Meghan Markle’s father Thomas Markle, with whom she’s had a long-running estranged relationship, is now coming after Oprah Winfrey for her interview with the royal couple in March. According to the patriarch, he feels the billionaire is “taking advantage” of the couple by interviewing the couple while they’re in a vulnerable state. “Oprah Winfrey, for one, I think Oprah Winfrey is playing Harry and Meghan,” he said in a new interview with 60 Minutes Australia. “I think she’s using them to build her network and build her new shows. I think she’s taking advantage of a very weakened man and getting him to say things that you just shouldn’t be saying on television.”
Markle’s troubled relationship with her father has been well documented. He infamously staged photos of the two of them for the press close to her highly publicized wedding in 2018 โโ which led to his exclusion from the wedding. He also released a personal letter from his daughter to the media. Markle’s half-sister Samantha later took the wrap for setting up the photoshoot in the hopes that it would keep the peace among both parties. Markle briefly discussed her relationship with her father and his inclination to run to the media. “I said, ‘I just need you to tell me, if you tell me the truth, we can help,’” she shared during the interview. “And he wasn’t able to do that, and that for me has really resonated, especially now as a mother. I look at Archie, I think about this child, and I genuinely can’t imagine doing anything to intentionally cause pain to my child.”
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Thomas has made it pretty clear that he didn’t appreciate the couple’s interview with Oprah. He voiced his side of the conversation on an episode of Good Morning Britain, where he aimed to clear some of his name. “We all make mistakes โโ but I’ve never played naked pool or dressed like Hitler like Harry did,” he said. “It really did upset me, like I said, it would have been easy for her to reach out to me, any of the rest of her family, who she claims she doesn’t know. But the other thing is that I would think that she could turn to her husband,” Markle claimed. When it was brought to his attention that Meghan actually had spoken to her husband regarding her mental health, Markle quickly retorted that Harry had “obviously not supported her that well.”