Family feuds dull Markle’s sparkle
Raucous relatives prove headache for royal courtiers
AS Meghan Markle’s gown undergoes final adjustments for her wedding to Prince Harry on Saturday, her gaffe-prone American family has been sending royal courtiers into a spin by airing its dirty laundry in public.
The bride-to-be remains close with divorced parents Tom Markle and Doria Ragland, but other relatives have been barred from the nuptials amid unwelcome stories of bust-ups, heavy drinking and even an arrest.
Markle, who grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, will be walked up the aisle by Tom, 73, an Emmy-winning Hollywood lighting director of Dutch-Irish descent who is enjoying retired life in Mexico.
Around the turn of the century, the future Duchess of Sussex was filmed as an aspiring teen actress by childhood friend Ninaki Priddy discussing her relationship with her father as they drove across LA.
“We aren’t going to go there,” she says on the video – posted to YouTube last year – as they near Tom’s LA home. “We aren’t on the best of terms.” There has been a detente in the intervening years, however, with Markle publicly expressing her love for her father in an Instagram message in 2016.
Markle’s introduction to Hollywood came thanks to her father, who would bring her daily to the set of ABC’s General Hospital and Fox sitcom Married . . . with Children.
“There I was, behind the scenes of a glossy soap opera and a TV sitcom, surrounded by famous actors and their glam teams, multimillion-dollar budgets, and crew lunches that always included filet mignon,” she wrote on her now-defunct blog, The Tig.
Tom reportedly put Markle through Hollywood’s most exclusive schools and the private Northwestern University in Illinois after winning $750 000 (R9.2-million) in the state lottery in 1990.
He met Harry in Toronto in mid-2016 and took to the prince immediately, describing him on a video obtained by British tabloid The Sun as “a gentleman”.
Markle’s mother, a 61-year-old African American yoga instructor and clinical therapist, met Tom while working at General Hospital as an assistant make-up artist.
The Ohio native has been through her own financial woes, according to the Daily Mail, which reported that she filed for bankruptcy in 2002 with assets of just $10 400 (R128 000) and credit card debts of $58 000 (R714 350).
“While my mixed heritage may have created a grey area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that,” Markle wrote in a 2015 essay for Elle magazine about being biracial.
She and Harry revealed in an interview with the BBC they had spent much time with Ragland ahead of their engagement. “Her mum’s amazing!” Harry said. There was speculation that Markle’s father would be left off the guest list after the American star barred estranged half-siblings Tom Jr and Samantha, Tom Snr’s children from a previous marriage.
Tom Jr, 51, who lives in Oregon, was arrested in January on suspicion of holding a gun to his girlfriend’s head while drunk, although the charges were dropped and the couple got engaged.
The twice-divorced father of two says he and Meghan have not been close since she moved from LA to Toronto in 2011 to start work on legal drama Suits.
Relations are unlikely to have improved since Tom Jr sent Prince Harry a letter to call off the “fake fairytale wedding”, saying his half-sister was “obviously not the right woman” for the royal.
“As more time passes to your royal wedding, it became very clear that this is the biggest mistake in royal wedding history,” he said in the April 26 missive that he shared with In Touch magazine.
He professed to be bored with Markle playing the part of princess and accused her of draining their father’s money until he went bankrupt in 2016.
Samantha, 53 – who lives in Florida and recently changed her surname from Grant to Markle – is said to have angered the Markle clan with the announcement that she was planning a tell-all book, The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister.
Other members of the extended family include Thomas Jr’s sons, Tyler, 27, and Thomas Markle III, who has berated his “crazy” father and aunt for their public feuding.