Meghan Markle and Mariah Carey are making waves on the air.
The Duchess of Sussex welcomed the pop icon on her podcast “Archetypes” on Tuesday, and during their chat, the two biracial stars discussed the difficulties of having natural hair in Hollywood.
Speaking about her 1993 music video for “Dreamlover,” Carey recalled, “People said, ‘girl next door’ … because there was also an ambiguity about me, racial, being fed in that, and those curls.”
The 53-year-old Grammy winner continued: “Here’s the problem: They didn’t know how to do my hair because if it was a white barber who had never worked with textured hair, they would be inclined to do something else. And my hair would be like, ‘You don’t!’”
Even if Carey got a hairstylist who worked exclusively with natural locks, she said, “it would be too much product and too much weight.”
Markle, 41, said she’d also experienced her hair being “scorched” by “so much heavy hair grease” in the past when professionals tried “to stroke those roots down.”
For both women, these frustrations extended beyond their jobs, with Carey recalling that “nobody knew how to do” [her] her, even as a little girl” growing up with a white mother and a black father.
“I think sometimes when it’s the other way around, you get the benefit of someone dealing with textured hair,” the singer added “Obsessed.”
Before Markle — who described her own hair as “so curly and so, so thick,” and recently delighted Sussex fans by showing off her natural texture during a video call — Grandmother Jeannette was once tasked with taming her locks.
“She said, ‘Hold on to the sink,’ and I grabbed my little hands on both sides,” the Duchess recalled. “You don’t have the luxury of being gentle.”
It’s shared experiences like this that made Markle a Carey fan from the start.
“When I was a young teen, I wanted to dress, look, be, sing and do everything like Mariah Carey,” she said.
“She was so glamorous and fabulous and talented. She was successful. And she was mixed, just like me. She was an ambitious figure that I could see… and you have to see it to believe it, they say. Well, I could see her. And it made me feel like I was being seen too.”
But Markle’s “girl crush” on Carey nearly came to a “quick demise” elsewhere in the episode — titled “The Duality of Diva” — when the hitmaker “Fantasy” accused the Duchess of her own “diva moments.”
“She must have sensed my nervous laugh and…she jumped right in to make sure when she said diva she was talking about the way I dress, the attitude, the clothes,” Markle clarified after the interview.
“She meant diva as a compliment, but I heard it as a dig. At the time, as she explained to me, she meant it as chic, as inspiring.”