- Meghan Markle addressed her half-sister Samantha Markle's book in a new clip from the Sussexes' interview with Oprah Winfrey.
- Samantha marketed her book as a "tell-all" memoir—but Meghan told Winfrey, "I think it'd be very hard to 'tell all' when you don't know me."
- "The last time I saw [Samantha] must have been at least 18, 19 years ago, and before that, 10 years before that," the Duchess of Sussex said. "She changed her last name back to Markle, I think she was in her early 50s at that time, only when I started dating Harry. So I think that says enough."
Meghan Markle spoke about her half-sister Samantha Markle's purportedly "tell-all" book in a new clip from the Sussexes' interview with Oprah Winfrey, released on Twitter Monday. Samantha, who has repeatedly attacked her sister in the media, released a memoir titled The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister Part 1 last month—but Meghan said the book couldn't contain any private information about her, considering she barely knows its author.
After Winfrey asked Meghan about her father, Thomas Markle, staging paparazzi photos, the conversation turned to Samantha and her book. "I think it'd be very hard to 'tell all' when you don't know me," Meghan explained. "This is a very different situation than my dad—when you talk about betrayal, betrayal comes from someone that you have a relationship with, right? I don't feel comfortable talking about people that I really don't know."
WATCH: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, tells @Oprah she wasn't close with her half-sister Samantha and she "changed her last name back to Markle... only when I started dating Harry. So I think that says enough."#OprahMeghanHarry pic.twitter.com/unfrStscZlMarch 8, 2021
"I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows, and I wished I had siblings," she continued. "I would have loved to have had siblings—that's why I'm so excited to be pregnant, so that Archie has someone."
"The last time I saw [Samantha] must have been at least 18, 19 years ago, and before that, 10 years before that," the Duchess of Sussex said. "She changed her last name back to Markle, I think she was in her early 50s at that time, only when I started dating Harry. So I think that says enough."
Earlier in the interview, Meghan opened up about her pain after her father, Thomas Markle, worked with the tabloid media to stage paparazzi photos before the Sussexes' royal wedding, and revealed that her father lied to her about doing so. "We called my dad and I asked him [whether he'd staged the photos]. He said, 'No, absolutely not,'" she told Winfrey. "I said, 'The institution has never intervened for anything for us, but they can try to go in and kill this story. But if they do this once, we're not gonna be able to use that same leverage to protect our own kids one day.'"
"I said, 'I just need you to tell me and if you tell me the truth, we can help,' and he wasn't able to do that. And that, for me, has really resonated, especially now as a mother," Meghan continued. "I look at Archie, I think about this child [due to arrive], and I genuinely can't imagine doing anything to intentionally cause pain to my child. I can't imagine it. So it's hard for me to reconcile that."
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Emily Dixon is a British journalist who’s contributed to CNN, Teen Vogue, Time, Glamour, The Guardian, Wonderland, The Big Roundtable, Bust, and more, on everything from mental health to fashion to political activism to feminist zine collectives. She’s also a committed Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, and Tracee Ellis Ross fan, an enthusiastic but terrible ballet dancer, and a proud Geordie lass.
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