What Meghan Said About Her Childhood as Half-Sister's Lawsuit Heats Up

Meghan Markle and her half-sister Samantha Markle have traded blows over the duchess' upbringing with the royal's lawyers defending her right to view herself as an only child.

Samantha Markle has sued Meghan for libel over the account she gave Oprah Winfrey suggesting they had little to no relationship.

In the latest court filing, Meghan's lawyers said that her words were an expression of her subjective perception of her childhood rather than a statement of fact and therefore could not be false.

Meghan Says She 'Grew Up as an Only Child'

Oprah Winfrey asked Meghan about Samantha Markle's "supposedly tell-all book about you" during the March 2021 interview.

"I think it'd be very hard to tell all when you don't know me," the duchess replied. "And I mean, this is a very different situation than my dad, right? When you talk about betrayal, betrayal comes from someone that you have a relationship with, right?

"I don't feel comfortable talking about people that I really don't know. But I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows.

"And I wished I had siblings. I would have loved to have had siblings. So I'm so excited to be pregnant [so] that Archie has someone. [It] was really interesting to me, I mean, the last time I saw her must have been at least 18, 19 years ago. And before that, 10 years before that."

"She changed her last name back to Markle in, I think she was in her early 50s at that time, only when I started dating Harry," Meghan added.

In a court filing seen by Newsweek, Samantha Markle's legal team said: "During the course of the show which aired on March 7, 2021, and was subsequently replayed on numerous televisions and online media platforms, the Duchess stated that she was 'an only child,' who only met Mrs. Markle 'a handful of times,' and that Mrs. Markle only changed her surname to 'Markle' after the Duchess started dating Prince Harry so that Mrs. Markle could cash in on her newfound fame. None of these statements were true."

Meghan's 'Rags to Riches' Story

The lawsuit accuses Meghan of smearing Samantha Markle to prevent her from successfully challenging a "rags to riches" narrative of her rise to royalty.

The complaint said: "At all times relevant, the statements and allegations were made by the Duchess with the sole intent to damage Mrs. Markle's reputation and credibility with the public so that she was virtually unbelieved.

"The Duchess did so in order to push her concocted 'rags to riches' life story, without contradiction or negation from Mrs. Markle or other family members."

Samantha Markle's original complaint form cited an open letter Meghan sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer calling for Paid Leave for All in October 2021, seven months after the Oprah interview.

The duchess wrote: "I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler—it may have cost less back then (to be honest, I can't remember)—but what I do remember was the feeling: I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky.

"And as a Girl Scout, when my troop would go to dinner for a big celebration, it was back to that same salad bar or The Old Spaghetti Factory—because that's what those families could afford to do too."

"I started working (at the local frozen yogurt shop) at the age of 13," Meghan added. "I waited tables, babysat, and piecemealed jobs together to cover odds and ends.

"I worked all my life and saved when and where I could—but even that was a luxury—because usually it was about making ends meet and having enough to pay my rent and put gas in my car."

However, Samantha Markle parted ways with her original legal team earlier in 2022 and a new, amended complaint only references the existence of a "rags to riches" narrative without giving details.

What Samantha Says About Their Childhood

Samantha Markle provided a very different account of her relationship with Meghan in her court filings by her legal team.

She said: "During their childhood, the Duchess was very close to her older sister despite their 17-year age difference.

"Mrs. Markle was more than a model to follow, but she was also the one who regularly drove the Duchess to school and helped her with homework, went on shopping trips to the local mall, and overall had a wonderful relationship with her younger sister.

"During the years which followed, including the time in which the Duchess was succeeding in her career as an actress, the two sisters continued to have a good and close relationship.

"Unfortunately, it was after the Duchess met and became engaged to Price [sic] Harry that their relationship became estranged and hostile."

Meghan's own legal team was dismissive in their court filing calling for the case to be thrown out.

The document, seen by Newsweek, read: "Even if [Samantha] did 'visit the Duchess,' take her 'to school,' or 'help [her] with her homework'—none of which is true—that would only go to their relationship when Meghan was a young child."

"Meghan's response to that question that she 'grew up as an only child' was obviously not meant to be a statement of objective fact that she had no genetic siblings or half-siblings," the complaint added. "Rather, it was a textbook example of a subjective statement about how a person feels about her childhood."

Meghan's lawyers added that Samantha and Meghan only lived with each other up until the duchess was two years old.