Meghan Markle’s Half-Sister Confesses She Staged Father’s Paparazzi Pics
In a little more than a week, Meghan Markle is set to walk down the aisle and marry Prince Harry in the much anticipated royal wedding. Leading up to that, a series of paparazzi photos of her father Thomas Markle began appearing online — depicting him doing things like reading a book of photos about Great Britain, going to a tailor to get measured for a suit, and sitting at an Internet cafe looking up stories about his daughter and her fiancé Prince Harry.
If they looked suspiciously staged to royal-watching skeptics, there was good reason. His daughter Samantha Markle, half-sister to Meghan but with whom she has no relationship, admitted that she arranged to have the photos taken by paparazzi. It wasn't to make money for the photos, Samantha claims, but rather to put him in a sympathetic light.
“I have to say I am entirely the culprit,” Samantha said Monday, when she appeared on British talk show Loose Women, as reported by People. “As we know the media can take very unflattering photographs of people on their casual days and blow it way out of proportion. I said, you know, the world has no idea you’re getting in shape, doing healthy things. They don’t photograph you buying vegetables and PH water. They photograph you as unflattering ways as they can.”
Samantha told Loose Women that she wanted to show Thomas trying to get in shape and do healthy things. She denied allegations from publications such as the Daily Mail claiming she was trying to make money off the photos. The whole ruse was revealed when surveillance footage showed Thomas talking to a photographer at an Internet cafe in Rosarito, Mexico, where he lives, before the photographer took "candids" of him at the Internet café.
Although Meghan Markle has had an on-and-off relationship with her father, who was supposed walk her down the aisle but has since changed his mind following the "embarrassment" he caused with the paparazzi scandal, she has no relationship at all with her half-siblings, including Thomas Markle, Jr., who in a handwritten letter shared exclusively with In Touch, warned Prince Harry not to marry Meghan, calling her a "jaded, shallow, conceited woman." Ouch. Neither Samantha nor Meghan's half-brother Thomas Jr. (obviously!) are invited to the ceremony.
Prince Harry had asked pararazzi to let Thomas have his privacy, and in light of this latest story, the the palace has no comment.
