To many, Meghan Markle lives what could be described as the epitome of a luxury lifestyle in her $14.65 million Montecito mansion—but she has now revealed that her life looked very different just a few years ago, when she was a struggling actress without a steady job and desperately trying to make ends meet.
Meghan, 43, looked back on this time in her life in a new episode of her podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder,” recalling a time when her lifestyle was vastly different from the one she enjoys today.
Speaking to her former stylist Cassandra Morales Thurswell, who went on to found a popular haircare brand, the Duchess of Sussex recalled a rental property she lived in before she landed the role of Rachel Zane on the hit legal drama “Suits.”
At the time, Markle, who recently celebrated her seventh wedding anniversary with Prince Harry, had secured only a few minor roles in TV and film, but began working with Thurswell to ramp up her audition wardrobe.
Sadly for Markle, her rental property was not particularly well suited to someone aiming to expand their clothing collection.
“You come into my little house that I was renting and I remember my closet, do you remember?” she asked Thurswell. “The closet door was within the bathroom?”
Her stylist remembered the home a little more fondly, joking: “Meghan, we’ll call it a bungalow, we’ll be chic.”
Laughing, Markle conceded that “it was a bungalow,” but went on to note that the layout of the tiny property still didn’t afford her much space for storage.
“You had to walk through my bedroom, past my bed, past the shower and the sink, which were right there, and the toilet, and then right across from that was the door that opened into my very small closet,” she went on.
In addition to not having space to store an extravagant array of clothing, Markle confessed that she also didn’t have the budget “pre-‘Suits,'” explaining that she worked with Thurswell to figure out a small number of “staples” that she could rely on without breaking the bank.
“This is pre-‘Suits’ for me, this is really early days when I was auditioning,” she explained. “And I remember literally going through things, and you think, ‘OK, here are a couple staples that you need.’
That’s not to say that Markle didn’t make the occasional splurge—one of which, she revealed, ended up being something of a lucky charm for her.
Thurswell “called me and said, ‘I just found the best pair of black patent leather [Christian] Louboutin wedge flats. They’re $200,'” Markle recalled. “I remember going, ‘That’s as much as I pay.’ … And [Thurswell says], ‘I promise you, you are going to wear [them].’
“Do you know what’s so funny? Of course, I wore those shoes until the red wore out. I wore those shoes on my final audition for ‘Suits’ when I booked the part.”
Markle began working on “Suits” in 2011, the same year that she married her first husband, Trevor Engelson. However, in the wake of her 2018 marriage to Harry, she quit her professional acting career and began focusing full time on her role as a senior working member of the royal family.
Then, in 2020, she and Harry made the shocking decision to step down from their official royal positions in order to relocate to California with their son, Archie.
Although they initially lived in a property owned by movie director Tyler Perry, the couple later snapped up their sprawling Montecito estate, which has served as their primary residence ever since.
The luxurious dwelling is a far cry from the “little house” that Markle resided in before landing her role on “Suits.” It boasts nine bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, and 7.4 acres of land, which the Duchess of Sussex regularly showcases on her Instagram account.
Charlie Lankston is the executive editor at Realtor.com. She previously worked at DailyMail.com as the associate editor covering news, celebrities, travel, lifestyle, and the British royals. In 2019, she was part of the DailyMailTV team that won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment News Program. Charlie earned a B.A. in English literature and theatre studies from the University of Warwick and an M.A. in newspaper journalism from City University in London. Originally from London, she has been based in New York City for 10 years.
