Meghan Markle is estranged from her father, Thomas Markle — here are 9 things to know about him and their relationship

"It was the late '70s when my parents met, my dad was a lighting director for a soap opera and my mom was a temp at the studio. I like to think he was drawn to her sweet eyes and her Afro, plus their shared love of antiques," Meghan wrote about her parents, Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland, in a 2016 essay for Elle UK.

Thomas has worked on iconic shows like "Married... with Children" and "General Hospital," and he even won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Direction for a Drama Series.

"Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of 'Married... with Children,' which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up," she told Esquire in 2013. "There were a lot of times my dad would say, 'Meg, why don't you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-color for your 11-year-old eyes.'"

Meghan's father wouldn't let her watch the show at home, but she did reveal to Esquire that he allowed her to continue a sweet tradition.

"I could watch the end credits so I could give the screen a kiss when I saw my dad's name go by," she said.

Despite her parents splitting up when she was only 2 years old, Meghan described both as "so supportive" in a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair.

Despite initial reports that Thomas Sr. would not be invited to the royal wedding and that he and Meghan were estranged, Meghan's old writings presented him as a loving, protective caretaker throughout her childhood.

In a now-deleted Instagram post on Father's Day 2016, Meghan wrote, "Happy Father's Day, daddy. I'm still your buckaroo, and to this day your hugs are still the very best in the whole wide world.

"Thanks for my work ethic, my love of Busby Berkeley films & club sandwiches, for teaching me the importance of handwritten thank you notes, and for giving me that signature Markle nose. I love you."

In the "Meghan & Harry" Netflix docuseries, Meghan said she was a "daddy's girl my whole life" and was "with him a lot" growing up. Thomas Sr. also did lighting for Meghan's school plays.

"Tom did a lot for our school, being a lighting director and Meghan being so involved with performances," Susan Williger, Meghan's childhood friend, said in the docuseries.

The former "Suits" actress has two half-siblings, Samantha Markle and Thomas Markle Jr., who are the children of her father's first marriage.

In "Harry & Meghan," Meghan said that she spent weekdays with her mom and weekends with her dad as a child.

Samantha has repeatedly made headlines for lashing out at Harry and Meghan, while Thomas Jr. has accused Meghan of "acting phony" and "trying to reinvent herself as the new Princess Diana." Both have admitted they haven't spoken to their famous sister in years.

In "Harry & Meghan," Meghan said she had not seen Samantha since her early 20s.

"I don't know your middle name," she said of Samantha. "I don't know your birthday. You're telling these people you raised me, and you coined me Princess Pushy? I hadn't had a fallout with her. We didn't have a closeness to be able to have that. And I wanted a sister!"

A title card in the docuseries reads, "Samantha Markle maintains that she and Meghan had a close relationship until 2018 and that the media fabricated quotes that have been attributed to her."

Meghan's father encouraged her to define herself — especially when it came to race and heritage — on her own terms.

When she had to complete a mandatory census in seventh grade, she was confused by the limited options presented to her. To choose either "Caucasian" or "African-American," Meghan wrote for Elle UK, would be "to choose one parent over the other — and one half of myself over the other."

"My teacher told me to check the box for Caucasian," Meghan wrote. "When I went home that night, I told my dad what had happened. He said the words that have always stayed with me: 'If that happens again, you draw your own box.'"

Thomas Sr. also took the time to create a custom set of dolls to give to Meghan for Christmas, so that they would more closely represent her family and experience.

"This perfect nuclear family was only sold in sets of white dolls or black dolls. I don't remember coveting one over the other, I just wanted one," Meghan wrote for Elle UK. "On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, there I found my Heart Family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll, and a child in each color. My dad had taken the sets apart and customized my family."

Thomas Jr. told the Daily Mail in 2017 that his father had grown increasingly reclusive since the announcement of the engagement.

"Dad never liked the limelight, but since the news came out about Meghan and Harry he's become a total recluse," Thomas Jr. said. "I haven't seen him in years. He hates the attention Meghan's romance has brought on to him. He loves her but hates the idea of being in the spotlight."

He reportedly lives in a cliff-top house that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, around a 15-minute drive from the Mexican/US border.

In episode three of the docuseries, Meghan, Harry, and her mother, Doria Ragland, discussed the paparazzi scandal involving Thomas Sr., who reportedly accepted money to pose for paparazzi photos in May 2018 ahead of the couple's wedding, according to a Daily Mail report at the time.

Harry and Meghan said they learned from their communications team that TMZ would be publishing a story the next day saying Thomas posed for photos, Insider's Samantha Grindell and Anneta Konstantinides reported.

Meghan said she called her father to ask him if the story was true, and Thomas denied the allegations. According to Meghan, Thomas refused her and Harry's help to get him out of Mexico, where he was living, before the media began swarming his house.

"I was like, 'We'll just come and get you a day early, we'll get you out of Mexico.' And he said, 'No, no, I have things to do.' And it felt really cagey," Meghan said. "I was like, 'It doesn't make sense.' And when we hung up, I looked at H and I was like, 'I don't know why, but I don't believe him.'"

Meghan said she called her father more than 20 times as reports of the staged photos broke days before their wedding, but she said he never returned any of her calls.

Days before the royal wedding, Thomas Sr. told TMZ he had suffered a heart attack but checked himself out of the hospital so he could attend the wedding.

According to TMZ's report, his decision to drop out of the wedding was born of embarrassment over his recent paparazzi scandal more so than any health issues.

Meghan learned he wasn't coming to the wedding and that he had a heart attack through the tabloids, she said in the series.

In text messages to royal aides released by the Court of Appeals in London, Meghan said she wrote a five-page letter to her estranged father to "protect" Prince Harry from "constant berating" from other royals who were annoyed by him.

Meghan sued the Mail on Sunday in 2019 after it published the private letter. The Mail on Sunday went to England and Wales' Court of Appeals in 2021 to appeal a previous court ruling that it breached privacy and copyright laws by publishing the letter. Meghan won the appeal, meaning that the lawsuit wouldn't go to trial.

"This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what's right," the Duchess of Sussex said in a statement sent to Insider's Mikhaila Friel.

A spokesperson for Associated Newspapers said in a statement obtained by Insider that the company was "disappointed" by the decision.

Thomas Sr. went on to give several interviews to British media discussing his daughter's personal life and even attacked the royal family.

In a 2018 interview with The Sun, he called the royal family "cult-like" and said they were "either like Scientologists or the Stepford family."

He added, "They are cult-like — like Scientology — because they are secretive. They close the door, pull the shades down and put their fingers in their ears so they don't have to hear. Maybe they have a secret handshake too!"

Thomas Sr. has claimed multiple times that he has been frozen out by Meghan and her in-laws, and he has even publicly begged Meghan to reach out.

"If I had one message for her it would be that I'm sorry for anything that went wrong. I'd like to put our differences behind us and get together," he said in a July 2018 interview with The Sun. "If I had a message for Harry, it's 'get over it.' I'm your new father-in-law."

In the interview, Thomas Sr. claimed he had no working phone number or address to contact Meghan. He said he had texted a palace aide to ask about his daughter but received no reply.

Later that same month, he adopted a more hostile approach — doubling down on his critiques of royal protocol and describing his daughter as "cold" — in a nine-hour interview with the Daily Mail.

"What riles me is Meghan's sense of superiority. She'd be nothing without me. I made her the Duchess she is today. Everything that Meghan is, I made her," he told the Mail. "I was... making good money, and could afford to give her the best, with a good school, good education, good home."

"She became the woman that she is today thanks to everything I did for her," he continued. "And did I get any recognition for it? Any thanks? She doesn't even speak to me now. How cold is that?"

In 2017, during Meghan's first sit-down interview with her then-fiancé, she revealed her father had talked to Harry "a few times" but hadn't "been able to meet him just yet."

It was reported that the two men had finally met during a secret baptism ceremony at the Chapel Royal at St. James' Palace in March 2018, but Thomas Sr. later revealed that he never flew to England and hadn't met his daughter's husband.

Thomas Sr. discussed a heated phone call with Harry that took place before the wedding, during which he claimed the prince criticized his decisions to stage paparazzi photos.

He said he replied to Harry, "Maybe it would be better for you guys if I was dead … then you could pretend to be sad. Then I hung up."

In "Harry & Meghan," the couple said they feared Thomas' phone had become "compromised" after they received a strange text from him before the wedding. The purported text, shown in the series, read, "I've done nothing to hurt you Meghan, or anyone else I know nothing about 20 phone calls I'm sorry my heart attack is there any inconvenience for you [sic]."

"It was really weird. You know how people text, right?" Meghan said of the text. "My dad used a lot of emojis and ellipses and dot, dot, dot, and this was just the opposite. And it called me Meghan. I was like, 'He's never called me Meghan any day I've lived on this planet.' Meg, all my friends call me Meg and my parents call me Meg."

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday after the docuseries premiered, Thomas Sr. said the claim about his phone being compromised "is simply not true."

"I wrote that text as I lay in a hospital bed after having had two heart attacks and having stents put in," he said.

Harry said what happened between Meghan and Thomas Sr. was "incredibly sad."

"She had a father before this. And now she doesn't have a father," Harry said in the docuseries. "And I shouldered that, because if Meg wasn't with me then her dad would still be her dad."