Nearly a week after Meghan Markle’s estranged 81-year-old father was rushed to a hospital in the Philippines for a health emergency, leading to his left leg being amputated below the knee, the beleaguered, California-based duchess was finally able to get a letter to him, marking their first contact in seven years.
But as Meghan’s spokesperson confirmed that a letter had been “safely” delivered to Thomas Markle in his hospital room, her spokesperson also blamed a tabloid reporter, Caroline Graham, for preventing her from privately contacting her father days earlier, Newsweek reported. The spokesperson said that Graham, who works for the Daily Mail, had been by the ailing man’s bedside since last week, “broadcasting each interaction and breaching clear ethical boundaries.”
It remains to be seen whether this accusation against the Daily Mail reporter will end suggestions that Meghan was hoping to ignore her father’s health emergency or will alleviate the public relations crisis that has been swirling around her team’s disjointed response to his hospitalization and surgery. The PR crisis erupted almost as soon as Netflix released her “With Love, Meghan” Christmas special on Dec. 3, in which Prince Harry’s wife, an aspiring lifestyle influencer, attempted to present herself as a champion of love, compassion and family holiday traditions — despite the fact that she has been estranged from her father since 2018 and has apparently refused to reconcile with him, according to the Daily Beast’s European editor Tom Sykes.
Due to her rift with her father, the Duchess of Sussex apparently didn’t feel as though she could just pick up the phone and call him after he was rushed to the hospital — not without the fear that the conversation would be leaked to the media, according to Feminegra.com magazine. But her team also hasn’t helped matters by issuing non-responsive, vague or conflicting statements about any efforts she made to each out to him, Sykes added.
In response to Meghan’s accusation about Graham’s alleged interference, the Daily Mail shot back to defend Graham, explaining that she also has been friend of Meghan’s father since 2018. When Markle took ill in the Philippines, where he has been living the past year, Graham responded to his request to fly from Los Angeles to be with him.
“She has been with Mr. Markle in hospital every day, providing him with care and support,” a spokesperson for the Daily Mail Group (DMG) said. Rather than prevent Meghan from reaching her father, Graham sought the ailing man’s consent to share his contact details with his daughter’s representatives, including the name of his hospital and room number.
“It is entirely untrue that each interaction has been broadcast, and the suggestion that Caroline has breached ethical boundaries is demonstrably false and vehemently denied,” the DMG spokesperson said.
For a Daily Mail story published Saturday, Graham interviewed Markle after his Dec. 3 surgery and quoted him as saying that he didn’t want to die estranged from his daughter and that he hoped to one day meet his grandchildren, Archie, 6, and Lilibet, 4, “before it’s too late.” Graham also photographed Markle in his hospital bed as he said he was “confused” by widespread reports that his daughter had “reached out” to contact him after he was hospitalized. Markle said he had never changed his phone number so that his daughter “could always get in touch with me.”
With Markle’s permission, Graham said the Daily Mail independently confirmed with the hospital that their administration office, reception, intensive care unit and nurses and doctors attending him had not heard from Meghan or her representatives. On Monday, Graham published a story quoting Markle’s surgeon as saying his leg was healing but that he had “a long road of recovery ahead of him.”
Graham also revealed that two representatives from the U.S. consulate in Cebu had visited Markle, with a consular official saying that the U.S. Embassy in Manila had asked them to check on him. But the official declined to give further details. Feminagra.com reported that Meghan’s team had likely reached out to the State Department to help facilitate her contact with her father and to get a private letter to him.
Meghan’s difficult family relationships became known in the run-up to her May 2018 royal wedding to Prince Harry. Both her older half-brother and half-sister, Thomas Markle Jr. and Samantha Markle, began bashing her in interviews with the U.K. tabloids. They called her a social climber and complained that that they were not invited to her star-studded wedding.
Then their father, a retired Hollywood lighting designer, was caught collaborating with paparazzi to stage photos as he prepared to travel to the U.K. to walk Meghan down the aisle. When Harry and Meghan became angry about the paparazzi stunt, Markle said he apologized but said the couple wouldn’t forgive him and cast him off — while he continued to give interviews criticizing his daughter for her treatment of him.
Graham’s friendship with Markle dates back to when he first became estranged from his daughter, with Femineara.com reporting that she became his “preferred point of contact” at the Daily Mail and has “covered every major rupture in his relationship with Meghan.” Notably, Graham co-authored the 2019 Mail on Sunday article that published excerpts of a private letter Meghan wrote to her father the year before, begging him to stop talking to the media, Feminegra.com reported. That article sparked Meghan’s privacy lawsuit against the Daily Mail. Since then, Meghan has avoided direct contact with her father and would be understandably concerned that contents of her new letter to him would be leaked to the public, possibly via Graham, according to Feminegra.com and Newsweek.
Thomas Markle Jr. first revealed last week to the Daily Mail that his father had been rushed to a hospital in Cebu, where the two men have been living. He said his father had suffered a blood clot and was in the intensive care unit. Through a spokesperson, Meghan initially refused to comment about her father’s situation, as if they hoped they could ignore it, according to Sykes. Then, a member of Meghan’s team told the London Times that they were worried that Markle’s health crisis could be a hoax by saying that the duchess had instructed them to “find out if her father is unwell,” Sykes also reported.
To some, Meghan’s wariness is understandable given that her father has not been averse in the past to using a health situation to garner public sympathy, Sykes said. Then, after news broke about her father losing his lower left leg, a spokesperson for Meghan cryptically told People that she had “reached out to her father,” without explaining how. Meanwhile, as further evidence of Graham’s alleged interference, Feminegra.com said that the reporter revealed that Markle first told her — not his own children — that his leg needed to be amputated.
The Daily Beast’s Sykes said the story about Meghan and her family is “complex,” given that her father has conceded that he has “been foolish, vain and thoughtless,” while her older half-siblings are “compromised individuals who have relentlessly sought to monetize their connection” to her. To Meghan’s supporters, it’s understandable that she would want to limit contact with family members whom she can’t trust and whom she regards as toxic.
But Meghan also has faced criticism for offering a version of her childhood that pretty much eliminates her father’s role in helping to raise her after he divorced her mother, Doria Ragland, when she was 2 years old. According to author Tom Bower, Meghan lived with her loving, indulgent father in Los Angeles during her teen years, while he paid for her to go to private schools and to Northwestern University. In 2014, she wrote a father’s day tribute to him, thanking him for “the blood, sweat and tears this man invested in my future so that I could grow up to have so much.”
As Sykes said, Meghan isn’t just any ordinary woman needing to establish boundaries with problematic relatives. She’s a world-famous entrepreneur who is trying to build a business and philanthropic brand around the virtues of warmth and compassion. In her dealings with her father’s health crisis, she’s opened herself up “to allegations of gross hypocrisy, preaching compassion and warm family traditions while refusing to reconcile with her father,” as Sykes said.
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