Meghan Markle 's claims she lived on $5 Sizzler salad as a child and her family was poor is a world away from the $14million LA mansion...
Meghan Markle's claims she lived on $5 Sizzler salad as a child and her family was poor is a world away from the $14million LA mansion she lives in with Prince Harry and their two children having built up a $100million-plus fortune over the past two years.
Her extraordinary 1,030-word letter asks the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and the Majority Leader in the US Senate Chuck Schumer, both Democrats, to consider her plea for paid leave for parents 'on behalf of my family, Archie and Lili and Harry'.
And critics have also questioned one of the most astonishing parts of her letter, that she suggests her family were impoverished but fails to mention her father was an Emmy award-winning lighting director and she was educated at private school from kindergarten including the $16,000-a-year private Immaculate Heart High School - all paid for by Thomas Markle's salary and his state lottery win.
Many of Meghan's supporters have backed her calls for universal paid leaves for parents, but pointed out that her letter fails to mention Joe Biden, who is about to try to force it into law as part of his $3.5million Build Back Better Agenda.
Meghan's very public statement is likely to ruffle feathers and add fuel to speculation that she has political ambitions despite her insistence it was sent as an American 'mom'. Many have said this is yet another step into the US political arena for the Duchess of Sussex after the furore she and Harry caused by urging Americans to vote in the last presidential election - angering Republicans including Donald Trump.
Royal commentator and former editor of International Who's Who, Richard Fitzwilliams, told MailOnline: 'Using the example of the $5 salad bar and how she had to struggle in the past is an attempt to link with the way so many families struggle to pay their bills.
'Aspiring politicians use these sort of examples and it remains to be seen, since she was privately educated and her father was one of Hollywood's top lighting directors, whether the audience she seeks are impressed by her account of how she had to struggle. She and her father are estranged as she is at the moment from the royal family. The issue she highlights is undoubtedly an important one, but many will sense a ruthless streak in her behaviour which needs moderating if she were ever to seek election'.
Meghan and Harry holding their son Archie, who his mother added as a cosignatory of her letter to US politicians
The $16,000-a-year private Immaculate Heart High School, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles where Meghan Markle attended as a teenager paid for by her father
The letter was written and sent on headed paper from the couple's $14million home in Montecito, California
Private schoolgirl Meghan's claims about how she 'grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler', selling frozen yoghurt from 13 and struggling to 'make ends meet'
The Duchess of Sussex says she ate cheap salads and worked selling frozen yoghurt as a 13-year-old - but all the while she was being educated in exclusive LA schools, including one whose alumni included Elizabeth Taylor and July Garland, all paid for by her now estranged father Thomas.
Meghan claims in her letter the Covid pandemic has exposed 'long-existing fault lines in our communities' and says 'millions of women' have been forced to drop out of the workforce to look after their children as a result of schools and childcare providers being closed.
And in one of the most astonishing parts of her letter, she suggests her family were impoverished but does not mention her father was an Emmy award-winning lighting director and she was educated at private school.
She says: '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.
'I waited tables, babysat, and piecemealed jobs together to cover odds and ends,' Meghan writes. '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.'
But critics have also pointed out that Meghan was raised in middle class comfort in the suburb of Woodland Hills in a home Thomas Markle, an Emmy-award winning lighting director, bought shortly before Meghan was born in 1981.
Meghan Markle lived this home in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles with both her parents and half-siblings Thomas Jr and Samantha until 1983, for the first two years of her life before her parents divorced
After living with her mum Doria, Meghan would later move back in with her father in the 1990s, as Thomas put her through private school. She stayed at the Hollywood property until she left for college in 1999
After her parents Thomas and Doria divorced when Meghan was six, they remained amicable and whatever the state of their shattered relationship now, Meghan has enjoyed a close bond with her father in the past and owed much to the money he earned in Hollywood to her world class education.
He sent her to Hollywood's private Little Red Schoolhouse, whose old students include Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland, where staff feed students six different types of organic vegetables from the school garden each week.
When Meghan was nine he won $750,000 in a lottery and the money helped send Meghan to the $16,000-a-year Immaculate Heart Catholic School, one of LA's finest.
Every day after school she would visit her father on the set of Married... with Children where he worked as a lighting director and was believed to earn $200,000-a-year.
Meghan's half-brother Thomas Jr said previously: 'Dad rang me one day and told me to come over. There was a lump on his bed under a blanket. I pulled it back and saw stacks of money there. My first reaction was, 'What did you do?' He started laughing and said, 'I won the lottery!'.
In her late teens Meghan went to Northwestern University, where she studied drama. 'Meg won scholarships to other universities but she wanted to go to Northwestern so she did,' her brother Thomas Jr said previously, adding: 'The money helped.'
The Duchess went on to detail her humble beginnings: 'I grew up on the 4.99-dollar salad bar at Sizzler,' she said
While trying to pay bills while auditioning for acting roles, she became a freelance calligrapher, doing correspondence for Dolce & Gabbana and wedding invitations for clients such as singer Robin Thicke. She also worked at the US Embassy in Argentina and was a 'briefcase girl' - one of the models who hold the suitcases full of cash - on the US version of Deal or No Deal.
It was only when she secured her acting role as Rachel Zane on Suits, that her career went global, earning around $60,000 per episode and making her a millionaire. It also set her on a path to meeting Prince Harry, who she started secretly dating while living in Toronto and living on the show.
After their lavish royal wedding and having their first child, Archie, the couple quit as frontline royals and emigrated before having baby Lilibet. They have signed $100million of deals with Netflix and Spotify. Experts have predicted they are on the way to building a $1billion brand in the US.
Thomas Markle this week suggested the Sussexes were only worried about cash. He said: 'Well, money isn't everything, but the book he's writing should be not Finding Freedom - it should be Finding Money, that's all they seem to care about right now.'
Finding Freedom is the biography of Harry and Meghan by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand released in August 2020. It was then announced this July that Harry will be writing a new book which explores his 'adventures, losses, and life lessons'.
'Harry's coming out with a book and that can't be anything but cruel and to insult his grandmother the Queen, it's a ridiculous idea. And it's just something for money, that's all they're doing - everything they're doing is for money. But to do that to your grandmother and the Queen, who is 95 years old, is shameful.'
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