”I was not the pretty one”

For Meghan, adolescence was filled with the kind of insecurities many can relate to — except hers were sharpened by feeling like an outsider.

“I was a big nerd growing up,” she confessed. “People don’t understand that about me. Like, I was not the pretty one. My identity was wrapped up in being the smart one.”

She used that intellect early on. At age 11, she successfully challenged a sexist TV commercial. Her writing skills, even then, were a superpower.

Despite financial struggles, small moments felt like luxury.

“I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler,” she recalled. “I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this… and I felt lucky.”

”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.