Duchess Meghan Loves Surprising Low Wage Workers

The Duchess Meghan of Sussex, formerly known as Meghan Markle, has done her first piece of press after the death of her husband’s 96-year-old grandma for Variety. Unlike The Cut’s September cover story — which Variety deems “snarky” — this time around the Princess opts for an interview transcript.

Did she write the questions? Probably. Does she allude to or elucidate anything about the rift within the British royal family? Not really. Does she call Gloria Steinem “Glo”? Absolutely. She also might reveal a certain Rasputin-like immortality that’s thought to run through the royal families of Europe, because she tells the hypothetical actor who “100 years from now is cast as Meghan” in the biopic about her life that will stream exclusively on our futuristic smart microwaves to call her for notes.

But the real bombshell? Well, this beauty — who was very terminally ugly but exceedingly bright in high school, indeed — has been known to eat the occasional burger, and the employees at an In-N-Out somewhere between Los Angeles and Montecito are weeping happy tears into their little paper hats about it. When answering the final jolting question posed by Variety, “Who takes the most snack breaks?” Meghan said:

We drove down [to Los Angeles] recently for a day of back-to-back meetings, equipped with chocolate chip cookies the size of my toddler’s head. Also, my husband’s favorite is In-N-Out. There’s one at the halfway point between L.A. and our neck of the woods. It’s really fun to go through the drive-thru and surprise them. They know our order.

Nevermind that there are like five items on the menu there. This is an act of adoration on behalf of the good folks working the line at the regional burger chain. Princess Di would surprise AIDS patients in the 1990s; Meghan leaves a 22 percent tip at In-N-Out drive-thru.

Meghan loves doing this. At the story’s August photoshoot at the “low-key old luxury resort” San Ysidro Ranch, Meghan waved and smiled from a golf cart to some serfs “teetering on the dusty cobblestone walkway in their wedges and kitten heels” celebrating a milestone birthday. Before the cameras rolled, “she couldn’t have been more at ease as she shook the hand of every crew member, stylist and photographer’s assistant,” even though they’re the plebs who dressed her in horrific clothes and posed her in front of a gym class parachute of sorts.

That’s global ambassadorship.