Something is going on in Isla de Saltines. In recent days, they’ve been pushing a lot of weird stories about the Duchess of Sussex and almost none of those stories have new information. It’s giving desperation, it’s giving “pay attention to me!” Speaking of, the Mail found some change at the back of the sofa, and they decided to pay Samantha Markle for another interview. When we last checked in on this c-u-next-Tuesday, Samantha’s defamation lawsuit against Meghan was being dismissed with prejudice back in March. Then Samantha and her lawyer gave some interviews about how they were not giving up and they’d find some way to continue to abuse the legal system to harass Meghan. So what’s new? The script Samantha is being paid to perform, I guess. Some lowlights:

Samantha’s mother died: Samantha Markle’s mother died six weeks ago. They had been estranged for many years. Things had been rocky anyway, but the nail in the coffin of their relationship, Samantha claims, was when her half-sister Meghan got engaged to Prince Harry, and the whole world turned its attention to the Markle family, in all its dysfunction. ‘And everyone sucked up to Meghan, even on the fringes of the family,’ says Samantha. ‘It was like the Emperor’s New Clothes. Unfortunately, my mother fell prey to it.’

Samantha talks to her father: She speaks to her father Thomas ‘every day, sometimes several times a day’, but Meghan has not been in contact since before her wedding. Thomas Markle has had two heart attacks and a stroke. He is 80, she points out, ‘and we don’t know how long he has’. Her anger returns. ‘Meghan has no idea what she is missing out on because when my dad goes, it will be too late. Believe me, I know. You can’t get back that time. It leaves a hole in your heart. When my father passes away, I hope she can feel, and remember he loved her more than life itself – or she will never be able to look in the mirror.’ She hasn’t finished. ‘Maybe Harry can learn something from me too,’ she continues.

The Sussexes’ interview with Oprah: ‘I don’t know the Royal Family. I’m just a human, watching from across the pond, but I couldn’t believe it.’ In particular, she was incensed by Harry’s implication he never had fun with Charles, and wasn’t able to go bike riding with him as a child. ‘Then we saw all those pictures of him rolling in the grass with Charles, laughing, riding on the back of his bike. I want to say to him “Why did you say it? Do you know what a gift that is? Maybe you didn’t get that every day, but you had it, and your family gave you those experiences”. I’d ask Harry “What did you give them? Heartache? Grief?”.’

How Meghan treated the Queen! ‘I never thought I would see Meghan do what she has done to the Royal Family. She’s done what she did to her own family to so many other people, too. I knew my dad had suffered, but I thought she would stop at the Queen.’ Samantha tells me ‘a line was crossed’ when Meghan mimicked curtseying to the Queen during the couple’s 2022 Netflix docuseries. ‘What a flagrant, nasty mockery of lovely royal protocol. And Harry sat there smiling, like a buffoon. He allowed it. In counselling [Samantha is a trained counsellor] we call this “enabling”.’

Her evolving view of Harry. ‘I used to think Harry was the victim here, that he had arrested development over the death of his mum and Meghan manipulated it. But there was no excuse for the things he said in his memoir Spare. There is no excuse for hurting people like that. Now I think of him as the teenage delinquent who throws stones at the windows of the school then sets it on fire, yet has the audacity to play the victim and say, “Oh I’ll come back to school on these terms”.’

On Meghan’s American Riviera Orchard line: The subject of American Riviera Orchard and Meghan’s lifestyle venture comes up – so far we’ve seen some jam and dog biscuits. ‘Is it in the shops? I don’t think it got beyond the PR stage,’ she muses ‘In the 70s, Tom [Samantha’s brother] and I would spend our summers with Grandma Markle and she did make jam, but that was long before Meghan was around. By the time she was interacting with Grandma Markle, she was in a care home and she certainly wasn’t making jam.’

[From The Daily Mail]

As a long-time reader of the British press/tabloids, I’m quite familiar with their talking points, Britishisms and worry-stones. Which is how I know Samantha was either operating from a script written by a British person, or she was being fed these lines by the Mail. No American says “is it in the shops?” No American gives a f–k if Meghan mocked the curtsy. No American thinks Spare was the story of a delinquent who constantly plays the victim. Between Samantha’s scripted interviews and her nuisance-suit harassment, Samantha is playing a really dangerous game. Also: with all of this talk about “family,” it’s good to remember that Samantha is estranged from her children, and Meghan is very close to her niece (Samantha’s daughter).

Photos courtesy of WENN.