Brooke Shields calls out Meghan Markle's gender equality story as 'too precious'

Fox News

2 days ago

Brooke Shields once dubbed Meghan Markle as "too precious."
During a recent appearance on India Hicks's podcast, the 60-year-old actress recalled the moment she interrupted the Duchess of Sussex during a panel at the South by Southwest Festival last year after the former royal seemed to have lost the audience's attention with an anecdote from her childhood.
To mark International Women's Day, Katie Couric asked the panel a question related to gender equality – and Markle answered right away.
"Katie asks the first question to Meghan and she talks about how at a young age, she was already advocating for women," Shields said, per Sky News.
Markle, who shared the exact same story with Vanity Fair in 2017, referenced the time she wrote a letter to a company that promoted women washing dishes.
"She starts telling a story about how when she was 11 – and she keeps saying, 'Well, when I was 11, I saw this commercial and they were talking about how washing dishes was for women. And she said, 'I didn't think only women wash dishes. It wasn't fair. So I wrote to the company.'"
"It was just too precious, and I was like, they're not going to want to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to anybody be precious or serious."
Shields recalled interrupting Markle during the panel.
"I go, 'Excuse me, I'm so sorry, I've got to interrupt you there for one minute.' I was trying not to be rude, but I wanted to be funny because it was so serious. 'I just want to give everybody here a context as to how we're different. When I was 11, I was playing a prostitute.'"
Shields, who earned a laugh from the audience, was referring to her role in the 1978 film, "Pretty Baby."
"The place went insane. And then luckily, it was more relaxed after that," Shields said.
During the same panel, Shields reflected on being sexualized as a child star in Hollywood.
The actress rose to fame at the age of 11 when she played a child prostitute in "Pretty Baby," which featured Shields in multiple nude scenes. As a 10-year-old, Shields posed naked for the Playboy publication Sugar'n'Spice.
"I was at the center of it," Shields said. "And I was promoting it and I was doing it."
She continued, "And I was lucky because I was surrounded by a very strong mom. I never did move to Hollywood. I always went to regular school."
"So I had this sort of community around me that was protecting me, buoying me. And so I did not become the type of statistic that Hollywood created," Shields added.
"Hollywood is predicated on eating its young."
Fox News Digital's Ashley Hume contributed to this post.