Not a fan. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s highly anticipated Netflix docuseries has premiered — but Samantha Markle and her father, Thomas Markle, are not interested in tuning in.
The Duchess of Sussex’s half-sister, 58, told TMZ on Saturday, December 10, that Thomas, 78, is more focused on his health than watching Harry & Meghan after suffering a stroke in May. Samantha further slammed the doc — which premiered on Thursday, December 8 — as “disrespectful.”
The first three episodes of Harry & Meghan — directed by Liz Garbus — documented the early courtship of Harry, 38, and the Suits alum, 41. The married couple, who wed in May 2018, also opened up about Meghan’s estrangement from her paternal relatives. The former actress noted in the doc that her parents — Thomas and Doria Ragland, respectively — “coparented well” while she grew up. However, things took a turn after the former lighting designer was accused of staging paparazzi photos before her royal wedding.
“Of course, it’s incredibly sad what happened. She had a father before this,” the Duke of Sussex — who shares son Archie, 3, and daughter Lilibet, 18 months, with the former Hallmark star — said in the third episode of the Netflix series. “Now she doesn’t have a father. I shouldered that. Because if Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad. … It’s amazing what people would do when offered a huge amount of money. Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, to hand over photographs, to create a story. And thank God most of them said no.”
While Meghan’s bond with her father deteriorated shortly after he skipped her wedding to Harry, she was never as close to half-siblings Samantha and Thomas Jr. (The former TV director shares his eldest children with ex Roslyn Markle.)
“I don’t know your middle name. I don’t know your birthday. You’re telling these people you raised me, and you coined me ‘Princess Pushy’? I don’t remember seeing her when I was a kid at my dad’s house,” Meghan claimed in Harry & Meghan. “I hadn’t had a fallout with her. We didn’t have a closeness to be able to have that. And I wanted a sister!”
Samantha, for her part, asserted in a statement to Netflix that she had a “close relationship” with the Bench author until 2018 and that the “media fabricated quotes” that had been attributed to her.
While neither The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister scribe nor Thomas appeared in the doc, Samantha’s biological daughter — Ashleigh Hale — made a cameo to discuss her connection to Meghan. The immigration attorney and brother Christopher Hale were raised by their paternal grandparents, who ultimately adopted them. Samantha reunited with Ashley in 2007 before Thomas told the duchess the news. Meghan was then immediately interested in connecting with her biological niece.
“It started out with these long emails back and forth to each other and then texts and calls,” Ashleigh recalled in the third episode of Harry & Meghan. “After a while, I think we were talking, on some level, several days a week. … I think she takes on a lot of roles to me. There’s a sister element, there’s something maternal, she’s a best friend, she’s kinda all the things.”
Despite Ashleigh and Meghan’s sisterly bond, the “Archetypes” podcast host claims she was “guided” by the royal family to exclude her niece from the wedding guest list.
“They just couldn’t wrap their heads around it and I have compassion for it. How do we explain that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is?” Meghan alleged. “And so with Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding. … I was in the car with H. I had [Ashleigh] on speakerphone and we talked her through what guidance we were being given and why this assessment was made and that’s painful.”
Ashleigh — who stopped talking to Samantha amid her public criticism about Meghan — admitted she was upset that she was unable to attend her aunt’s wedding.
“I think I said I was hurt on some level, but I understood where it was coming from,” the lawyer said in Thursday’s episode. “To know that it was because of my biological mother that this relationship that’s so important to me was impacted in that way. To feel like because of her, it was taken away it’s been hard.”
The first three episodes of Harry & Meghan are currently streaming on Netflix. The next batch drops on Thursday, December 15.
