Meghan Markle: Why Are Her Old Sex Scenes Generating New Controversy?

Long before Meghan Markle became Duchess of Sussex and mom to Archie and Lilibet, she was a young actress trying to make a name for herself in a wildly competitive industry.

Like most up-and-coming artists, Meghan was sometimes forced to do work she wasn’t terribly proud of in order to pay the bills.

And now, more than a decade after the fact, the Duchess’ most virulent haters are digging through her past performances in attempt to shame her for that work.

It all started when Paris Hilton appeared on Meghan’s “Archetypes” podcast earlier this week, and the two of them discussed Meghan’s time as a “Brief Case Girl” on the game show Deal or No Deal.

“I ended up quitting the show. I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage,” Meghan said.

“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 word ‘bimbo,’” the Duchess added.

“I was grateful for the job, but not about how it made me feel, which was not smart,” she continued.

“By the way, I was surrounded by smart women … but that wasn’t the focus.”

Many listeners took umbrage with Meghan’s statement, and quite a few took to social media to point out that she occasionally appeared in slightly risqué scenes once her acting career began to take off.

“YEARS after you left deal or no deal for ‘being treated like a bimbo’, you took on roles giving men BJ’s in cars in 90210, taking your top off to grill burgers in Mens Health, had a ton of sex scenes in ‘Suits’. You’ve objectified YOURSELF,” one person tweeted, adding:

“You’re not a victim girl.”

“She’s a lying hypocrite!” another added, according to Page Six.

“Sorry, #MeghanMarkle, you chose that gig plus – hot girl, FedEx girl, 90210, other assorted roles, the burger ad, etc. No one forced you. No one reduced you. You willingly took those jobs,” a third chimed in.

Meghan appeared (fully clothed) in the 2008 CW 90210 reboot for about four seconds.

And Suits always kept things PG-13.

In fact, you could comb through Meghan’s entire catalogue and not find a single instance in which she fully disrobed on camera.

Not that that matters, of course.

Again, she was a working actor, and sometimes actors take off their clothes when a role calls for it — this is something that adults are supposed to understand.

Thankfully, countless grownups — many of them performers themselves — came to Meghan’s defense.

“…As an actress you have to take jobs you don’t particularly like or empathise with to pay the bills? I can’t say I was thrilled to play ‘Peasant 4’ or ‘Cheating Wife’ either,” one actress tweeted.

“When you’re a performer, you take the gig,” Whoopi Goldberg remarked while discussing Meghan on The View.

“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,” Goldberg continued.

“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 trying to make a living, too.”

Meghan also received some blowback from fellow performers, including a former Deal or No Deal colleague.

“Deal or No Deal NEVER treated us like bimbos,” ex-Brief Case Girl Claudia Jordan wrote on Instagram.

“For clarity — yes getting a MODELING GIG on a game show isn’t necessarily about your intellect…” Jordan continued, adding that the “opportunity IS what you make it.”

Okay, so Claudia had a different experience on the show — but that doesn’t mean that Meghan can’t speak out about her own feelings.

And the fact that Meghan complained about one job certainly doesn’t give a bunch of internet randos the right to shame her for everything she did in the years that followed.

Meghan Markle: Why Are Her Old Sex Scenes Generating New Controversy? was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip .