Harry & Meghan details the lives of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and several of the people involved in their lives, such as Meghan’s half-sister Samantha. Samantha and Meghan are currently estranged from each other and do not share a close relationship. According to Meghan, the two did not spend much time together growing up and as adults have rarely encountered each other. However, Samantha begs to differ.
In episode three of Netflix's controversial documentary, Harry and Meghan discussed a series of events leading up to the couple’s 2018 wedding that ultimately led to Meghan becoming estranged from her father, Thomas Markle. A large part of these events centered around Thomas Markle working with the paparazzi to stage photos. Harry later recalled in that episode, "Of course, it's incredibly sad what happened. She had a father before this, and now she doesn't have a father. And I shouldered that, because if Meg wasn't with me, then her dad would still be her dad.” This does not appear to have been taken kindly to by Samantha Markle, or her father Thomas Markle, who have both also taken issue with the series as a whole.
Samantha Markle Doesn't Support The Harry & Meghan Documentary
There were a number of reasons Samantha Markle was not supportive of the Netflix documentary on her half-sister’s relationship with Prince Harry. This mainly revolves around the fact she felt that the documentary was unfairly biased against her and her father, Thomas Markle. Samantha Markle states feeling that the show had made her father out to be a bad person following his involvement in the paparazzi photo scandal. Additionally, Samantha has publicly stated that she found the show to be “distasteful” and she was currently more concerned with taking care of her father, who suffered a stroke and heart attack in recent years, than watching the show (via PageSix).
Although Meghan claims to have never had a close relationship with her half-sister, Samantha claims the opposite. In a statement made to the streaming service Netflix, she maintained that she had a “close relationship” with Meghan until the 2018 estrangement. Samantha was also unhappy about a quote in Harry & Meghan wherein Harry compared Meghan to his mother, Princess Diana, stating “Diana was never noted as destroying other people, ignoring people through heart attacks, strokes, pandemics” (via 1News).
Where Is Samantha Markle Now?
There is not much information available on what Samantha has been up to outside the drama with her half-sister. As mentioned previously, she has recently been taking care of her father, Thomas Markle, in the wake of his stroke and heart attack. She has also filed a defamation lawsuit against Meghan that is set to go to trial in October 2023.
In the case, she has claimed that Meghan defamed her during a widely televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, where Meghan stated that she was raised as an only child with no siblings. Additionally, she asserts that she was further defamed in the book Finding Freedom, which was written with the assistance of Harry and Meghan. She alleges that the book derides Samantha for losing custody of her kids, and portrays her as a deadbeat parent (via New York Post). Unfortunately, further episodes of Harry & Meghan are unlikely to make this fraught familiar relationship any smoother.