Samantha Markle accused her half-sister, the Duchess of Sussex, of wielding her six-episode Netflix miniseries as a weapon to spread “malicious, hurtful, and damaging lies” about her on a global stage, she claimed on Thursday.
The new allegations are part of an amended version of Markle’s defamation lawsuit against Meghan, filed within hours of a two-week deadline a judge had set for her—after granting Meghan’s motion to dismiss the original claim.
In a statement at the time, Markle’s attorney swore they’d be returning with an “even stronger” case.
As opposed to focusing on Meghan’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the amended complaint zeroes in on Harry & Meghan. In the series, Samantha Markle claimed, Meghan made statements seeking to “demonize” her, portraying her as “a liar,” “a fame seeker,” and “a racist.”
She even alleged that some of Meghan’s fans launched “hate-filled smear campaigns” against her as a result of the show, saying she’d been the target of “death threats” and “trolls” who hacked her Twitter account.
She launched her original case just over a year ago, in March 2022, suing Meghan for “defamation and injurious falsehoods,” among other things.
In it, she pointed at three specific statements Meghan had made which she alleged had caused her harm: that Meghan said she was “an only child,” claimed she had only met her half-sister “a handful of times,” and that Samantha changed her surname to “cash in on her newfound fame.”
In her dismissal of the suit, U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell wrote that Meghan was simply “expressing an opinion about her childhood” when she claimed to have grown up as an only child.
She also noted that the other two claims contradicted the exact transcript of Meghan’s interview with Oprah.
It is unclear if the updated case will fare any better.
