Thomas Markle’s ‘pre-wedding shots’ backfired – but spare a thought for a father facing a media frenzy

HER role on Suits, the glamorous US television legal drama, may divide public opinion, but there is no doubt now about the source of Meghan Markle’s acting talent. Reports in The Irish Mail on Sunday on her father’s astonishing collaboration with photographer Jeff Rayner – creating an album of staged pre-wedding shots – confirm it’s from her dad Thomas Markle that the addition-to-be to the British royal family inherited the performance gene.

The photographs, shot in a range of locations around Rosarito, the dirt-poor Mexican town about 30 kilometres across the US border which the father of the bride calls home, pretend to show him innocently preparing for the biggest role in his life, unaware that he is being photographed. One image shows the corpulent 73-year-old being measured for a new suit – a fairly run-of-the-mill chore in the lead-up to a society wedding.

Another shows him sitting in an internet café and scrolling through romantic pictures of his beloved daughter with her royal beau.

A third has him sitting in the window of his local Starbucks, devouring a coffee table-style book, the title of which – Images of Britain: A Pictorial Journey Through History – is clearly visible.

The last of the suite of photos shows the man who will shortly walk his daughter down the ancient aisle of St George’s chapel in Windsor – in front of a television audience of hundreds of millions – trying to get into shape for the big day. Standing in some scrubland, littered with the detritus of old mattresses and flat tyres, he is holding weights in both hands, eyes focused intently on the ground.

It may all have been staged, but in all the shots, Mr Markle does an excellent job of ignoring the photographer furiously clicking every millisecond of his stellar performance. Not only that, but as might be expected from a former cameraman like Mr Markle, he had a hand in deciding the best angles for the photoshoot.

He even supplied his own tape measure for his fake appointment with the Mexican ‘tailor’, who in reality knows as much about bespoke suits as a cat and is a 17year-old student with a part-time job in a shop selling bunting and furniture for parties.

Let’s hope Mr Markle enjoyed a good chuckle as he sat down with his accomplice to storyboard the snaps. As they ticked off the list of pre-wedding clichés that Mr Markle could enact – suit fitting, weight loss and so forth – the only thing that was missing was a shot of Mr Markle rummaging around a luxury goods store for a wedding gift.

But designer emporia are rather thin on the ground in Mr Markle’s adopted home of Rosarito, where he lives in a seafront bungalow in a gated clifftop community and enjoys a reputation as a recluse.

Like all creatives, Mr Markle and his collaborator had to simply make the best of what was available. Their audacious scheme may show a reckless streak in Mr Markle; he would have known that however they covered their tracks, they ran the risk of being rumbled and that it would rebound negatively on his daughter, whose position in the royal fold, not to mention British hearts, is still fragile to say the least.

Dignity

The exposé would also be a slap in the face for the British royal family – particularly Prince Harry, who has demanded that his fiancée’s privacy be protected – and for Kensington Palace, which has repeatedly sent out warnings to the media about letting Meghan Markle’s low-key parents live in peace.

But most of all, it’s a blow to Queen Elizabeth, who, notwithstanding the efforts of some of her nearest and dearest to shamelessly cash in on their royal status, has never done anything to tarnish the lustre of monarchy or to drag it into the gutter of tawdry celebrity.

As Mr Markle is introduced to Her Majesty next weekend, he may not receive the warm welcome due to someone who has flown 8,000 kilometres, incurred expenses he can ill afford, not to mention had his life turned upside down because of his daughter’s marriage. He may feel the cold lash of royal disapproval, just like Fergie, Princess Diana and all the semi-detached flunkies who were frozen out after they were deemed guilty of betraying the dignity of the monarchy.

However he’s received, it’s impossible not to sympathise with Mr Markle. Once the news of his daughter’s relationship with Prince Harry broke, and especially since their engagement, he has been stripped of his anonymity, his solitary lifestyle and his peaceful retirement.

The more he shunned the international media and stayed silent, the more frenzied and unending came the attention. His picture was carried over the world as well as those of his two adult children from his first marriage, both of whom nurse fierce grudges about their lucky half-sister Meghan.

Thomas may have much to reproach his opportunistic offspring about, but they are still his flesh and blood and it must have pained him to see them described as trailer trash, his family depicted as a ghastly stain on the noble House of Windsor.

But before his backfired scheme is taken as proof of the entire Markle clan’s mission to exploit Meghan’s marriage for every last cent, it’s worth noting that there is no evidence of Thomas profiting from the photographs.

The images have reportedly made up to €114,000 in sales, but it’s not known if he had a cut. Perhaps his posing for them was just a naïve attempt to ‘manage’ the media interest in him.

Whatever his motives, though, it’s not really surprising that he should try to control the drama that surrounds him in the frenzied lead-up to the wedding, given his background.

Despite his modest bearing, Mr Markle is an award-winning lighting director who spent his entire career in the entertainment industry.

The culture of Tinseltown, with its hierarchy of celebrities who are measured only by their box-office appeal, is his hinterland, so it’s natural he should view the British royal family through the same gaudy prism.

Besides his daughter, the nearest he has got to the royals, it seems, is speaking to Prince Harry on the telephone. It’s unlikely he’s read up much on the long history of the British monarchy or is very aware of the solemn duty of its members to keep the mystery alive.

Like most of us who will tune in this Saturday to watch Harry and Meghan wed, Thomas Markle probably sees the august traditions, the pomp and ceremony of British royalty as entertaining, rather than awe-inspiring or reverent.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about the Emmy-winning Thomas Markle is that he hasn’t released any specially produced videos of the various milestones along his daughter’s journey into adulthood or intimate vignettes from her childhood in Los Angeles.

As the royal family prepares to greet their new American in-law, they should count themselves lucky that his only misstep was a handful of innocuous photographs that could have been taken by anyone.