I Don’t Know Her: Comic Howie Mandel Struggles to Remember Meghan Markle From Her Days on 'Deal or No Deal'
Comic Howie Mandel asked if Meghan Markle was 'a Duchess,' as he fails to remember working with her on 'Deal or No Deal.'
Even though it has been 17 years since they worked together on Deal or No Deal, the game show's host, Howie Mandel, fails to remember working with Meghan Markle.
"To be honest, when she became the duchess or whatever — is she a duchess? When I heard that she was on Deal or No Deal, I didn’t remember her," Mandel revealed on the latest installment of "The Good Guys" podcast.
When asked if they still kept in touch, the comic shared: "In touch, you mean by text or email? No. I have a picture of her in my office. She’s one of the girls standing behind me. But, I don’t remember a lot of them. You know, Chrissy Teigen was also a Deal or No Deal model."
The series ran on NBC from 2005-2009, with Meghan appearing as "briefcase girl 24" in the 2006-2007 season. This was during the former actress' phase of "trying to break into Hollywood, and four years before she landed a supporting role on Suits.
Although Mandel struggled to remember her, the Duchess of Sussex had a lot to say about her time on the game show during a 2022 episode of her dumped podcast, "Archetypes."
Speaking to guest Paris Hilton, Meghan felt how she frequently felt "objectified" on the show.
"I didn’t like feeling forced to be all looks and little substance," she shared. Prince Harry's spouse then revealed how she would think about her time in college as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina as she performed the work she was hired to do.
"Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite," she told Hilton. "There was a very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty, and not necessarily about brains."
Others who worked on the series took offense to some of the Duchess' recollections and experiences on the show, such as when she said an executive used to allegedly scream at her to "suck it in," referring to her stomach.
Another former model on the show, Donna Feldman, disagreed with Meghan's assessment of the program. "You know what you’re signing up for when you’re hired as a 'briefcase beauty,'" she told an outlet. "I have gotten opportunities in my career based off the way I look, but it’s my brains, personality, and work ethic that help seal the deal [and] get me the job, and get clients to continue to hire me on a regular basis."
Feldman concluded: "It's up to a woman to decide what experience will empower her or use it as an excuse to seek attention."
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The New York Post reported on Mandel and Feldman's comments.
