Meghan: How I cannot risk speaking to Dad
THE Duchess of Sussex has not spoken to her estranged father since she married Prince Harry over fears he will leak details of their private conversations, sources have said.
Royal insiders say while Meghan wants to speak to Thomas Markle, both she and her husband believe any contact between the two will be shared with millions.
Mr Markle’s repeated media interviews – including a number of statements made to gossip websites in the run-up to the wedding in Windsor – have been a sore point for the couple and an embarrassment for the new royal.
In an interview, the former Hollywood lighting director recently hit back at allegations he had become addicted to drugs.
Lies
Mr Markle said claims he had become hooked on prescription painkillers were a “slur”.
He said: “There are thousands of stories circulating out there and it’s not right that people should be allowed to make up lies and get away with it.
“I’ve read stories saying I’m a drug addict or alcoholic. I don’t understand where these stories come from.
“I’ve taken pills when I’ve been in pain but I’ve never abused drugs.
“My best friend died from an overdose of [addictive opioid prescription painkiller] OxyContin.”
The 74-year-old said he had taken drugs in the past but has never been addicted to them. He added: “You couldn’t move in Hollywood in the 1980s without seeing bowls of cocaine everywhere.
“But I don’t do drugs and I barely drink.”
Mr Markle, who missed the royal wedding on May 19 after suffering a heart attack, also denied claims he had missed Meghan’s first nuptials to the film director Trevor Engelson in 2011.
Photographs from the event show the couple exchanging their vows and Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, paddling in the sea in Ocho Rios, Jamaica – but there have been no pictures of Mr Markle.
He said: “Of course I have photographs of Meghan and me at her first wedding but I choose not to share them because I think that would be in poor taste and offensive to Prince Harry.”
The last time Mr Markle spoke to his daughter was after his heart attack in the days before the wedding, when his future son-in-law took him to task over working with the paparazzi over allegedly staged pictures.
He said: “Prince Harry said, ‘If you’d listened to me none of this would have happened’, meaning I shouldn’t have co-operated with the paparazzi.
“And he’s completely right. I made a terrible mistake which I have paid for ever since.
“There was no yelling or screaming and I didn’t slam the phone down.
“How do you slam a cellphone down?”