{"id":4152,"date":"2016-12-13T04:26:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T04:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beautycategory.com\/?p=4152"},"modified":"2016-12-13T04:26:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T04:26:08","slug":"meghan-markle-opens-up-about-being-a-biracial-actress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefastfashion.com\/?p=4152","title":{"rendered":"Meghan Markle Opens Up About Being a Biracial Actress"},"content":{"rendered":"
Meghan Markle hits the streets in NYC. (Photo: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Meghan Markle has been making headlines lately thanks to her romance with Prince Harry, but there is so much more to her than her high-profile love life. The\u00a0Suits<\/em> star penned a piece for Elle<\/em>\u00a0discussing the challenges she has faced growing up as a biracial woman and how she\u2019s managed to navigate life and Hollywood on her own terms.<\/p>\n

Markle says that her ambiguous look\u00a0has\u00a0been a double-edged sword when it comes to casting. \u201cBeing \u2018ethnically ambiguous,\u2019 as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African-American when in mustard yellow; my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an \u201980s Benetton poster. Sadly, it didn\u2019t matter: I wasn\u2019t black enough for the black roles, and I wasn\u2019t white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn\u2019t book a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markle\u2019s difficulties as far as her race when it came to casting made her more excited than ever to join the cast of\u00a0Suits<\/em>. She mentions the producers, who didn\u2019t have a particular ethnicity in mind for her character Rachel,\u00a0using them as an example of how Hollywood can diversify their casting process if they look for someone who is good for the role when possible, as opposed to having a fixed image.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe series was initially conceived as a dramedy about a N.Y. law firm flanked by two partners, one of whom navigates this glitzy world with his fraudulent degree. Enter Rachel Zane, one of the female leads and the dream girl \u2014 beautiful and confident with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. \u2018Dream girl\u2019 in Hollywood terms had always been that quintessential blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty \u2014 that was the face that launched a thousand ships, not the mixed one. But the show\u2019s producers weren\u2019t looking for someone mixed, nor someone white or black for that matter. They were simply looking for Rachel. In making a choice like that, the Suits<\/em> producers helped shift the way pop culture defines beauty. The choices made in these rooms trickle into how viewers see the world, whether they\u2019re aware of it or not. Some households may never have had a black person in their house as a guest, or someone biracial. Well, now there are a lot of us on your TV and in your home with you. And with Suits<\/em>, specifically, you have Rachel Zane. I couldn\u2019t be prouder of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Markle\u00a0mentions that once the ethnicity of her character Rachel became more clearly defined after producers cast\u00a0Wendell Pierce as her father, the backlash from some\u00a0Suits<\/em>fans was a reminder that we still have a long way to go in terms of some audiences accepting people of color in three-dimensional roles, or as full human beings and not racist tropes. \u201cI remember the tweets when that first episode of the Zane family aired, they ran the gamut from: \u2018Why would they make her dad black? She\u2019s not black\u2019 to \u2018Ew, she\u2019s black? I used to think she was hot.\u2019 The latter was blocked and reported. The reaction was unexpected but speaks of the undercurrent of racism that is so prevalent, especially within America.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with\u00a0Complex<\/em><\/a>, model Sofia Richie touched on the racism she sees in Los Angeles and how her light complexion and blond hair makes her the target of racist comments, because people look at her and don\u2019t think she\u2019s black. \u201cI\u2019m very light, so some people don\u2019t really know that I\u2019m black. I\u2019ve been in situations where people will say something kind of racist and I\u2019ll step in and they\u2019ll be like, \u2018Oh, well, you\u2019re light,\u201d she said. \u201cThat still doesn\u2019t cut it, buddy. It\u2019s 2016 \u2014 you better get your s*** together before you get slapped out here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markle doesn\u2019t\u00a0touch on the fact that women who look like her and Richie are privileged in that their proximity to whiteness is valued more in our society. Richie\u2019s comment is a reminder that there are still those prejudices, and they can rear their ugly heads when people don\u2019t see you as part of a certain demographic. Still, Hollywood is slowly making\u00a0changes when it comes to diversity, at least on television \u2014 just look at the 2017 Golden Globe nominees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile my mixed heritage may have created a gray area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that,\u201d Markle writes. \u201cTo say who I am, to share where I\u2019m from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman. That when asked to choose my ethnicity in a questionnaire as in my seventh-grade class, or these days to check \u2018Other,\u2019 I simply say: \u2018Sorry, world, this is not Lost<\/em> and I am not one of the Others. I am enough exactly as I am.’\u201d<\/p>\n