Texts reveal how Meghan begged father to get in touch
The Duchess of Sussex has laid bare emotional text messages from her and the Duke to her father as they pleaded with him to contact them before their royal wedding, as she embarks on a court case against a British newspaper.
The duchess, who is suing the Mail on Sunday over the publication of a letter to her father in 2018, has filed court documents spelling out the family’s interaction with Thomas Markle, with messages pleading with him to accept help and stop speaking to the press.
The messages to Markle, who had been admitted to hospital with chest pains and did not fly to England for their wedding on May 19 2018, include an offer by the couple to send security to help him, a plea for him to him to ‘‘please, please’’ get in touch, and from Prince Harry: ‘‘If u love Meg and want to make it right please call me.’’
The paperwork, filed before the first court hearing on Friday, shows the Duchess’s legal team laying out its argument against the Mail on Sunday, which in August 2018 published extracts from a letter she had sent to her estranged father.
In it, the duchess accused Markle of breaking her heart ‘‘into a million pieces’’.
The court documents were made public a day after the duke and duchess wrote to a selection of British tabloid newspapers to tell them there would be ‘‘no corroboration and zero engagement’’ with them from now on.
‘‘What they won’t do is offer themselves up as currency for an economy of clickbait and distortion,’’ they said in a letter to the editors of the Mail, Sun, Mirror and Express.
The couple are now living in Los Angeles, with paparazzi pictures of them walking their dog and undertaking food deliveries being world.
Yesterday, Good Morning America, the country’s mostwatched breakfast show, aired ‘‘exclusive’’ footage of the duchess being interviewed about Elephants, the film she has narrated. In the case against the Mail on Sunday, the duchess is seeking unspecified damages relating to claims of breach of copyright, data protection and privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It begins in the High Court on Friday with a strikeout hearing, after which the trial is not likely to get under way until the end of the year.
The contents of the letter were published in a ‘‘highly shared around the manipulated, sensational and deliberately inflammatory way’’ which ‘‘deeply upset’’ the duchess, her legal team says.
Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Mail on Sunday, has said it would defend the claim ‘‘vigorously’’, categorically denying the letter was edited in ‘‘any way that changed its meaning’’.
The newspaper has argued that the handwritten letter was given to them by Markle to set the record straight after its existence was made public in an interview given to the US celebrity magazine People by five of the duchess’s close friends.
The duchess denies that she authorised the interview, saying she was ‘‘distressed’’ after learning the ‘‘deeply private’’ letter had been mentioned.
In a new submission, the duchess’s legal team contests what they call the ‘‘tendentious and highly partial’’ description of her contact with her father, saying they would therefore lay out the ‘‘full exchanges’’.
They took place after he had been exposed as collaborating with paparazzi from his home in Mexico, and while he had been admitted to hospital with chest pains before their wedding.