Samantha Markle says Meghan hung up on her after she started dating Prince Harry

• Samantha Markle filed an amended complaint in her defamation lawsuit against Meghan on Friday.
• She said that Meghan hung up the phone on her after she started dating Prince Harry.

Meghan Markle's half-sister Samantha Markle filed an amended complaint in her defamation lawsuit against the Duchess of Sussex on Friday. Among the new claims in the complaint, Samantha, 57, alleges that Meghan, 40, hung up on her during a phone call shortly after she began dating Prince Harry.

Samantha first sued Meghan for defamation on March 3 as a result of comments Meghan made about Samantha in her interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 and statements published about Samantha in the duchess' biography "Finding Freedom," according to the complaint Insider was able to review. The book was written by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, though the Duchess of Sussex's lawyers said Meghan gave her permission to a friend to speak to the authors despite previously denying she was involved.

Samantha and Meghan are half-sisters through their father, Thomas Markle.

Meghan filed a response to Samantha's complaint on May 13 requesting the lawsuit be dismissed, calling the suit a "defamation case without any merit" and saying that Samantha's claims were "demonstrably false and the evidence would easily confirm that."

Douglas Kahle, the lawyer who filed the original lawsuit on Samantha's behalf in March, also filed a formal motion to withdraw from the case on April 27, citing "irreconcilable differences" and "fundamental disagreements," according to BuzzFeed.

On Friday, Samantha filed an amended complaint against Meghan with a new legal team that Insider was also able to review. Samantha accused Meghan of defamation and requested a jury trial to resolve the matter.

The complaint was filed while Meghan and Prince Harry were in the UK celebrating Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee.

Representatives for Samantha and Meghan did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

As was the case in her original complaint, Samantha accused Meghan of defaming her both in her interview with Oprah Winfrey and in "Finding Freedom." In the complaint, Samantha said that in the interview with Winfrey, Meghan "stated 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 married Prince Harry."

As Insider previously reported, Meghan told Winfrey, "I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows."

Meghan also said in the interview that Samantha changed her last name after she and Prince Harry started dating.

"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," the duchess told Winfrey at the time.

"The last time I saw her must've been at least 18 or 19 years ago, and before that, 10 years before that," she went on to say of Samantha.

The amended complaint also said that Meghan hung up the phone on Samantha in 2018.

"In 2018, while the Duchess was dating Prince Harry, Mrs. Markle phoned her sister who was in Canada with her mother," the complaint stated. "When they connected and Mrs. Markle started to speak, the Duchess hung up the phone on her. Mrs. Markle then called back and left a message which was never returned."

The complaint went on to say that Samantha "receives hateful emails and messages on a regular basis, is subjected to ongoing negative media portrayals, news articles, nasty negative press, and her reputation has been so damaged that she has been unable to work as a mental health counselor" because of Meghan's statements.

Samantha also said Meghan's comments impacted the sales of her autobiography, "The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister Part 1," which was published in 2021, and that she had to file a protection order against stalking as a result one of Meghan's "zealous" fans.

On March 14, a Twitter account believed to belong to Samantha was suspended after BuzzFeed News' Ellie Hall reported that Samantha appeared to have been using it to share criticisms and lies about Meghan for years, including that Meghan did not actually give birth to her children.

A representative for Twitter confirmed to Insider that the account was suspended for violating its ban evasion policy at the time.

Samantha's then-lawyer Kahle denied BuzzFeed's allegations, said the account had been hacked, and suggested the screenshots included in BuzzFeed's story were edited when contacted by Insider about the matter.