Clapping back! Meghan Markle’s half-sister, Samantha Markle, spoke out after the duchess’ CBS tell-all interview on Sunday, March 7.
“The truth was totally ignored and omitted,” Samantha, 56, told Inside Edition on Monday, March 8, after Meghan claimed, “I don’t really know [her],” despite growing up with the same father, Thomas Markle.
The former Suits star, 39, addressed her relationship with Samantha in a bonus clip from her and Prince Harry’s interview that aired on CBS This Morning on Monday, revealing her true thoughts on her half-sibling’s book, The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister, which was released in January.
“I think it would be very hard to ‘tell all’ when you don’t know me,” Meghan said. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about people that I really don’t know. I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows, and I wished I had siblings.”
Samantha, however, did not agree with Meghan’s recollection of their childhood. “I don’t know how she can say, ‘I don’t know her’ and she was an only child,” she said on Monday. “We’ve got photographs over a lifespan of us together. So how can she not know me?”
The author shared snaps of the half-sisters together through the years, including one from her graduation in 2008. She claimed the photo, which was taken 13 years ago, contradicts Meghan’s comment that “the last time I saw her must have been at least 18, 19 years ago.”
Meghan and Samantha have been at odds since before her marriage to Harry in May 2018, with Samantha criticizing her sister in the press and social media. Samantha was not invited to the royal wedding and later admitted she was “hurt at not being included” in the celebrations.
During the Tig founder’s explosive sit-down with CBS, she also claimed that Samantha “changed her last name back to Markle in her early 50s … only when I started dating Harry. I think that says enough.”
Samantha again denied the activist’s allegations, showing a photo of her petition to change her name to Markle in December 1997. She also had a record of her college diploma, which lists her name as Samantha M. Markle.
“I was a Markle before she was,” she said. “I thought that was kind of weird that she would say I only changed my name back when she met Harry. Markle has always been my name.”
Samantha also said that she didn’t have any sympathy for Meghan, who is expecting her second child, after she spoke out about her suicidal thoughts, which she experienced as a result of the pressures of being a royal, living in the U.K. and expecting the couple’s first child, Archie.
“Depression is not an excuse for treating people like dishrags and disposing of them,” she said.
Samantha published the first half of her book about Meghan, which includes allegations about her half-sister’s “demanding” attitude and stories about the philanthropist’s first marriage to producer Trevor Engelson. It also featured text messages between Thomas, 76, and Harry, 36, after Meghan’s fallout with her father following his paparazzi photo scandal in May 2018.
Thomas told Us Weekly in January that he was “very pleased” by Samantha’s book. Samantha, for her part, insisted to Us that the book was “never designed to attack my sister.”
Meghan and Harry spoke openly about both of their families during the sit-down, with the duchess explaining her father “wasn’t able” to tell her the truth about the paparazzi photo scandal. Her mother, Doria Ragland, “never said a word” to the press, according to Meghan, who praised her ability to remain “in silent dignity for four years watching me go through this.”
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