Meghan Markle’s estranged father has plenty of blistering words to say about her Netflix series.
Thomas Markle has accused the Duchess of Sussex of being inauthentic in “With Love, Meghan.” He even went as far as to say that the 43-year-old used “pre-planned” facial expressions to appear relatable.
“Unfortunately, Meghan has never been authentic,” the former Hollywood lighting director told the U.K.’s Daily Mail. “She has to think about everything. She’s not spontaneous. Everything she says is pre-planned and rehearsed. It makes me laugh because I know all her looks and expressions.”
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“I know when she’s faking it for the cameras,” the patriarch insisted. “She’s trying so hard to be perfect that she tenses up every time the camera is on her.”
The 80-year-old previously served as a TV lighting director and director of photography on shows like “Married… with Children” and “General Hospital.”
Looking back on his experience in the filming industry, the Emmy Award winner noted that “cooking shows are horrendously boring unless the presenter has a passion for it.”
“You have to be authentic to hold people’s attention,” he explained. “… The best cooks are funny, they mess up, they are human. She just wants to be perfect. It’s sad because she’s trying so hard to stay in the limelight.”
In the series, the mother of two described herself as “a latchkey kid” who “grew up on a lot of fast food and TV dinners.” Thomas told the outlet that he was working two jobs “so money was never an issue.”
“We occasionally ate TV dinners, which family doesn’t?” he said. “… We would eat out at least three times a week and order in the rest of the time.”
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“Like any single father who did a long day’s work, I’d occasionally put a TV dinner in the microwave,” he said. “But most of the time we’d go out. After school, I would either pick her up myself, and we’d go out to eat, or I’d send a car to bring her to the set. She grew up on the sets I worked on. She was never a latchkey kid.”
“We lived in a great area, which was packed with restaurants,” he said. “We ate out all the time. At weekends when I wasn’t working, I’d take her to a dance class and then invite her and all her friends out for a meal.”
He claimed that Meghan never showed much interest in cooking growing up.
In the show, Meghan clarified to Mindy Kaling that she now uses “Sussex” as a shared family name with her husband and their children. Thomas said his mother would be “disappointed” to learn that her famous granddaughter no longer uses the name “Markle.”
“My mother was proud to be a Markle – so am I,” he said. “Meghan never had a problem with the Markle name until she met Prince Harry.”
“Now, I have to say, ‘I am Meghan Sussex’s dad,’” he added, “with bitter sarcasm.”
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Thomas admitted to the outlet that he hadn’t seen “With Love, Meghan” in its entirety, only clips of the eight-episode series. He said it was too painful to watch.
“I might sit down and watch it one day, but I’m not sure,” he said.
Fox News Digital reached out to a spokesperson for the “Suits” alum for comment.
According to the outlet, Thomas was cut off by his daughter on the eve of her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry. He said he suffered two heart attacks which prevented him from attending the ceremony in the U.K. He believes Meghan has never forgiven him.
“I still don’t know why she dumped me,” he said.
The outlet noted that Thomas relocated to the Philippines earlier this year from his previous home in Rosarito, Mexico.
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In her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan told the media mogul that before the royal wedding, she learned that her father was “working with the tabloids” to stage paparazzi photos.
“The tabloids had apparently known [his location] for a month or so and decided to hold until the Sunday before our wedding because they wanted to create drama,” she explained.
“We called my dad, and I asked him [about staging the photos],” she said. “He said, ‘No, absolutely not.’… 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… 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.”
Meghan’s half-sister Samantha took responsibility for arranging her father’s staged paparazzi photos.
Meghan and Thomas were involved in a privacy and copyright infringement case. The duchess won her case against the Mail on Sunday’s publishers in 2021 after they reproduced parts of a handwritten letter she wrote to her father after her wedding. The letter was described as “a heartfelt plea from an anguished daughter to her father.”
The publisher had argued that the publication of the letter was Thomas’ attempt to reply to a People magazine interview in which five of Meghan’s friends alleged he was “cruelly cold-shouldering” his daughter in the run-up to her wedding.
Meghan and Harry announced in early 2020 that they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America. They said the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media prompted the move. They have settled in California with their two young children.
“With Love, Meghan” is returning for Season 2 in the fall.
