In a revelation that has left royal watchers reeling, fresh evidence and insider accounts have confirmed that Meghan Markle has not contacted her father, Thomas Markle Sr., once since May 2018 – despite the retired Hollywood lighting director having sacrificed everything to give his daughter the privileged, opportunity-filled life she later described to Prince Harry as “never having a family.”
Sources close to the Markle family, speaking exclusively to multiple outlets this week, paint a devastating picture of a father frozen out, financially cut off, and emotionally devastated – all while the Duchess of Sussex allegedly told Prince Harry in the earliest days of their whirlwind romance that he was “the family she never had.”“Thomas gave her everything,” a longtime family friend told The Sun. “Private schools, Northwestern University tuition, cars, auditions, headshots, apartments, vacations – you name it, he paid for it.
He worked double shifts on movie sets with broken bones just so Meghan never had to worry about money. And now? Radio silence for seven straight years.”Thomas Markle, now 81 and in failing health, has repeatedly stated in interviews that he has not heard from his daughter since a single tense phone call days after the 2018 paparazzi photo scandal – a call that ended with Meghan allegedly telling him, “If you had listened to me, this would never have happened.”
Since then: nothing. No birthday calls. No Christmas cards. No contact after his 2018 heart attack. No inquiry after his 2022 stroke. Not even a text when he was photographed using a wheelchair in 2024.Yet during the couple’s courtship in 2016–2017, multiple sources close to the early stages of the relationship claim Meghan presented a very different story to Prince Harry.
“She told Harry she essentially grew up as an only child with no real family structure,” one former palace aide revealed. “That her parents were long divorced, her half-siblings were distant, and that she’d never truly had a family until she met him and the Royal Family. Harry believed he was giving her the family she’d always been denied. That narrative was central to how quickly and intensely he fell for her.”
That version, however, directly contradicts decades of Thomas Markle’s documented devotion.
- He won sole custody of Meghan when she was young after her mother Doria moved out, raising her full-time from age 6 onward.
- He paid for 12 years of private Catholic schooling at Little Red Schoolhouse and Immaculate Heart High School – tuition that exceeded $20,000 a year in the 1990s.
- He personally drove her to every audition, dance class, and play rehearsal – often working 14-hour night shifts on shows like Married… with Children and then waking up at 6 a.m. to chauffeur her.
- He paid in full for her double major at Northwestern University – a bill that topped $200,000.
- He bought her first car, paid her rent in Toronto during Suits, and even co-signed the lease on her first Los Angeles apartment.
“Thomas literally lived for Meghan,” another crew member who worked with him for decades said. “He had photos of her taped up all over his lighting booth. Every time someone asked about his kids, it was ‘My Meghan this, my Meghan that.’ He was the proudest father in Hollywood.”Even Meghan herself publicly acknowledged this unbreakable bond – repeatedly – before meeting Harry.In her 2014 Father’s Day post on The Tig she wrote: “You made my childhood magical… you never missed a dance recital, a school play, a graduation. You were there for everything.”In a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair – while already dating Harry – she said of her father: “He’s always been so supportive… I’ve never had to go without because of him.”
Yet within months of the wedding, the narrative flipped entirely.In the 2021 Oprah interview, Meghan claimed she “lost” her father and implied he had betrayed her. In the Netflix series Harry & Meghan, the couple portrayed Thomas as someone who “sold them out” for money – despite evidence showing he was paid less than £1,000 for the staged photos and later returned most of it.
Now, seven years into total silence, Thomas Markle has made a final public plea through the Daily Mail: “I just want to hear her voice one more time. I may not have much time left. All I ever did was love her.”
As of December 2025, palace and Sussex sources confirm: Meghan has still made no contact.Royal biographer Tom Bower, whose book Revenge first exposed the extent of Thomas’s sacrifices, told GB News: “This isn’t just a family rift.
This is a daughter who erased the man who gave her everything the moment he became an inconvenience to her new image. And she sold Prince Harry a story that simply wasn’t true – that she had no family until him. The truth is she had a father who adored her more than life itself… and she ghosted him the second she got the crown.”The silence from Montecito speaks louder than any statement ever could.
