Meghan Markle discusses her struggles to excel in Hollywood at the onset of her career following her appearance without makeup in her first-ever podcast interview. Since launching her Lemonada media podcast, the Duchess of Sussex has thrilled her audience with fresh insights into her struggles panning various aspects of her life, from candid health revelations to career exposés. While these revelations have kept viewers glued during each episode, they’ve also offered a fresh look into the life and struggles of the multi-faceted career woman, as she grills her guests for juicy insights into their own struggles as well. This week’s episode of the Lemonada podcast saw Meghan Markle discuss some of her biggest challenges when she first started out in Hollywood, including typecasting and her full face of natural freckles.
During the Tuesday, April 29 episode of her podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, the Suits alum discussed the multiple rejections she suffered before finally snagging her breakthrough role as Rachel Zane.
Markle Reveals How Her Appearance Hindered Her Career
Speaking with It Cosmetics founder Jamie Kern, Meghan Markle explained how she was still a struggling actress and model with dim career prospects back in the noughties when Kern was starting up her beauty business. The 43-year-old explained how, in her case, having freckles was the main deal-breaker preventing her from snagging gigs in the beauty industry, ultimately limiting her modeling prospects. She recalled,
“I remember I could not be submitted for beauty or skincare ads because I had freckles.”
Markle recounted how beauty companies kept saying “no” to her, informing her that she would never work for those ads because “freckles aren’t a sign of beauty.” Aside from dealing with multiple rejections in her modeling career, Meghan Markle also took several hits in her acting pursuits. The mom of two recalled how her biracial identity worked against her in the movie industry, noting,
“I heard no all the time, especially because I wasn’t cookie-cutter for a specific style. And at the start of my auditioning career, you were either the Black girl or the White girl or the Latina girl or the like, everything was typecast.”
Meghan Markle With No Makeup Celebrates Her Freckles
The icon’s admission about her early career struggles comes barely hours after she showed off her natural beauty, freckles and all, during an interview on The Jamie Kern Lima Show. During the episode, which marks her first-ever podcast interview, Meghan Markle and the host, Kern Lima, went without makeup, flaunting their natural beauties while sharing candid insights into their personal lives. While many have commended the two founders for embracing their natural looks, others have slammed their decision to go makeup-free, even questioning their authenticity. One Reddit user fired,
“I’m so tired of natural makeup being called ‘makeup free!'”
Another wrote,
“They might technically be ‘makeup free’ but plzzzz these women both certainly drop thousands a month on skincare + aesthetics. I hate this even more than the ‘no makeup’ makeupers.”
Some netizens defended Meghan Markle’s choice, commending how beautiful she looked, accentuated by her gorgeous freckles, even without makeup. A fan noted,
“If I looked like her, I would too, as it’s really the ultimate flex on her haters, lol. Yes, I know she has a lot of help to look that way, but she’s always been very beautiful! How refreshing to see someone with a face that moves!”
From Undesirable to Beauty Standard
After spending years limited by certain perceived beauty standards that deemed her features undesirable, the duchess has come to wholly embrace those physical attributes and her uniqueness. Over the years, the actress-turned-royal-turned-entrepreneur has discussed the beauty of freckles on occasions. She has openly celebrated her natural sun-kissed look with empowering comments, while embodying the saying, A Face Without Freckles…Is a Night Without Stars.
This saying, which Markle has propagated since childhood, now resonates completely with today’s beauty standards. In fact, freckles have become a favored beauty perk, so much so that they are a desirable trait in various industries, popularized by the TikTok trend and celebrity endorsements.
The TikTok freckles trend entails using various methods to create the freckled look on someone without them, with popular application methods like makeup brushes, freckle pens, sprays, and even the broccoli hack for a more natural-looking effect. With the likes of Hailey Bieber and Billie Eilish promoting the freckled look, many go through great lengths to achieve it, often resulting in concerning scarring, infection, and undesirable pigmentation. This freckles craze makes it almost laughable to imagine a time when the likes of Meghan Markle, with natural freckles, struggled in their entertainment career because the trait was deemed unacceptable.
