FaceTiming Meghan Markle during a recent podcast recording for her new series Archetypes. Accompanying Meghan and Harry to Windsor Castle when they first introduced Archie to the Queen and Prince Philip. Smiling for the cameras as she drove with Markle to her wedding in 2018.
Doria Ragland might have made a handful of very high-profile public appearances since Meghan joined the royal family, but – unlike her ex-husband Thomas Markle – she had kept a relatively low profile when it came to her private life and opinions in the media. Until now, at least.
“I’m ready to have my voice heard, that’s for sure,” Ragland is seen telling cameras in the opening minutes of the second episode of the Sussexes’ new documentary, Harry & Meghan. Tearfully, she recalls the key moments of the last six years: Meghan first telling her she was going out with Prince Harry, warning her daughter that the criticism she was getting was about race, not being able to walk her dogs without being “stalked” by the papparazzi.
The bombshell series, the first three episodes of which aired today, is the 66-year-old’s first TV appearance after years of “silent dignity”, as Meghan once said of her mother’s refusal to talk to the press.
According to sources, Ragland is a hands-on grandmother and even shelled out £5,000 for grandparenting classes before the arrivals of Archie and Lilibet, with many suggesting her appearance in this week’s documentary is a nod towards the starring role insiders say she might be about play in Brand Sussex as time goes on. So what does she reveal in the first three episodes? Do we see more of that “best friend” mother-daughter relationship as the series goes on? And has that “silent dignity” finally come to an end?
From her marriage to Thomas Markle to her close bond with Meghan, here’s everything we know so far.
The makeup artist who married the lighting director
Ragland was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a mother who was a nurse and a father who worked as an antique dealer. Her parents moved to LA when she was young and later divorced.
She’s stayed on the west coast ever since, working as a makeup artist after her graduation from Fairfax High School. During that time she worked on the TV show General Hospital, which is where she met lighting director and her now ex-husband, Thomas Markle.
They married in 1979 and had Meghan two years later in 1981, separating when she was just two-years-old. They both raised her, and officially divorced in 1987 when Meghan was six. Meghan lived full-time with her mother growing up, and spent weekends with her father.
‘Best friends’ with a passion for yoga and social justice
“Dreadlocks. Nose ring. Yoga instructor. Social worker. Free spirit. Lover of potato chips & lemon tarts...”.
This is how Meghan described her mother in a post from her old lifestyle blog, The Tig, before she met Harry – and it speaks to many of Ragland’s (and indeed Meghan’s) eclectic range of jobs and passions.
Since her days as a makeup artist, Ragland has worked as a travel agent and more recently, as a social worker. She worked at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services Clinic in Culver City, LA, until just days before Meghan and Harry’s wedding in 2018, and Meghan previously revealed in an interview that her mother worked “specifically with the geriatric community”.
Ragland and her daughter both share a passion for social justice, but the shared hobby they’ve spoken about the most over the years is yoga. Ragland, a qualified instructor, reportedly introduced Meghan to the practice at the age of seven and despite some pushback at the start, it made an impact.
Meghan Markle snapped carrying #Yoga mat as she stretches busy schedule to make time for a relaxing workout -… https://t.co/JSRvXDLX7g #Yoga pic.twitter.com/voCKx9Gv8l
— Yoga News (@YogaLatest) December 28, 2016
“Yoga is my thing,” Markle once told a Best Health interview. “I was very resistant as a kid, but [my mother] said, ‘Flower [Ragland’s nickname for Meghan], you will find your practice – just give it time.’ In college, I started doing it more regularly.”
Since becoming a mother, she’s reportedly continued that tradition and taken her own son, Archie, to baby yoga clases. “Apparently Doria took up postpartum yoga and baby yoga, and that’s all Meghan has been doing,” according to royal author Katie Nicholl.
Yoga isn’t the only activity Ragland introduced that Meghan admits she was sceptical about at first. Years ago, she also spoke of the experience of “walking around naked” at a Korean spa together.
“For those of you who haven’t been before, it’s a very humbling experience for a girl going through puberty,” she explained. “Because you enter a room with women from age nine to maybe 90, all walking around naked and waiting to get a body scrub on one of these tables that are all lined up in a row. All I wanted was a bathing suit! But you are not allowed, by the way. And once I was over that adolescent embarrassment my mum and I would go upstairs, sit in a room and we would have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles.”
Ragland is also a keen runner – she ran the LA Marathon shortly before Meghan met Harry – and loves dancing. “If the DJ cues Al Green’s soul classic ‘Call Me,’ just forget it,” Meghan wrote in her Tig post about her mother. “She will swivel her hips into the sweetest little dance you’ve ever seen, swaying her head and snapping her fingers to the beat like she’s been dancing since the womb. And you will smile. You won’t be able to help it. You will look at her and you will feel joy.”
In an interview with Glamour around the same time, she described her mother as a “free spirit” and shed further light on their close relationship. “We can just have so much fun together, and yet I’ll still find so much solace in her support,” she said. “That duality co-exists the same way it would in a best friend.”
A hands-on grandmother who keeps a low-profile
Ragland’s first big appearance on the public stage was at her daughter’s wedding to Prince Harry in 2018. She was reportedly involved in the whole process, with Meghan flying out to LA “equipped with sketches from the wedding and of the wedding dress itself” before the big day and Ragland pictured in the car with Meghan and chatting to now King Charles at the ceremony – so have the pair remained just as close since?
It certainly seems so, according to pictures and interviews. Ragland flew into London for the arrival of her first grandchild, Archie, in 2019 and was famously pictured with the couple as they introduced him to the Queen and Prince Philip in the official portraits. She was even included in the official royal statement, which said that Ragland was “overjoyed by the arrival of her first grandchild”.
Since then, the couple’s big move to California in January 2020 has allowed Ragland a geographical closeness, too. She currently lives just a 90 minute-drive from their Montecito home, in the View Park-Windsor Hills neighbourhood of Los Angeles, just east of Los Angeles International Airport, and was spotted walking her two dogs near there in September, sporting a new flower tattoo on her arm – perhaps a nod to her daughter’s childhood nickname.
“My mum still calls me Flower,” Meghan told actress Michaela J Rodriguez in an episode of Archetypes earlier this year, adding: “I’ll be a 41-year-old Flower, that’s fine”. Ragland was seen sporting a flower tattoo on her arm while out walking her dogs in September – a nod to her daughter’s childhood nickname?
When Ragland doesn’t fancy three hours of driving, there’s plenty of space for her to stay with Meghan and Harry, too. The Sussex’s £11m pad comes with its own guest house that is believed to feature two bedrooms and two bathrooms – plenty of space for her to put her feet up after a busy day of grandparent duties.
Indeed, she’ll probably need it: the doting grandmother reportedly spent the equivalent of nearly £5,000 in grandparenting lessons to prepare for Archie and Lilibet’s arrivals and insiders say she “get[s] up in the morning and read[s] to [Archie]” as well as making him “all-organic” food.
Ragland was recently seen looking relaxed alongside Meghan and Archie in a now-deleted screengrab of a Zoom call with academic Professor Duchess Harris, and Meghan certainly gives the impression that she and her mother stay in close virtual contact as well. “Oh sugar, my mom’s FaceTiming me,” Meghan is heard saying in a recent Archetypes episode with actor Pamela Adlon and Sophie Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – coincidentally (or not?) about the “whirlwind” of motherhood.
“Hey, how’s my girl?” Ragland is heard saying over the phone. “I’m okay. I’m hanging in there. It’s okay,” Meghan replies. “I’m recording right now. Do you want to see?”.
A rare and adorable glimpse of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, the first born child of Prince Harry and Meghan, seen on video call with mom and grandmother, Doria Ragland. 😍#Archie #MeghanMarkle #PrinceHarry pic.twitter.com/7rqWNlywt2
— Harry x Meghan (@HarryxMeghan) December 1, 2022
Meghan suggests calling back later and her mother makes a sweet comment before hanging up. “You have on a smiley face,” says Ragland said, to which Meghan replies: “I have on a smiley face. I love you.” “I love you, too. I’ll see you on Saturday,” her mother says in a seemingly casual on-air appearance.
Race, relationships and finding her ‘voice’
For an on-screen debut, Ragland’s documentary appearance packed quite the punch. “I’m ready to have my voice heard, that’s for sure,” she tells her interviewers, tearfully.
She begins by introducing herself and admitting the last five years have been “challenging” before going on to describe the moment Meghan whispered to her over the phone that she was going out with Prince Harry. “He was this 6”1, handsome man with red hair,” she says. “Really great manners, he was just really nice and they looked really happy together. Yeah. Like he was the one.”
Ragland goes on to describe the “novelty” of Meghan and Harry’s relationship in the press at first, but how it quickly changed. In episode three she talks about feeling unsafe “a lot”. “I can’t just go walk my dogs, I can’t just go to work, there was alwayas someone there waiting for me, following me to work, I was being... stalked by the paparazzi,” she says.
There are nostalgic moments during the documentary, too, such as when Meghan and her mother are filmed re-visiting their old home in LA, remeniscing about Meghan’s childhood memories. Ragland talks about raising “Meg” with a network of women around her and how she couldn’t help Meghan with her homework because she was smarter than her by that age already.
“She was always so easy to get along with... she was very mature. I remember asking Meg ‘did I feel like her mom’ and she said I felt like her older, controlling sister,” she laughs. “I never forgot that.”
Together, they also revisit Miss Debbie, former principal of Meghan’s old school. “P.s. When I am rich and famous, when I write my life story, I will talk about you and this school so you will be known world-wide,” Meghan reads from an note written by her 11-year-old self to her old teacher.
But Ragland doesn’t shy away from tougher subjects like race, either. In one episode, Meghan recalls the first time she heard her mother being called the n-word and Ragland goes on to say she wishes she’d had that conversation with Meghan, “about how the world sees you”.
Later, when Meghan started receiving negative comments in the press: “I said to her very clearly that ‘Meghan, this is about race’, and Meghan said ‘Mummy, I don’t want to hear that,’” Ragland recalls. “I said you might not want to hear it but this is what’s coming down the pike.”
She and Meghan both address the issue of Samantha Markle, her half-sister from Thomas Markle’s side, and she addresses her ex-husband Thomas Markle, too. “I was absolutely stunned that Tom [Thomas Markle] would become part of this circus...,” she says of his speaking to the tabloids before Meghan’s wedding. “Certainly as a parent, that’s not what you do.”
What more will Ragland reveal in the final three episodes? Watch this space.
