Apparently intent on earning the title of worst dad ever, Thomas Markle is set to appear on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, where he’ll be interviewed by another infamously terrible person, Piers Morgan.
His appearance follows Sunday night’s bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview, which heard Meghan Markle speak out for the first time about her relationship to her estranged father.
According to Markle, Thomas went behind her back to talk to British tabloids for a story slated to run just before the 2018 royal wedding. Markle said when she gave her father the opportunity to come clean, he lied: “We called my dad and we asked him, and he said, ‘No, absolutely not,’” Markle told Winfrey. “I said, ‘The institution has never intervened in anything for us but they can try to go in and kill this story. But if they do this once, we’re not going to 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,’” Markle continued. “And he wasn’t able to do that. And that for me has really resonated, especially now as a mother.”
When Winfrey asked if Markle considered her father’s actions a “betrayal” she said she wasn’t sure if she was comfortable talking about that. But the idea that her father would do something to cause her so much distress was “hard for [her] to reconcile.”
And it wouldn’t be the last time either: Since Meghan Markle and Harry got married, Thomas Markle has given countless exclusive interviews to British media about his daughter and the royal family, shamelessly profiting from his tenuous association with them. In 2018, for example, he was exposed for staging photos of himself and selling them to the paparazzi. A year later, after receiving a highly personal letter from Markle pleading with him to stop talking to the press, he turned around and handed the letter over to to the Mail on Sunday for publication.
So if you ask me, Markle’s comments about her dad seem remarkably restrained, given…all of this. Nonetheless, Morgan’s plug for his Thomas Markle interview insists that she “trashed her dad on US TV.”
The last time Thomas Markle was interviewed by Morgan, in 2018, he claimed Prince Harry gave him the impression that he was “open to the experiment” of Brexit, and told him he should “Give Donald Trump a chance.”
What should we expect this time? Well, Thomas Markle has called his daughter “controlling” before, which raises the possibility that he might roll with the allegations that Meghan Markle faced a “bullying complaint” during her time at Kensington Palace. (Word of this complaint happened to surface mere days before her sit-down with Winfrey.) And he’ll probably continue to portray himself as a loving father who is being snubbed by his daughter.
All I can say is that I hope Meghan Markle has a good therapist!