Meghan Markle Talks Difficult Decision to Uninvite Her Niece From Her Wedding, Explains Why She Did

Meghan Markle‘s niece Ashleigh Hale is featured in the new Netflix docu-series Harry & Meghan and we get a closer look at their relationship over the years.

For those who don’t know, Ashleigh is the biological daughter of Meghan‘s estranged half-sister Samantha Markle.

In the docu-series, Ashleigh explained that she was raised by her grandparents and had not seen her mother Samantha since she was 6 until they reconnected in 2007. When Meghan learned that her half-sister was in touch with her daughter again, she reached out to her niece and formed a relationship with her.

Ashleigh says their relationship began with “these long emails back to each other. And then texts and calls. After a while, I think we were talking, on some level, several days a week.”

Click inside to find out why Ashleigh was uninvited from Meghan’s wedding…

Meghan and Ashleigh even went on trips together, including one to New Orleans.

“We walked around, we listened to some good live music, ate way too much food and had way too many drinks,” Ashleigh said. “It was just the two of us, which I think was really special. I think she takes on a lot of roles for me. There’s, like, a sister element. There’s something maternal. She’s a best friend. She’s, you know, kind of all the things.”

Meghan said, “I wanted a sister, and she was like a little sister.” She added that after she started dating Prince Harry, “Ash was put through quite a bit by the media, just by association. And I didn’t want her life to be plagued with all that drama.”

Ashleigh said she stopped talking to Samantha after news broke about Meghan‘s relationship with Harry.

“After the news first broke, Samantha pretty quickly began expressing a lot of angry words about Meg towards me. What was communicated to me was maybe some resentment,” she said. “And it felt like no matter what I said, her perspective didn’t change and seemed to get angrier and bigger, and we stopped talking. Some people you just can’t reason with.”

With all the drama happening with Samantha, Meghan was advised to not invite Ashleigh to the wedding.

“How do we explain that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is?” Meghan said in the docu-series.

“With Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding. I was in the car with H. I had her on speakerphone and we talked her through what guidance we were given and why this assessment was made … and that’s painful,” Meghan said.

Ashleigh added, “I think I said I was hurt on some level, but I understood where it was coming from. To know that it was because of my biological mother that this relationship that’s so important to me was impacted in that way … to feel like, because of her it was taken away, has been hard.”

Check out the biggest bombshells that were revealed in the docu-series.