you just received the jane fonda humanitarian award, glamour uk women of the year, latino power list. and now us, bbc 100 women, it s a pleasure having you with us. thank you. and thank you for the, for the honour of being on the list with such incredible other women. 0k. let s start with an easy question. let s talk about your name, america. mm. what s the true story behind your name? yeah. well, i m named america after my mother, who is also named america. and it s true, growing up in the united states of america, everyone assumed that it was a, it was a patriotic homage by my immigrant parents. but the truth is, is that in latino america, the name america is much more common. and so my mother is actually named after a very obscure holiday that she was born on, called dia de las americas. and i was due on her birthday. and so i was also named america. so that, so my name is very central american and latino americana. that s a name that you didn t love when you were younger,
not feel supported by the royal family. at one point meghan admitted she d thought about suicide. but i knew that if i didn t say it that i would do it. and i just didn t i just didn t want to be alive anymore. and that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. just one of many bombshell claims. another stunning revelation, harry and meghan say there were questions about what color their baby s skin might be. meghan says they were told the baby might not have security or get a title. and meghan says the tabloid reporting she made kate middleton cry ahead of her marriage to harry was exactly the opposite of what happened. it was kate that made meghan cry. at one point prince charles stopped taking harry s phone calls. and harry says he and his brother william still need space and time to heal. i want to get some reaction to all of this from ana stewart in windsor england. you ve certainly covered the royal wedding and other events with the duke and duch
i m benjamin hall in for todd piro. jillian: i m jillian mele. minutes ago, the white house reveals additional executive orders president biden is set to sign as he aims to combat gender issues and sexual violence in schools. ben: doug luzader joins us live as the president always calls on congress to pasco individual relief. doug pass covid relief. reporter: hot off the presses, this adds to the pile of executive orders that the president has already signed. one of these asks the department of education to look into existing regulations to eliminate a sexual violence and evaluate changes made during the trump administration. the other sets up what they re calling a gender policy council. it s intended to combat what they call systemic bias and discrimination including sexual harassment, ensuring access to comprehensive healthcare and preventing and responding to gender based violence, promoting equity, that s a key word for this administration, not equality, but equity a
and i clung to performance and.and acting and also academics, because i had been taught so early on, throughout my whole life by my parents, specifically my mother, that, you know, education and taking advantage of every opportunity ihad to. ..to get an education was why they, why they immigrated to the united states. and so between my education and my love of performing, that s where i tried to shape an identity for myself. you ve spoken about the labels you ve had to fight against in your career, too brown, too chubby, too poor, too unsophisticated. that s pretty hard for a young girl to hear. what kept you going? it s a good question. um.
you are an example of what i think is someone who, incidentally, now happens to be bangladeshi. so, i m a firm believer that as a bangladeshi and a british, i ll take the good bits from this bit and i ll take the good bits from that bit. i believe that we firmly, happily live in that grey area. i m proud to say that i mix up my britishness and my bangladeshiness and put it all together in cookbooks that people actually really like. it s taken me a very long time to accept that middle place. you know, i ve always felt i m too haram to be halal, too halal to be haram, too white to be brown, too brown to be white. you know, all of these, like, contradictions. i m not going to lie for a second and tell you that there are times where i ve wanted to bleach the brown out of me because life would have been so much easier if i wasn t brown, if i wasn t bangladeshi, if i could just be like everybody else. i come with all of those layers