”And as a Girl Scout, when my troop would go to dinner for a big celebration, it was back to that same salad bar or The Old Spaghetti Factory – because that’s what those families could afford.”
Things changed when her dad won $750,000 in the lottery. Her half-brother said it helped put Meghan on the path she’d later walk with such fierce focus.
“That money allowed [her] to go to the best schools and get the best training,” he said. “[She] doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants.”
Early hustle, Hollywood dreams
Even as a kid, Meghan dreamed big. At 11, she wrote a letter to her principal promising to make their school famous once she made it.
She wasn’t kidding. By 13, she was working jobs from babysitting to slinging donuts at a stand called Little Orbit. Her work ethic never stopped.
Meanwhile, she found love for acting while hanging out on the set of Married… with Children, where her dad worked as a lighting director.
“A really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up,” she laughed.
But teenage Meghan was still figuring out who she was.
”I wasn’t black enough”
“My teens were even worse — grappling with how to fit in,” she wrote in a blog post years later. “Being biracial, I fell somewhere in between.”