Meghan Markle has had a very chilly relationship with her father over the past three years. Ever since their infamous wedding feud, the two haven’t spoken at all. In fact, the only kind of “contact” has been through interviews, where the two have offered some rather harsh words about one other.
Meghan and Prince Harry have just welcomed their second child, daughter Lilibet Diana. Much of the Royal Family congratulated the couple, but Thomas Markle has decided to do something else entirely.
In a brand new interview with 60 Minutes Australia, Meghan’s father says he didn’t even know of Lilibet’s birth, and went on to warn that he could air more ‘dirty laundry’ about the couple.
At a very young age, Meghan Markle was welcomed into the world of show business, and that thanks to her father Thomas Markle, an Emmy award-winning lighting director. On many occasions, Meghan actually got to join her father on set.
She attended the all-girls Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles, and that was a big contrast compared to being on set.
Meghan Markle – Thomas Markle
“Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of Married, with Children, which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up,” she told Esquire.
“There were a lot of times my dad would say, ‘Meg, why don’t you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-color for your 11-year-old eyes.’”
Her father Thomas was very supportive of his daughter’s will to change things, and he helped her write to very powerful people, including Hillary Clinton, hoping they could help. Just a few days later, the company producing the soap changed their slogan from “Women All Over America” to “People All Over America”.
With her dad having been a photography director, she got great advice from him.
“I will always find my light, no question,” she said. “And if I don’t, I’ll know, because my dad will be the first person to call me and say like, ‘You need to have him bring another 2K in,’ and ‘Why aren’t you using this sort of lighting gel?’ The crew guys know that it’s where I grew up.”
Up until the summer of 2016, everything was going amazingly well regarding Meghan’s private life.
Meeting Harry changed everything
She was very close with her father all throughout her childhood, as well as through college. He he helped her pay tuition, as well as helped her land a role in General Hospital. In short, he supported her in the best way he could.
But it was in 2016 that Meghan met the love of her life, Harry. And that became the starting point through which her relationship with father Thomas started to crack.
A year later, Meghan and Harry announced their engagement.
The couple wed on May 19, 2018 and people from all over the world eagerly watched the wedding.
But for Meghan, someone was missing from her big day. Her father Thomas wasn’t there, and it was the start of a decline with regards their relationship.
Before the wedding, the Markle family had come under a great deal of press scrutiny. Then, just days before the wedding, the Daily Mail revealed that Thomas had coordinated with a paparazzi photographer to stage several photos, including him getting fitted for a suit prior to the wedding, him reading a book about Britain, and him looking at pictures of Meghan and Harry.
Missed the wedding
The pictures reportedly sold for over £100,000 ($137,000) and Meghan didn’t like it.
Thomas then initially lied to Meghan and Harry, saying that he wasn’t involved in the staging of the photos. Because of the event, he was too embarrassed to attend the wedding, and and also suffered subsequent heart troubles. As a result, he missed his own daughter’s wedding.
It was tough on Meghan, who has been so close to her father all her life. Reportedly, she was seen crying before the wedding.
Just two months after the wedding, Thomas Markle spoke again with the Daily Mail, saying he’d been cut out of his daughter’s life. He also said she looked “terrified”, and referred to the British Royal Family as “a cult”.
“I tell you, I’ve just about reached my limit with Meghan and the Royal Family,” he told Daily Mail. “They want me to be silent, they want me to just go away. But I won’t be silenced.
“I refuse to stay quiet. What riles me is Meghan’s sense of superiority. She’d be nothing without me. I made her the Duchess she is today. Everything that Meghan is, I made her.”
Meghan Markle’s letter to Thomas
In August of 2018, just months following the wedding, Meghan decided to send her father a five-page letter. She reportedly begged him not to talk to the press. Then, not long after the letter was leaked, the Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, went on to publish parts of it, which left Meghan furious.
She decided to sue the ANL.
In court, Meghan Markle’s lawyers said that the publication of the “intrinsically private, personal and sensitive” letter was “unlawful” and “a triple-barrelled invasion of her privacy rights”, according to the Mirror.
The last line of the letter read: “I ask for nothing other than peace and I wish the same for you.”
Since the royal wedding, she hasn’t spoken publicly about her relationship with her father. That was until her and Harry’s primetime interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Meghan – who was wearing a very special bracelet during the interview – said that her father had “betrayed” her as he had spoken to the tabloid press.
‘Betrayed by my father’
“If were going to use the word betrayal, it’s because when I asked him, when the comms team told us this the story was coming out, we called my dad and I asked him and he said, ‘No, absolutely not,’” Meghan told Oprah in their CBS interview.
Following Meghan and Harry’s tell-all sit down with Oprah, her father decided to speak out. Appearing on the television show Good Morning Britain, he said that he’d continue speaking to the press every 30 days until his daughter and Harry resumed contact. He even went to Oprah’s home to deliver a letter to the media mogul, personally pleading to get his own interview with her.
“I feel she let me down, I was in a hospital bed the last time we talked, and I never heard from them again; they didn’t care if I died,” Thomas Markle said on Good Morning Britain.
“When they say that I’m taking advantage of the press, well, basically what I do because I haven’t heard from them is I’ll do a story for the press.”
“If I haven’t heard from them in 30 days, I’ll do another story for the press,” he added.
Even so, the last number of months have been quiet from Thomas Markle. But for Meghan and Harry, it’s been a whole different story. In the wake of the Oprah interview, their relationship with the Royal Family has been icy to say the least.
Despite expectations, thing’s weren’t improved when Harry met his family at the funeral for his grandfather, Prince Philip.
Meghan and Harry – baby Lilibet
Prince Charles was said to be very disappointed in his son for ‘dragging his name in the dirt’.
However, focus has now changed. Instead of chilly relationships and negative headlines, Harry and Meghan are getting all the love in the world.
On Sunday, they announced the birth of their second child, Lilibet Diana.
“It is with great joy that Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, welcome their daughter, Lilibet ‘Lili’ Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, to the world. Lili was born on Friday, June 4 at 11:40 a.m. in the trusted care of the doctors and staff at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, CA,” an official announcement read, Sunday.
Congratulations from members of the Royal Family came pouring in. The Queen, William and Kate, and Charles and Camilla all sent their greetings through their official social media accounts. But still, the relationship between Buckingham Palace and Harry and Meghan is frosty, and it’s unclear if they actually have spoken to each other beyond internet announcements following the birth of Lilibet.
Meghan and Harry decided to pay tribute to the Queen with their daughter’s name – Lilibet is a nickname that’s been used for Her Majesty from an early age, and is still used by her closest family today.
The Queen’s grandfather, King George V, used to call her “Lilibet”. Since then, the name has stuck, as reported by The Guardian. Her late husband Prince Philip, also referred to her by that moniker.
Thomas Markle – new interview
Not only that, but Harry and Meghan’s daughter also has Diana as her middle name.
Even though it was a sweet gesture, some consider it a huge deal and actually a negative thing that they named their beloved daughter after the Queen.
The Queen is said to have seen her beloved grandchild through a video chat, since they live on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
However, there were certain others who didn’t even get a call as regards the birth. That’s what Meghan Markle’s father Thomas claims, anyway, in a new interview with 60 Minutes Australia.
In a new 40-second-trailer for the interview, Thomas Markle asks to be forgiven for his one ‘dumb mistake’. It’s now been three years since he and his daughter last spoke.
“I haven’t spoken to [Meghan] since two days before they got married,” Thomas said.
Thomas Markle warns of new ‘dirty laundry’
Further, Thomas warned that he was prepared to air more ‘dirty laundry’ about Meghan and her relationship with Harry. As mentioned earlier, he hasn’t exactly been a paragon of confidentiality when it comes to holding back on things he know.
“You want dirty laundry? This is the first time I’ve discussed these things,” Thomas Markle said in the promo for the interview.
Thomas also revealed that he hadn’t been informed about his granddaughter Lilibet’s birth.
“No phone calls, I just heard it on the radio,” he explained. “I’ll be very disappointed that I don’t get to hold my granddaughter.”
The exclusive interview with Thomas Markle is set to air this upcoming Sunday.
Do you think Meghan is doing the right thing by not talking with her father? Or do you believe that Thomas Markle is entitled to see his granddaughter? Leave us your opinion in the comment section.
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