Meghan’s dad tears into Oprah for ‘taking advantage of weak Harry’

The Duchess of Sussex’s estranged father has claimed that Oprah Winfrey has ‘taken advantage’ of a ‘weakened’ Prince harry and is ‘using’ the duke and his wife to further her own career.

Thomas Markle, 76, also told a TV interviewer he had found out that his granddaughter lilibet Diana had been born only after the ‘cold’ couple announced the birth two days after the event this month.

Miss Winfrey secured a bombshell interview with the couple that aired in March and has worked with harry on a documentary series about mental health for Apple TV+, The Me you Don’t See.

Both the interview and the documentary included incendiary claims about the royals, including that a family member had been racist about their son Archie, two, and that they had treated his wife with ‘total neglect’ when she had suicidal thoughts.

Mr Markle told Australian television programme 60 Minutes on Saturday: ‘I think she [Oprah] is using them to build her network and build her new shows and I think she’s taken advantage of a very weakened man and has got him to say things that you just shouldn’t be saying on television.’

he added: ‘She [Miss Winfrey] will disagree of course, and she may even sue me. I don’t care. But the bottom line is she is working with harry.’

Mr Markle went on to criticise ‘cold’ Meghan and harry for refusing to see him, saying even ‘axe murderers’ are visited by their families. Referring to the time when he collaborated with the paparazzi who photographed him before harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, he said: ‘I’m not an axe murderer. I made one dumb mistake and I’ve been punished for it.

‘This show they’ve been on, they talk about compassion, there’s no compassion for me, no compassion for my family, and no compassion for the world.’

In the Oprah interview, Meghan called his actions a ‘betrayal’.