Meghan Markle's Father, Thomas Markle Sr., Asks His Daughter to Reach Out

From Town & Country

Meghan Markle's father, Thomas Markle Sr., has a difficult relationship with his famous daughter, and today he continued his habit of speaking with the press by giving an interview to Good Morning Britain, in which he said he is "hopeful" that he'll get to meet his future grandchild, and asked Meghan to reach out. He also called on the Queen for her assistance in the family matter saying, "I would appreciate anything [the Queen] could do."

Watch a clip from that interview here:

Earlier this month, Markle gave an interview to the Mail on Sunday.

"I have been frozen out and I can’t stay silent," he said. "I have made dozens of attempts to reach my daughter via text and letters, but she and Harry have put up a wall of silence. They have done what they once told me not to do – they are believing everything negative that has been written about me. So I am reaching out to them, once again, to try to correct the lies and get the truth out there."

Markle Sr. also gave the paper previously unseen photos from Meghan's childhood, and her first wedding to Trevor Engelson.

Read the full interview at this link. Then, read on for what else you need to know about the man whose daughter stole Prince Harry's heart.

Post-wedding, he made several comments to the media.

In the months following his daughter's wedding to Prince Harry, Thomas Markle Sr. has given several interviews to the media. In late July, he even gave an interview with the Daily Mail in which he said "Perhaps it would be easier for Meghan if I died."

He also speculated about his daughter's future children and said that he has not spoken with Meghan in weeks. Read the full interview here.

In mid-July, Markle Sr. spoke with The Sun about Meghan's new life as a Duchess, sharing that he believes his daughter is struggling to cope with her new role.

"My thing about my daughter right now is that I think she is terrified," Markle Sr. said in the interview. "I see it in her eyes, I see it in her face and I see it in her smile. I’ve seen her smile for years. I know her smile. I don’t like the one I’m seeing now. This one isn’t even a stage smile–this is a pained smile."

Markle Sr. added that his take on Meghan's adjustment to royal life could mean the Duchess is "just having a couple of bad days," before adding, "it really worries me. I think she’s under too much pressure. There’s a high price to pay to be married to that family."

Watch the full interview with The Sun here:

Back in June, Markle Sr. sat for a wide-ranging interview with Good Morning Britain. During the conversation, Markle Sr. discusses everything from Donald Trump and Brexit to when Meghan told him she was dating Prince Harry to why he staged those photographs for the press. See a few clips below, and the full interview is over on Good Morning Britain's website.

But he's still happy to learn that she is expecting her first child with Prince Harry.

Markle told the Daily Mail that when he heard the news that his daughter was pregnant on the radio, his first thought was of Meghan as a newborn.

"I thought, 'My baby is having a baby,'" he said. He also shared that he was filled with "love, joy and happiness for both my beautiful daughter and my son-in-law. A new baby is a blessing and I look forward to seeing a little Meghan or a little Harry."

Markle's comments were kinder this week than in some of his previous interviews, and he seems to have shied away from the press in recent weeks, but earlier this summer, he likened the royal family to a "cult."

"They are either like Scientologists or the Stepford family," he told the Sun . “They close the door, pull the shades down and put their fingers in their ears so they don’t have to hear."

He did not walk his daughter down the aisle at the royal wedding.

Markle was conspicuously absent from the royal wedding, recovering from heart surgery. While Markle Sr. couldn’t make it to Windsor to walk his daughter down the aisle, he watched her big day from California, where he was recovering. He told TMZ that Saturday, "My baby looks beautiful and she looks very happy. I wish I were there and I wish them all my love and all happiness."

He previously told the outlet he felt "honored and grateful" that Prince Charles, would be taking his spot. He added that his daughter called him and was "super sweet on the phone, telling him she loved him and worrying about his health."

Prince Harry and Meghan tied the knot in front of guests like Oprah, Serena Williams, and George and Amal Clooney. Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, accompanied her in the car on her way to the church and sat front and center at the ceremony. After saying "I do," the newlyweds shared an iconic kiss at St. George's Chapel and then departed on a 6.5-mile carriage ride.

It was only a few weeks before the nuptials that Kensington Palace had announced that Markle Sr. would be at the wedding to give Meghan away. When news of his heart surgery broke, Meghan announced via a statement on Twitter that her father would sadly "not be attending our wedding. I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health."

"I would like to thank everyone who has offered generous messages of support. Please know how much Harry and I look forward to sharing our special day with you on Saturday."

At first, Markle Sr. had told TMZ that he would not be at his daughter's wedding because of the "fallout" over selling paparazzi photos of himself preparing for the wedding, which he called "stupid and hammy."

When asked to comment on the TMZ story at the time, a spokesman for Kensington Palace said:

He met Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, in the late 1970s.

“I like to think he was drawn to her sweet eyes and her Afro, plus their shared love of antiques,” Meghan wrote in an 2016 ELLE UK essay about being biracial titled 'I'm More Than An Other.' The couple wed, moved to a Los Angeles neighborhood that was “leafy and affordable,” and welcomed Meghan into the world on August 4, 1981.

The bride-to-be recalls her upbringing in the Valley as lacking in diversity. “There was my mom, caramel in complexion with her light-skinned baby in tow, being asked where my mother was since they assumed she was the nanny,” Meghan wrote.

Meghan’s parents separated when she was 6. She lived with Ragland, a yoga instructor and social worker, after the divorce.

He has two other children from a previous marriage.

Meghan has two half-siblings, Samantha and Thomas Jr., who are the children of Markle Sr.'s first marriage to Roslyn Loveless.

Samantha Markle, who is also known by the name Samantha Grant, is 17 years Meghan's senior and has spoken with the press frequently about her half-sister-and not always in a positive way.

Hollywood runs in the family.

Ever since the couple revealed news of their engagement, anglophiles have been hungry for information on Meghan, an actress best known for her portrayal of Rachel Zane on the television show Suits.

The 36-year-old (she's three years older than her fiancé) is a breath of fresh air for the British monarchy-not least because her background is so different from most other royals. She hails from Los Angeles, and as the daughter of Markle Sr., a television lighting director, Meghan credits her dad and the time she spent on set with him as a kid with sparking her interest in acting.

Markle Sr. worked in Hollywood for years. When Meghan was a kid, he was a television lighting director and photography director on sets like Married... with Children and General Hospital.

"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 in 2013. "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.'"

Still, it felt glamorous to the impressionable tween. “And there I was, behind the scenes of a glossy soap opera and a TV sitcom, surrounded by famous actors and their glam teams, multi-million dollar budgets, and crew lunches that always included filet mignon and enough sweets to make you think you were at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory,” Meghan wrote later on her lifestyle website The Tig.

Markle Sr. won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Design Excellence For a Daytime Drama Series.

He’s proud of his daughter’s professional achievements.

Before the wedding, Ramon Moreno, identified as a family friend, said Markle Sr. regularly talks about his famous daughter. He told Daily Mail, “[Thomas] was proud of her when she was in Suits, even before she was with the Prince. I am sure Tom will be there at the wedding. He will want to be there. He will be so happy. He loves his daughter very, very much. He says they talk regularly.”

In Vanity Fair, Meghan called both of her parents “so supportive.”

“My parents had been so supportive watching me audition, trying to make ends meet, taking all the odds-and-ends jobs to pay my bills," she told the magazine. "I was doing calligraphy, and I was a hostess at a restaurant - and all those things that actors do... My father knew how hard it is for an actor to get work, so he above all people was so proud that I was able to beat the odds.”

His lottery win helped jumpstart Meghan’s career.

According to Meghan's brother Thomas Jr., their father reportedly scored a $750,000 lottery win when Meghan was nine–a large sum of money that ultimately helped her pursue her acting dreams. “If Meg marries Harry she'll have won the lottery of life but dad winning the lottery helped us all," he told Daily Mail in November 2017. “That money allowed Meg to go to the best schools and get the best training. Meg is someone who has always had laser focus. She knows what she wants and she doesn't stop until she gets it.

“She was always the family's princess but now she's going to be a real princess and I couldn't be more proud.”

He helped his daughter feel comfortable with her identity.

When Meghan’s seventh grade English teacher told her to check the ethnicity box for Caucasian on a mandatory census, which confused her, she says her father told her: “If that happens again, you draw your own box.”

“I never saw my father angry, but in that moment I could see the blotchiness of his skin crawling from pink to red,” she wrote in ELLE UK. “It made the green of his eyes pop and his brow was weighted at the thought of his daughter being prey to ignorance. Growing up in a homogeneous community in Pennsylvania, the concept of marrying an African-American woman was not on the cards for my dad.”

He now lives in Mexico.

He’s reportedly relocated to the small beach city of Rosarito, where he originally told reporters he’d “love to” give his daughter away at the wedding. “I’m very pleased, I’m delighted,” he told the U.K.’s Daily Mirror.

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