Meghan's secret blog exposed

The anonymous internet diary was fearlessly candid. Penned in a confessional style, its author — an aspiring young Hollywood actress with a salty turn of phrase and a keen eye for detail — chronicled her triumphs and tribulations as she ‘hustled’ in search of stardom.

Some entries exposed the darker side of Tinseltown. The tyrannical casting directors and ‘bitchy’ rivals with whom she vied for roles, for example, and the hard-driving producers who treated the cast like ‘show ponies’, enlisting a doctor to inject them with vitamins so they stayed fit for work.

She laid bare her ‘roller-coaster’ emotions, which swung back and forth with success and failure.

When she passed an audition, her confidence soared and the champagne corks popped; when she was rejected, she would spend the day ‘sobbing in bed with a bottle of wine and a box of cookies’.

Then there were the daily indignities and the financial hardship she endured as she clawed for recognition.

‘I’ve had to freeze my [acting] union membership, borrow money, work jobs that I hated, endure being treated like s**t on a set, kiss actors with smelly breath and cry for hours on end because I just didn’t think I could take it any more,’ she wrote.

The young actress also described, in less than delicate terms, how awkward it felt to act out a love scene with an actor whose passions had run away with him.

Quite clearly, she couldn’t risk putting her name to such a nakedly candid blog, which first appeared in January 2010 and became a ‘must read’ for budding actors, according to one entertainment industry website. To do so would have been tantamount to committing professional suicide.

For as the long-hidden predations of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and others have since demonstrated, the Hollywood establishment guards its secrets closely and would not have taken kindly to an upstart performer turning the spotlight on the industry itself.

So she simply called herself ‘The Working Actress’ and used a silhouette of an empty director’s chair as her logo, declining to identify herself even when mainstream news channels began clamouring to interview her.

She remained incognito and wrote her final piquant post, in the summer of 2012, whereupon she signed off from the internet without a word of explanation or farewell.

By then, she had described the thrill of landing her big break, a starring role in a new TV series, and her abrupt departure inevitably caused her disappointed readers to speculate about her identity.

But the guessing game started again after it came to light that the diary had been removed from the internet.

Today, however, I can unmask ‘The Working Actress’.

Given the position that she is about to assume, we can well understand the possible motive for this cloak-and-dagger image-polishing operation.

So step forward, out of the shadows, Meghan Markle.

The revelation that Prince Harry’s fiancee was the diary’s author comes from impeccable sources in California.

‘It was a way for her to vent her frustrations and try to have a voice in the industry. I think it was also a way to inspire other struggling actors — and herself, too — to keep going,’ one said.

By recovering some of the entries and matching them with events that occurred in Meghan’s life, and also with remarks she later made in interviews, I have uncovered more evidence to conclusively prove that she is the mystery Hollywood whistleblower.

In truth, the task wasn’t all that difficult, for Meghan became rather reckless towards the end of her time as a secret diarist, leaving many clues as to her identity.

Speculation that Meghan was the blogger began circulating on internet forums in November after her engagement to Harry was announced.

‘It’s weird that this blog disappeared. There isn’t a trace of it on the net any more. I remember people thinking that Meghan Markle wrote it. And seeing how the blog had disappeared, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true,’ a woman called Stephanie posted.

‘Yeah, it was definitely Meghan who wrote it,’ responded Lance Carter, a Hollywood actor who has appeared in films and TV shows.

Daily Mail.