Still at odds. After years of public drama, Samantha Markle filed a lawsuit against half-sister Meghan Markle, alleging the Duchess lied during her 2021 tell-all interview with husband Prince Harry.
The sisters’ tumultuous relationship originally made headlines ahead of Meghan and Harry’s wedding in May 2018. Two years later, the couple announced that they were stepping back from their duties as working members of the royal family. In February 2021, they confirmed their decision to not return to their senior roles.
Meghan and Harry, who moved to California following their royal exit, addressed their major life change during a CBS sit-down one month later. During the interview, the California native said, “I grieve a lot. I mean, I’ve lost my father. I lost a baby. I nearly lost my name. I mean, there’s the loss of identity.”
Samantha, who has previously been outspoken about Meghan throughout her royal tenure, claimed in her March 2022 lawsuit that her younger sibling was not being honest when discussing her past or their father, Thomas Markle. In court documents obtained by Us Weekly at the time, the Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister author alleged that Meghan made up stories about growing up in “virtual poverty.”
Meghan, who shares son Archie and daughter Lili with her husband, claimed during her CBS interview that she was never close with Samantha. “I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows, and I wished I had siblings. I would have loved to have had siblings,” she said in March 2021, noting that she had not seen her half-sister in “at least 18, 19 years.”
The Suits alum also questioned why Samantha changed her last name, saying, “[She] changed her last name back to Markle in her early 50s … only when I started dating Harry. So, I think that says enough.”
In her March 2022 filing, Samantha accused the Bench writer of lying about her and their father so they “could not interfere with or contradict the false narrative and fairytale life story [she] concocted.”
Thomas, for his part, previously addressed Meghan’s comments about their rift, which grew more strained after he staged paparazzi photos and subsequently missed Meghan’s 2018 nuptials. He told Good Morning Britain in 2021, “She’s pretty much ghosted all of her family, on her mother’s side and my side. So, she really had no one to reach out to. She would’ve had us if she’d kept us. We all make mistakes.”
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With reporting by Diana Cooper
