Meghan Markle Had These Totally Normal Jobs Before Joining the Royal Family
It’s no secret that Meghan Markle had a career of her own before joining the royal family. As an actress on Suits while running a successful lifestyle blog, The Tig, she was able to follow her own passions in her work. However, before she was able to achieve her career goals, she had to work a handful of odd jobs just like any normal person.
Before Markle became a royal (or even famous, for that matter), these are the totally normal jobs the Duchess of Sussex once had.
She worked at a frozen yogurt shop
Way back when Markle was just 13 years old, her first ever job was at a frozen yogurt shop called Humphrey Yogart in California. According to her former boss, Paula Sheftel, “She earned minimum wage and was very popular with customers. She had to prove she had an outgoing personality and would work well with staff.”
In 2014, Markle tweeted about a time she crossed paths with Baywatch star Yasmine Bleeth in the shop’s parking lot. She admitted to having a complete fangirl moment, exclaiming, “Oh my God, I loved you in that Soft & Dri commercial. Bleeth apparently responded, “OK, thank you!”
It turned out to be an important moment, as Markle has since told The Guardian, “That moment with Yasmine is exactly what I base every interaction with fans on.”
She was a freelance calligrapher
Markle has proven to be multifaceted in her talents — and apparently, calligraphy is one of them. She offered her handwriting skills in a freelance capacity, which she told Esquire in 2013 was “super lucrative.” She explained, “Because there are so few people doing it.”
She actually managed to score the job for handwriting Robin Thicke and Paula Patton’s wedding invitations in 2005. Dolce & Gabbana also hired Markle to write out their holiday celebrity correspondence.
Markle revealed to Esquire a few of her methods for top-notch calligraphy. “I would sit there with a little white tube sock on my hand so no hand oils got on the card, trying to pay my bills while auditioning,” she revealed.
“You don’t have to have a fancy pen by any means,” she added, but you do have to “take your time” and “do fluid strokes.”
She taught calligraphy classes at a stationary store
Markle managed to expand her calligraphy skills to make even more money. She took a part-time job at a Paper Source in Beverly Hills to teach two-hour long classes on mastering calligraphy. Apparently, some of her classes even involved gift-wrapping and book-binding.
“It was her part-time job as she was going through auditions,” Paper Source CEO Winnie Park told People. “She taught calligraphy, and hosted a group of customers and instructed them during a two-hour class on how to do calligraphy.”
She worked at a restaurant
Like any aspiring actor trying to make ends meet, Markle even took a job as a restaurant hostess back in the day. She told Vanity Fair in September 2017 about her job experiences while trying to “make it”:
My parents had been so supportive. Watching me audition, trying to make ends meet, taking all the odds-and-ends jobs to pay my bills. I was doing calligraphy, and I was a hostess at a restaurant — and all those things that actors do. My father knew how hard it is for an actor to get work, so he above all people was so proud that I was able to beat the odds.
