Whoopi Goldberg accuses Meghan Markle of making ‘other women feel bad’ when they’re ‘just trying to make a living’ after her ‘bimbo’ comments on being a Deal or No Deal ‘briefcase girl’
Whoopi Goldberg has blasted Meghan Markle for ‘making other women feel bad’ after the royal claimed her time as a ‘briefcase girl’ on Deal or No Deal made her feel like a bimbo.
Goldberg – famed for her liberal views – delivered the hammer-blow on Wednesday’s episode of The View, saying: ‘My point is, if you see it and that’s how you feel, just maybe you don’t want to make the other women feel bad because maybe they’re not — you know, maybe they’re trying to make a living too.’
She continued: ‘The objectification might be coming from you and how you felt about how these women were being portrayed,’ she said.
‘That’s what you have to change because we’re performers. When you’re a performer, you take the gig… sometimes, you’re in a bozo suit, sometimes you got a big nose, and this is just the way it is.’
Whoopi also implied the Duchess of Sussex was taking the matter altogether too seriously, telling The View panel: ‘I just want to say that on that show, you basically had a suitcase.
‘And (the contestants) want to know, is this the deal you want or is this not the deal you want? I don’t know that the people who were sitting there are thinking bout you like that. They’re thinking, I want the money.’
Whoopi’s views triggered global surprise, given she tends to have sympathy for the same liberal and right-on causes as Meghan does.
Recently, she instructed the Royal Family to apologize for its colonial past including ‘running roughshod over India,’ making her rebuttal to Markle’s comments especially stark.
Speaking on the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast, Meghan told guest Paris Hilton: ‘I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach, knowing that 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 episode was titled ‘Bimbo,’ and was intended to look at unfair labels given to women.
Meghan was referring to her stint on Deal or No Deal between 2006 and 2007. The gameshow, hosted by Howie Mandel, sees contestants open a series of briefcases containing a potential cash prize. Meghan was one of the identically-dressed women tasked with opening those briefcases.
Her remarks were also condemned by talk show host Megyn Kelly, who claims the duchess ‘knew exactly what she was getting herself into’ on Deal or No Deal, and that the part satisfied Meghan’s alleged craving for attention.
Speaking on her SiriusXM show Wednesday, Kelly said: ‘The laughable notion that she did not know what she was getting herself into when she took a job in which one’s only mission is to look tan, wear false eyelashes and wear a skimpy shiny dress while opening a suitcase,.
‘She knew exactly what she was getting herself into on that job and it was no surprise to her that they wanted her to look as good as possible while doing it.
‘What she’s trying to con us on now is whether she enjoyed it. She loved every minute of it. She wanted to be objectified.
‘She wanted the adulation just like she still wants it to this day.’
The Archetypes episode released on Tuesday was followed by the publication of a bombshell interview with Variety which had been re-recorded after the Queen’s death to allow her to pay tribute to Her Majesty.
The mother-of-two and former actress said that while she was ‘grateful’ the job helped pay the bills, she felt she was only valued for her ‘beauty’, not her ‘brains’.
Markle’s comments also prompted one of her former Deal or No Deal co-stars to say the program had provided ‘so many opportunities’ for them and that models who opened briefcases on the show were not chosen just because of their looks.
Kelly is notably no fan of Markle’s and added further added to the discourse Wednesday on an episode of Paul Murray Live that she has grown weary of what she believes is Markle’s ‘deceptive nature’ and ‘abject dishonesty.’
‘She does this podcast with Paris Hilton on how “oh we’ve been labelled bimbos, it’s so wrong”, meanwhile Paris Hilton made millions of dollars off of that label, leaned into robustly, which she discusses in the podcast.
‘But Meghan Markle won’t own it. Meghan Markle wants to complaint about being objectified when she was suitcase girl number 24.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ she said.
Goldberg, in unlikely agreement with Kelly, concurred that the Duchess of Sussex may have been reacting to the way she felt about being on the show, and that part of being a performer is doing your job in costumes with which you’re not always comfortable.
Her intervention came on the same day it was revealed Meghan re-recorded her tell-all interview with Variety after the Queen died so she could make a tribute.
The Duchess of Sussex’s interview and photoshoot with the US publication had been completed eight days before Her Majesty died on September 8. But it was redone after she returned from the Queen’s funeral.
Variety writer Matt Donnelly revealed: ‘She worries that any comments about the Queen or her in-laws will be “a distraction” from continued mourning, but presses on to celebrate the icon’.
In the interview she went on to say she was ‘done’ with acting but would not stop her children pursuing it as a career.
She also appeared to distance herself from the Netflix docu-series about her and Prince Harry that is set to be released and was candid about her home life – including her and her husband’s wind-down routine and her son’s love for British children’s television show Octonauts.
But she does not talk about her time on Deal or No Deal in the Variety interview.
Meghan, who appeared on 34 episodes of the show’s second season, revealed she was forced to get regular spray tans and wear a padded bra.
She said her time on the show made her feel ‘not smart’ as it was all about ‘looks’.
In the latest podcast episode, which featured Paris Hilton as a guest star, the royal said she was grateful for the money she earned on Deal or No Deal as she tried to succeed as an actress – calling it ‘a short stint’ to pay the bills.
But she added: ‘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 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. That’s how it felt for me at the time, being reduced to this specific archetype, the word bimbo.’
She added that she wanted her one-year-old daughter, Lilibet, to be valued first for her mind, rather than her ‘beauty’, unlike she was on the show.
‘I want our daughter to aspire to be slightly higher,’ she stated. ‘Yeah, I want my Lili to want to be educated and want to be smart and to pride herself on those things.’
The actress claimed that she and the other women on the show were forced to ‘line up’ for various beauty treatments including ‘padding in their bras,’ attaching fake eyelashes, and ‘putting in’ hair extensions.
‘We were even given spray-tan vouchers each week because there was a very cookie cutter idea, of precisely what we should look like,’ she added. ‘It was solely about our beauty.’
The former Suits star also said that a woman ‘in charge’ of the show would tell her to ‘suck it in’ before filming, presumably an order to hold in her stomach on camera.
But Claudia Jordan, who appeared alongside Meghan, 41, on the NBC game show – posted a furious rant about the duchess on Instagram on Tuesday, hitting out at claims she made about the show.
Claudia, who starred in Deal or No Deal for four seasons from 2005 to 2009, slammed Meghan for her comments on her Archetypes podcast, saying the show ‘never treated them like bimbos’ and it helped provide ‘so many opportunities’.
‘For clarity – yes getting a modelling gig on a game show isn’t necessarily about your intellect, but every show the executive producers picked five models with the most outgoing and fun personalities to place mics on, who they knew would engage with the contestants,’ she wrote.
‘And Deal or No Deal never treated us like bimbos. We got so many opportunities because of that show.’
The reality star added that it’s the ‘kind of opportunity’ that ‘is what you make it’. She said: ‘If you just show up and don’t engage – then you’ll just get your check and not get much out of it.
‘But if you show up and seize your moments, there’s no limits to what you can do with the opportunity.’
Claudia explained that she ‘enjoyed’ working on Deal or No Deal, and claimed it helped launch a major career for her.
Variety reveals that Meghan did the bombshell interview TWICE after the Queen died
Variety writer Matt Donnelly revealed that the Queen’s death meant Meghan Markle agreed to do an interview twice to reflect it.
Describing the first sit-down, he said Meghan ‘shook the hand of every crew member, stylist and photographer ’s assistant’ before taking part in the photoshoot likely to be around September 1.
But he wrote: ‘Nearly three weeks before press time, though — eight days after she stopped the birthday revelers in their tracks at the San Ysidro Ranch — the prince’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died at her Scottish estate Balmoral. The world watched and mourned as the longest-reigning monarch in British history was laid to rest and celebrated for what Meghan says was the “shining example” of female leadership.
‘Following the official period of mourning, Meghan agrees to sit again for a lengthy discussion about her road to the present. She worries that any comments about the queen or her in-laws will be “a distraction” from continued mourning, but presses on to celebrate the icon.’
‘It was a step on the ladder I’ve been ascending on for 25 years that paid all my bills, put me in front of 13million people a night, and led to me getting on Celebrity Apprentice, Celebrity Apprentice All Stars, a breast cancer awareness campaign, guest hosting Extra, getting into People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful issue, and so much more,’ she continued.
‘It also led to me co-hosting the 2009 Miss Universe pageant with @BillyBush in front of half a billion people. Not to shabby for a “bimbo”.’
While the 49-year-old wanted her followers to know that she was not ‘attacking’ Meghan, she said it was important for her to defend the show, and all of the people who worked so hard to make it a success.
‘Lord knows I’ve been defending this woman in the media for years,’ she explained. ‘And I still will, but I just didn’t want any misunderstanding about the climate and environment on the Deal or No Deal set.
‘And I’m especially protective of [host] Howie Mandel, who was nothing but kind and respectful to all 26 of us.’
In her Variety interview, Meghan praised Her Majesty’s ‘warmth’ and ‘leadership’ after she passed away on September 8 but did not speak about other members of the Royal Family, including her ‘in-laws’ to avoid any ‘distraction’ from mourning her death.
The feature headlined ‘Meghan Markle Lets Her Guard Down’ said the Duchess of Sussex agreed to ‘sit again’ when she returned to California after Her Majesty’s funeral because the glitzy photoshoot and video chat was first completed eight days before she passed away.
The interview revealed Meghan ‘stopped birthday revellers in their tracks’ when she arrived at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara just before she flew to London with Harry for their pseudo-royal tour visiting pet projects in the UK and launching the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf.
But within 24 hours of the Germany trip Her Majesty had died and Mr Donnelly revealed the duchess then agreed to ‘sit again for a lengthy discussion about her road to the present’.
After praising the Queen as ‘the matriarch of the family’, she became ‘animated talking about the warmth and support she received from the thousands of citizens she interacted with during her time in the UK’, her two children as well as her deals with Spotify and Netflix, the article says.
But Meghan did still get in a perceived dig at the royals by hinting that her death and its fallout had been ‘complicated’ for Prince Harry, but added he remains ‘ever-optimistic’ and preferred to remember that she was now reunited with her beloved husband Prince Philip.
Variety does not go into detail about what, if anything, Meghan said about the Royal Family before the Queen died.
But her decision to sit down again will lead to speculation about what the first interview contains, especially as it was around the time when she told The Cut magazine that Harry had said he had ‘lost his dad’.
The Duchess of Sussex spoke about a range of issues including ‘misconceptions’ about her since she married her husband in 2018 – especially after the Oprah interview – and claiming their ‘love story’ had inspired the world because ‘people love love’.
And opening up for the first time about how she felt after the interview where the Sussexes accused the Royal Family of racism, she said her California friends had gathered around her to support her.
She said: ‘It’s like they knew exactly what I needed to feel in that moment. It meant, and still means, so very much to me. The power of sisterhood and female support can never be underestimated.’
But she said the public has ‘misconceptions’ about her, adding: ‘I think that what happens, looking in from the outside, when there is this much noise, is that you become dehumanised’.
She she hopes her Archetypes podcast will help people see her as a ‘real person’.
