Meghan Markle’s half-sister has accused her of being “fake” in a blistering attack on social media. Samantha Markle posted an AI video on X of Meghan flying on a broomstick brandishing a sign reading “fake as ever”.
She captioned the post: “Sources report seeing my sister in the area of the hospital Dad is in. Could she be living up to all of that paid PR?” It has not been possible to confirm Ms Markle’s claim the Duchess is near where her father is being treated. The Duchess of Sussex’s office declined to comment.
Ms Markle tweeted an update about her father, telling her followers he would “be okay” and that “recovery time will do him good and the rest will sort itself out”.
Her criticism of Meghan comes after a spokesperson for the Duchess said she had “reached out” to her father, who is in a hospital in the Philippines where it is believed he has had his left leg removed.
Relations between Ms Markle and the Duchess have been strained for some time, with Ms Markle’s attempt to sue Meghan over comments made in a Netflix documentary and interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 dismissed by a US judge in March 2023.
Meghan and her father, Thomas Markle, have also been estranged since her 2018 wedding when he was caught staging paparazzi photos in the run-up to the big day.
Mr Markle previously told the Mail on Sunday he does not want to die distanced from his daughter and he wishes to meet Meghan’s children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, and husband, Prince Harry.
The same publication reported Mr Markle was “confused” by the suggestion Meghan had “reached out”,adding that he had not received any messages despite not changing his phone number.
Meghan reportedly contacted an email address which had not been used “for at least five years”, with the Mail on Sunday reporting Mr Markle “never uses email”.
The newspaper’s claims sparked an angry rebuke from a source close to Meghan who said the Mail made no attempt to contact the Duchess’s team prior to publication to verify the claims in their report.
The source said: “Had they asked – particularly in light of the quotes they relied upon from Mr Markle and hospital staff – we would simply have told them to ask Mr Markle to check his email.
“We first saw the story only after it was published. We immediately informed the Mail that the Duchess had, in fact, emailed her father – a detail we had deliberately chosen not to share in order to avoid further dragging this private matter into the public eye.”
It is understood Meghan has contacted reporters at the Mail to provide any means of contacting her father, as well as the name of the hospital where he is being treated but had not received any response.
And she has also rung around several hospitals in the Philippines but has been unsuccessful, it is understood.
It is also understood that Meghan does not have a phone number for Mr Markle and is also of the belief that he does not have a phone in his possession in hospital. Meghan is said to have tried to reach out to her father in the past.
The source also accused the Mail of “puppeteering this desperately sad situation”.
A spokesperson for the Daily Mail’s parent company DMG Media said in a statement: “Our journalist, Caroline Graham, has had a close relationship with Mr Markle since 2018.
“He contacted Ms Graham when he was taken ill and asked her to travel to the Philippines to be with him. Nothing has been published without his specific consent, and that of his son.
“Ms Graham has confirmed to the Duchess of Sussex’s representative that Mr Markle does not have an active email address but that his phone number, which the duchess has previously used for him, remains unchanged.
“Ms Graham has made clear that if she can do anything to facilitate contact between Mr Markle and his daughter to have a conversation, then she would be happy to do so. That remains the case.
“Any suggestion we have ‘puppeteered’ Mr Markle is entirely false and strongly denied.”
