Shortly after her engagement announcement to Prince Harry, the Meghan Markle interview vault was opened. Old clips and videos—inspiring ones at that—resurfaced, reminding us of how wonderful, motivational, and downright witty this celebrity is. Yet another Markle moment has popped up on our feeds, and it’s so empowering and relatable that you’ll probably start tearing up. If you’re at your desk, you better grab some tissues.
For the 12th issue of Darling, Markle penned a personal essay that revealed a moment that completely changed her life—the wake-up call in her early 20s that reminded her that she was “enough.”
She writes that she was struggling to find her value “in an industry that judges you on everything that you’re not versus everything that you are.” She was on an audition when the casting director April Webster interrupted her to give her a piece of life advice that changed everything. “I had never met her before, and at my very first audition for her, she stopped me mid-scene and said so simply, ‘You need to know that you’re enough.'”
And it all hit her.
“I was breathless. No one had ever seen it, or perhaps no one had ever called me out, but there in that small box of a room in Burbank, this woman I had never met saw me. My gut reaction was to smile. To smile hard. Maybe that would keep the tears tucked behind my draping eyes. It wouldn’t have mattered if I cried, because she saw me. She saw all that self-doubt beaming through the self-tanner and excessive blush. ‘You need to know that you’re enough,’ she said. ‘Less makeup, more Meghan.’ She went on to say that I was like a ‘shrinking violet,’ wilted joy and energy and exuberance behind this shroud of insecurity. You couldn’t pay for a therapy session this good. And that moment, for me, was a wake-up call.”
She goes on to explain how she wrote about this experience on her recently retired website The Tig, and how she used the platform for these inspirational stories. If this isn’t a reminder that celebrities are just like us—dealing with the struggle of self-acceptance, self-confidence, and security, we’re not sure what is.
