When things got tough, the royal family’s official line was to make no comment, former Meghan Markle said in her recent interview with Oprah Winfrey. But that’s not how we roll here in the Americas – at least as far as her father and half-sister are concerned.
Both Thomas Markle and Samantha Markle followed Prince Harry and Meghan’s seat with comments of their own. It is surprising that they are not happy with what Meghan said in the two-hour presentation that got more than 17 million viewers for CBS on Sunday night.
“I grieve a lot. I mean, I lost my dad. I lost a baby. I almost lost my name. I mean, there is the loss of identity, ”Meghan said in the interview. “But I still stand, and my hope for people who take this away is to know that there is another side.”
In a bonus clip – the three-hour, 20-minute conversation was broadcast on TV for up to an hour and 25 minutes – she noted that her mother, Doria Ragland, ‘remained silent for four years when I went through it . Her father did not behave like that when the media tracked him down.
About her half-sister, Samantha Markle, with whom she shares a father and a half-brother, Meghan said in the bonus grip: ‘I do not feel comfortable talking about people I really do not know. I grew up as an only child, who grew up all around me, and I wished I had siblings. I would love to have brothers and sisters. ”
Thomas Markle laid the blame squarely on his daughter’s shoulders, saying he had not heard from her or Harry since lying in a hospital bed after having a heart attack.
“She was quite haunted in her whole family, on my mother’s side and on my side. So she really had no one to reach out to. She would have had us if she had kept us, ‘he told’ Good Morning Britain ‘, which is presented on the same network as the interview in the UK (Piers Morgan, an educator at’ Good Morning Britain ‘since 2014 ). , left the program on Tuesday after complaints about his behavior on the air after the interview was broadcast in the US)
Thomas Markle maintained his bad behavior – selling photos, sharing a personal letter, giving interviews – but insisting that his interaction with the media was exaggerated by stores that picked up the interviews and distributed them worldwide. Markle, who lives in Mexico, said he had only interviewed half a dozen and thought Meghan and Harry might one day respond to him.
He said the part of Meghan’s letter to him was retaliation after her friends started talking to him about the media. According to him, these were ‘mostly lies’. But he noted that he had apologized “at least 100 times or so” for his actions. ‘
“We all make mistakes,” Thomas declared before making a few shots at the prince’s antics: “But I’ve never played a naked pool and never dressed like Hitler.”
And we wonder why they are not all right.
Meanwhile, Samantha Markle, who is about 16 years older than Meghan, has argued the case of the Duchess that they have not seen each other for 18 or 19 years. In ‘Inside Edition’, she took a photo of the two of them at a graduation ceremony in 2008. That said, taking a photo with a person is not the same as having a relationship with them.
While Meghan said that Samantha changed her surname to Markle only after the future Duchess started dating the future Duke, Samantha cried foul and showed her own diploma and documentation of her name change from 1996.
“Markle has always been my name,” says Samantha, who used Grant’s before.
Then there was the case of Samantha’s recently released book, “The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister: A Memoir (Part 1).”
“I think it’s going to be very difficult to ‘tell everything’ if you do not know me,” Meghan said of Samantha’s literary endeavor. ‘It’s a very different situation than my father’s. Betrayal comes from people with whom you have a relationship. ”
The half-sisters do not have one, Meghan said.
Yet Samantha said it is not fair that Meghan blames depression for anything. “Depression is not an excuse to treat people like garbage and get rid of it.”
Meanwhile, during the Oprah interview, Meghan told a story about watching the movie “The Little Mermaid” a few years back while she and Harry were living in Nottingham Cottage.
“It got going and I was like, ‘Well, I’m just here all the time, so I might as well watch it,’ she said. “And I went, ‘O my God! She falls in love with the prince and therefore she has to lose her voice. ‘
“But in the end, she gets her voice back.”
Contrary to usual policy, the palace eventually commented on the hardships Meghan mentioned in the Oprah interview.
‘The issues, especially those of race, are relevant. “Some memories may differ, but they are taken very seriously and will be addressed privately by the family,” reads a statement attributed to Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday. “Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be very close family members.”