Meghan Markle's father Thomas did drugs during her teenage years, despises being cut off by the Duchess of Sussex
Meghan Markle's father used to do drugs while he was working as a lighting director in Hollywood and when Meghan was just a teenager, reports said.
This comes in the wake of several reports that everything is not all right between the new member of the British royal family and Thomas Markle, who has said in interviews that his daughter has shut him out of her life ever since marrying Prince Harry, and has expressed fears that he will not be able to see his grandchildren.
Markle senior is said to have struggled with the pressure of the TV industry, according to the source who also added that drugs were "part and parcel" of the industry and Thomas Markle was no exception to the habit.
The source said while talking to the Mirror, "Tom was no different. He worked every hour God sent so he could give Meghan the life he wanted for her...After a while, such long hours take their toll and Tom would use drugs that helped him work for longer. Coffee just didn’t cut it.”
However, the source also added that the former lighting director would often work over 16 hours a day in order to provide Meghan with the best of everything.
The 74-year-old himself in an interview with Daily Mail said he "did drugs," but said he hadn't touched them in almost 20 years.
He also denied being an alcoholic as he said, "I hardly drink at all, just a little wine with my dinner, nothing much.”
Although Thomas did not mention what drugs he was on, his daughter Samantha Grant talking to Mirror confirmed that marijuana was quite a popular mean for addiction at the time when he worked for Hollywood. She added, "My father is upstanding and doesn’t really drink...But in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for most people, I know in America it was a cultural thing to smoke marijuana." She also mentioned that Thomas had never taken drugs. “But certainly my father has never taken cocaine or any other drugs like that. He didn’t have the mentality for it."
She explained, "He was a really successful lighting director which required very sharp visuals and attention to detail...If he had been a drug addict he wouldn’t have been successful for 40 years in a highly technical job, no way.”
However, Meghan seems to be quite unaware about her father's problematic past. Probably it is due to this fact that she has cut herself completely from her father. Although he apologized for staging fake paparazzi shots on 'Good Morning Britain', he has refused to remain silent regarding his daughter's cut off.
As he fears that he might not be able to see his grandchildren. "How tragic is that, to deprive a child of its grandfather because I said a few things critical of the Royal Family?" he said.
He went to claim that whatever was going on between him and his daughter was wrong and that he would not remain silent about it. "I tell you, I've just about reached my limit with Meghan and the Royal Family. They want me to be silent, they want me to just go away. But I won't be silenced. I refuse to stay quiet. What riles me is Meghan's sense of superiority. She'd be nothing without me. I made her the Duchess she is today. Everything that Meghan is, I made her."
The Emmy-award winning lighting director who funded his daughter expensive holidays when she was a teenager, claimed that he had never asked her for anything although he did suffer from certain financial setbacks over the years.
He also lost a vast portion of his lottery winnings and now supports himself on pensions and social security payments. He has been angry about Meghan's support for her mother Doria, who was the only one from the Markle family to attend the wedding. A friend also mentioned that Thomas who is now suffering from heart ailments has is upset and feels "completely cut off" from her. He also mentioned that he probably no longer has his daughter's number.
"He used to have Meghan’s number but now if he tries it’s dead. She, or the Palace, have changed them all. Only last week he mentioned it was Meghan’s birthday this Saturday, but he has no idea how to send her a card. We joked he should turn up himself and hand-deliver it."
However, it seems that Thomas Markle couldn't have helped but invoked Princess Diana's name in an already controversial saga. He claimed that Princess Diana would have probably hated the way he was being treated.
He said: "They [the Royal Family] have Meghan treating her father in a way that Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, would have loathed. That’s not what Diana stood for...Princess Diana is credited with changing the Royal Family, but she wasn’t perfect. She was still very much one of them."
However, while speaking with Peter Sheridan and Caroline Graham for The Mail on Sunday, Thomas Markle, in the end, didn't mind throwing some derogatory comments on the way of the royals. "Who cares these days about a dusty old crown?... Okay, maybe it’s been polished, but it’s an ancient institution, stuck in its ways."
