Meghan discusses relationship with half-sister Samantha Markle
By Amarachi Orie, CNN
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has opened up about her distant relationship with her half-sister Samantha Markle in the highly-anticipated Netflix series, the first episodes of which aired on Thursday.
In the third episode of “Harry & Meghan,” the duchess said she “truly” believed that the UK media wanted her mother’s side of the family to be the ones where the drama could be “stirred up.”
But her mother was “classy and quiet” while her father’s side was “acting differently,” Meghan said.
The program then cuts to newspaper articles quoting Markle, who made various appearances on UK and international media outlets.
Meghan said: “My half-sister, who I hadn’t seen for over a decade — and that was only for a day and a half — suddenly, it felt like she was everywhere.
“I don’t know your middle name. I don’t know your birthday. You’re telling these people that you raised me, and you’ve coined me ‘Princess Pushy,'” she added.
Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, and father, Thomas Markle, separated when Meghan was two years old, according to Ragland.
“I don’t remember seeing her when I was a kid at my dad’s house — if and when they would come around,” said Meghan. “And then the last time that I saw her, that I remember, is when I was in my early twenties.
“I hadn’t had a fallout with her. We didn’t have a closeness to be able to have that. And I wanted a sister,” she added.
A statement shown in the episode read: “Samantha Markle maintains that she and Meghan had a close relationship until 2018 and that the media fabricated quotes that have been attributed to her.”
Samantha Markle’s daughter, Ashleigh Hale, who was raised and adopted by her grandparents, did speak in the Netflix documentary and expressed her closeness to Meghan.
“After the news (of Harry and Meghan’s relationship) first broke, Samantha pretty quickly began expressing a lot of angry words about Meg towards me. What was communicated to me was maybe some resentment,” Hale said.
She added that she and her mother stopped talking. “Some people you just can’t reason with,” she said.
More episodes of the documentary will be released on December 15.
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