In a bombshell that is already sending shockwaves through Montecito, London, and every group chat that still cares about the Sussexes, sources extremely close to Thomas Markle Sr. have confirmed what many have long suspected: Meghan Markle’s iconic “messy bun” and “effortless beach waves” that she paraded as her “natural texture” during her royal years were anything but natural.
According to multiple family friends who spoke exclusively on condition of anonymity, it was Meghan’s father, the reclusive retired lighting director Thomas Markle Sr., who quietly footed the bill for years of expensive chemical straightening treatments and silk presses – all so his biracial daughter could “look more like the straight-haired girls” at school and in Hollywood.
“He paid for everything,” one longtime friend of Thomas told us. “Japanese straightening, keratin treatments, Brazilian blowouts – you name it, he covered it. We’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars over the years. Tommy never complained once. He just wanted his little girl to feel confident and not get teased for her curly hair.”
The revelations paint a starkly different picture from the narrative Meghan has carefully cultivated since stepping onto the global stage. In her now-infamous 2021 Oprah interview, the Duchess of Sussex tearfully spoke of “concerns” in the palace about how dark her son Archie’s skin might be and implied that her biracial identity had been a lifelong struggle within largely white spaces.
She has repeatedly described her naturally curly hair as a core part of that identity – once telling Allure magazine in 2017, “My mom is Black and my dad is white, and I have the kind of curls that when they’re wet they go up to here [motioning to shoulders].”
Yet according to people who knew the Markles when Meghan was growing up in Los Angeles, those curls were chemically relaxed as early as middle school.“Meghan had beautiful natural hair, tight 3C curls,” recalls a former classmate from Little Flower Catholic High School (an all-girls private school that was predominantly white at the time).
“But she started getting it straightened religiously from about 12 or 13. The other girls had that California straight blonde thing going on, and Meghan wanted to blend in. Her dad paid for the best salons in town – places on Rodeo Drive, not cheap strip-mall spots.”Receipts allegedly still exist, our sources claim.
Thomas Sr. reportedly kept meticulous records of every salon charge on his credit cards – José Eber, Chris McMillan (the man behind Jennifer Aniston’s “Rachel” cut), and high-end Black salons in Inglewood that specialized in relaxers for biracial hair. One particularly lavish period came during Meghan’s Northwestern University years, when Thomas is said to have wired money every few months so his daughter could maintain the silky, swingy hair that became her trademark on Suits.
“Tommy used to joke that he spent more on Meghan’s hair than on her college textbooks,” a family friend laughed bitterly. “He never minded. He was proud of how she looked. But now to hear her act like she was embracing her natural texture while trashing the royal family for not accepting her Blackness… it hurts him.”
The irony is thick: the same woman who launched The Tig blog with posts celebrating “curly girl method” products and “embracing your natural texture” was allegedly touching up her roots with lye relaxers well into her 30s. Palace insiders whisper that when Meghan joined the royal family, she quietly continued the treatments at London’s most exclusive salons – again, reportedly bankrolled by private funds arranged through her father until the infamous “Sandringham Summit” fallout.
One particularly stinging detail: sources say Thomas Sr. even offered to pay for Meghan’s wedding-day hair in 2018 (the now-iconic messy bun that broke the internet), but was rebuffed. Instead, Meghan’s longtime stylist Serge Normant flew in from New York – at a reported cost of £15,000 – to create the “effortlessly undone” look that relied on extensions and a fresh keratin treatment, not natural curls.“Thomas just wanted to be part of it,” a source sighed.
“He still had the salon on speed dial.”As of press time, representatives for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have not responded to requests for comment, though friends of Meghan insist she stopped chemical straightening years ago and now uses only heat tools on her naturally wavy (not curly) hair.
But the damage is done: Twitter is ablaze with side-by-side photos of 1990s Meghan with a full afro-textured ponytail next to red-carpet Meghan with pin-straight locks, while memes of Thomas Markle holding a flat iron with the caption “The real MVP” are going viral.
For a woman whose brand has been built on “authenticity,” the revelation that her father quietly funded a decades-long quest for straight hair so she could “fit in” has left royal watchers stunned – and Thomas Markle Sr., now 81 and in poor health, quietly vindicated.Stay tuned. This is only the beginning.
There are so many women so much more beautiful than her, you see them every day, anywhere you go.