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Thomas Markle, Meghan Markle’s father, would like you to know that he just wants to be reconciled with his daughter.
Failing that, however, he’ll take a payoff, warning his daughter, “It’s time to look after Daddy.”
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In an astonishing and naked threat, Thomas has told a British TV show that the royals “owe him” and henceforth he’ll be charging for interviews in which he slams, shames, and denigrates his daughter and her husband (who haven’t had a great 202o so far) and that he deserves to be “rewarded.”
For what, one might ask? His discretion?
In a 90-minute film for the U.K.’s Channel 5, entitled Thomas Markle: My Story, Thomas accuses Meghan and Harry of saying “trashy things” about him, and said he doesn’t feel bad about taking money to appear in the film because: “At this point, they owe me. The royals owe me. Harry owes me, Meghan owes me. What I’ve been through I should be rewarded for. My daughter told me that when I reach my senior years she’ll take care of me. I’m in my senior years now, it’s time to look after Daddy.”
It is Markle’s most naked request yet for a payoff, and while Meghan may indeed have made a pledge to help him out at some point, most people would agree that giving evidence against her in court invalidates that verbal contract.
Thomas also confirms that he is ready to give evidence against his daughter in a forthcoming High Court trial in which Meghan is suing Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Mail on Sunday, for allegedly infringing her copyright by publishing a letter she wrote to Thomas. He tells the filmmakers: “I’m going to defend myself.”
Associated Newspapers filed paperwork last week that clearly suggested Thomas would be their star witness and may face his daughter in court.
In the film, he admits collaborating with a paparazzi photographer to create staged photos ahead of the royal wedding, a decision he says will “haunt me for the rest of my life.” He says that the last time he ever spoke to Meghan and Harry was on the eve of their marriage, after his actions had been revealed and he had been admitted to a hospital after a heart attack.
In the new film, he describes that bad-tempered last call, saying “Harry said to me: ‘If you had listened to me, this wouldn’t have happened to you.’ I said to him ‘It’s too bad I didn’t die because then you guys could pretend you were sad,’ and then I hung up on them. I was done.”
Markle said he has not spoken to them since (wonder why?) and added: “I don’t think at this point they’re thrilled to see me or want to talk to me. The last time they might see me is being lowered into the ground.”
Markle and his other daughter Samantha have made similar threats before, forecasting his imminent death, warning his daughter she will be sorry when he dies. Unsurprisingly, these attempts to guilt-trip his daughter appear to have had little effect when it comes to warming her heart.
Thomas speaks at some length about the handwritten letter he received from his daughter in 2018 that is at the heart of Meghan’s action against the Mail.
He says he was very excited when he first received the letter from Meghan in August 2018, claiming he thought it was “good news,” but as he read it his hopes fell: “There is no love and no thought of concern for me in this letter. I felt like shit. I just wanted to hear something positive and it wasn’t.”
Markle says he was forced to publish the letter after an interview with a group of Meghan’s friends in People magazine in which they claimed Meghan had reached out to her dad and was trying to make peace with him in the letter, which he says misrepresents it.
“I kept that letter for about six months and then these lies started coming out,” he says, “They dissed me, calling me a liar… It’s become an organized defamation of me. So I felt I had to defend myself, so I published part of the letter.”
Responding to Harry’s emotional attack on the media when he announced the legal action regarding the letter, Thomas said: “He’s not 12 years old any more, he’s got no right to be this sensitive.”
