‘a word that is used to cut down a beautiful woman to kind of say well she’s beautiful, but maybe she’s slutty or maybe she’s silly or stupid’.

In last week’s episode Meghan claimed she had been branded ‘crazy’ and ‘hysterical’, saying such labels were used to silence women.

She said the insults could lead to people being ‘gaslit’ into thinking they were ill.

Taking a swipe at films and TV, she attacked the way the words were ‘thrown around casually’, leaving ‘reputations destroyed and careers ruined’.

Meghan didn’t say who had questioned her mental health but said her ‘worst point’ came after she started dating Prince Harry and he arranged a referral for her.

During her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, she confessed to feeling suicidal while working as a frontline member of the Royal Family. Her experience demonstrated the need to be ‘really honest about what it is that you need’, she said.

In a trigger warning at the start of her fifth podcast episode last week, called The Decoding Of Crazy, the duchess advised listeners to tune out if the subject matter was ‘too heavy’.

She added: ‘Raise your hand if you’ve ever been called crazy or hysterical or what about nuts? Insane, out of your mind, completely irrational. OK, you get the point.

‘Now, if we were all in the same room and could see each other, I think it would be pretty easy to see just how many of us have our hands up.

‘By the way, me too. And it’s no wonder when you consider just how prevalent these labels are in our culture.’

The Duchess of Sussex released the latest episode of her Spotify Archetypes podcast, ‘Breaking Down The Bimbo’, today – but admitted she was nervous about interviewing Paris Hilton because she’d ‘had a judgment’ about the US socialite. Meghan, 41, said she grew up thinking ‘What could possibly be wrong with her life?’ because Hilton, also 41, was ‘beautiful, rich and famous’

Hilton shot to fame in the 90s, with socialite pal Nicole Richie in reality TV show The Simple Life. She says she was told to adopt a ‘bimbo’ persona for the programme

Meghan’s Spotify podcast has returned after a brief pause following the death of Prince Harry’s grandmother the Queen

The former Suits star said the damaging depictions of women’s mental states were ‘drilled into us from movies and TV, from friends and family, and even random strangers’.

Several clips were played, including one from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother where the character Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, says: ‘If she’s this crazy, she has to be this hot.’

Conservative philosopher Jordan Peterson was then heard saying: ‘I don’t think that men can control crazy women.’

The stigma around the word crazy had a ‘silencing effect’, particularly for those with real mental health issues, Meghan added. ‘They get scared. They stay quiet, they internalise and they repress for far too long.’

Describing how Harry, 38, found help for her at her lowest ebb, the mother-of-two recalled: ‘My husband had found a referral for me to call.

‘And I called this woman and she didn’t even know I was calling her and she was checking out at the grocery store. I could hear the little beep, beep … she could hear the dire state that I was in.

‘But I think it’s for all of us to be really honest about what it is that you need and to not be afraid and make peace with that, to ask for it.’

The 55-minute episode, which went on to different topics including successful women being ‘calculating or having some agenda’, had a contribution from US comedian Jenny Slate.

During a discussion on the word hysteria – from the Greek for womb – Miss Slate said: ‘Hysteria, craziness, like it’s a disease of the people with the uteri, like, the people with the emotions.

‘It is a definition created by a man. It is a definition meant to shame and limit a certain type of experience.’