Prince Harry To Blame For Lack Of Support Over Paparazzi Attention, Meghan Markle's Dad Claims

Meghan Markle's dad, Thomas Markle Sr., has opened up about his experience with the paparazzi since his daughter began dating Prince Harry.

The Duchess of Sussex's estranged father, 77, claimed to GB News Thursday that he did not get enough support from his daughter and Prince Harry when it came to dealing with paparazzi attention. The former lighting director appeared to partly blame the 2018 fiasco that involved him staging paparazzi photos with a British tabloid on the lack of support from the couple, especially Prince Harry.

"I'm blaming Harry for this mostly," Thomas said when asked if he feels that the duchess should have supported him on this rather than believe media reports. "Harry has this saying: if you look at the paparazzi, you're doing your own thing. That's the only advice Harry and Meghan ever gave me about paparazzi."

Thomas explained that he managed to hide from the paparazzi for almost nine months before they found him at his home in Mexico.

"When they found me, they wouldn't let up," he recalled. "Every day, they rented the porches on both sides of my house, so they could take continuous pictures of me every time we left the house. They were there every day."

When GB News' Dan Wootton suggested that Prince Harry should have given him support as, similar to his own mother Princess Diana, Thomas also suffered from a media storm that he didn't ask for, Meghan's father said he was "over and above that."

Thomas slammed Prince Harry for allegedly never reaching out to his father-in-law. "I'm surprised that Harry never bothered to come down to visit me or ask for my daughter's hand," the 77-year-old continued. "I would think that would be one of the first things that a royal would do. He never bothered to come down. He just asked for her hand over the phone."

Thomas also claimed that it was hypocritical that the couple didn't want him to talk to the paparazzi before his daughter's wedding but aired their own private family matters in a bombshell interview.

"It's embarrassing for them to be telling me a few years ago to ‘never talk to the press,' but then they spend three hours on a show with Oprah where Harry claims he's reclaiming his mental illness and curing himself. It is a joke," he said. "You don’t go on the TV and talk for three hours and get rid of your mental illness, you talk to a psychiatrist in a room somewhere and you work out your problems."

Prince Harry had previously shared his therapy session in his documentary series, "The Me You Can't See," with Oprah Winfrey on Apple TV+. In one episode, he also spoke about Princess Diana's death and how the media attention on their family has affected him.

"The clicking of cameras and the flash of cameras makes my blood boil. It makes me angry. It takes me back to what happened to my mum, what I experienced as a kid," he told Winfrey. "I was so angry with what happened to her, and the fact that there was no justice at all. The same people that chased her through that tunnel photographed her dying on the back seat of that car."

Meanwhile, Thomas also revealed during an interview on "Good Morning Britain" back in March that he felt forced into staging the photos with the paparazzi because he felt unprotected by Meghan, Prince Harry and the rest of the royal family in the face of constant press attention at his home.

He recalled not being able to "go anywhere or do anything without being photographed."

"I wish I hadn't done the whole thing," Thomas said at the time.