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- Meghan Markle is seen being cradled as a newborn by her grandmother and during a family trip to Hawaii in unearthed childhood photos
- The Duchess of Sussex’s cousin, Shawn Johnson, 43, shared the images as he reflected fondly on their upbringing in a exclusive sit-down with DailyMail.com
- Johnson is now estranged from her, but remembers Meghan as a person who couldn’t really do too much wrong, saying ‘it’s so strange to see it switched up
She’s now one of the most photographed women in the world but back in 1981 she made her debut to a much smaller fan base.
Pictured in DailyMail.com photos, this is Meghan Markle shown as a newborn: cradled in the loving arms of her maternal grandmother Jeanette.
A second photo shows her peering up at the camera, cozy in a black hoodie and bearing a striking resemblance to her own five-year-old son Archie at the same age.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, the now Duchess of Sussex’s cousin Shawn Johnson, 43, said: ‘She was always really sweet. She was kind and she always had a star quality about her.
‘She was infectious with just the way she was and really mature for her age. She was always really looking after us and making sure that we’re all doing fine.’
Shawn is the son of Joseph Johnson, Markle’s maternal uncle who died aged 72 of congestive heart failure in August 2021.
Although the pair lost contact in their early twenties, Shawn says he hopes to get back in touch with his cousin who is currently estranged from everyone in her family with the exception of her mother Doria, husband, and children.
Photos showing Markle interacting with her family as a child make the estrangement all the more baffling, particularly in the case of her father Thomas – seen with his arms wrapped around her in one of DailyMail.com’s exclusive photos.
The pair have not spoken since her April 2018 wedding when the retired lighting director suffered a heart attack and canceled his plans to attend at the last minute.
At the same time, he was exposed by the Mail on Sunday as having staged a series of paparazzi photos – among them shots of him getting measured for a suit and jogging near his home in Rosarito, Mexico.
Thomas, who has never met Prince Harry or his grandchildren Archie and Lilibet, has since become increasingly outspoken, desperately pleading with his daughter to let him see her, all to no avail.
But during Markle’s childhood, he was the axis on which her world turned along with her mother Doria.
Shawn paints a portrait of a very happy family – one that had Meghan at its center and saw her lavished with a private education and treated to luxury vacations in Hawaii, as well as a transatlantic trip to London where she was famously photographed outside Buckingham Palace with her childhood best friend Ninaki Priddy.
Among DailyMail.com’s cache of photos are shots of the future Duchess of Sussex beaming on the beach in Hawaii as well as enjoying a trip to Disneyland – a far cry from the modest upbringing she claimed she had in a 2021 letter to Congress, where she described having worked from age 13 and having to ‘make ends meet.
In that missive, Meghan claimed her parents had struggled to afford a $4.99 Sizzler salad bar meal for her.
But according to her cousin, she ‘definitely had enough’.
Shawn explained: ‘I don’t think any of us were really well off, but we had enough, and she definitely had enough.
He added: ‘Doria loved her a lot. We could see that, and we all loved her and we’re happy that her life turned out the way it did for her.’
Shawn, who lives in Merced, California, told DailyMail.com he hasn’t seen his cousin in nearly two decades but remembers their joint childhoods being very happy.
The embroiderer and graphic designer said: ‘We used to go down there for all the holidays and go to Los Angeles and visit them.
‘We’d be at my grandmother’s house, and we’d all get together. We all had a pretty good childhood growing up.
‘Meghan definitely helped make that childhood great – she was a big part of it. It was really nice just going out there for the holidays, hanging out with her.’
The proud cousin added: ‘We just had that feeling she was going to do something amazing.
‘We didn’t know what but we were still shocked by what she actually did.’
He added: ‘I have no bad memories, no anything of her having any weird attitude issues or anything like that.
‘She was always just really, even later in the teenage years, she was really mature and kind of ahead of the curve.’
Since fleeing the Royal Family in 2020 and setting up home with Prince Harry, 39, in Montecito, the couple have become increasingly controversial.
First, in March 2021 came the infamous Oprah interview in which the pair first claimed one of the royal family had made racist comments about the color of an as yet unborn Archie’s skin.
Later the same year, Markle wrote the widely derided letter to Congress claiming to have endured a struggling childhood – in stark contrast to DailyMail.com’s photos showing her holidaying in Hawaii and enjoying trips to Disneyland as a child.
A Netflix documentary aired in December 2022 caused yet more controversy with Markle seen making a mocking curtsey and taking potshots at the Prince and Princess of Wales.
2023 began with Harry’s bitter memoir, Spare, which proved to be riddled with inaccuracies and full of salacious detail – including his use of Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream to heal his frostbitten penis.
That was followed by a mocking edition of South Park called ‘The Worldwide Privacy Tour’ and then, in May, widespread derision after the couple claimed to have been the victims of a ‘high speed paparazzi car chase’.
Their story rapidly fell apart with both the NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams casting doubt on their version of events, while photos showed them crammed into the back of a slow-moving taxi.
Despite the controversy that follows his cousin, Shawn says he thinks some of the criticism has gone too far and says he is horrified by some of what he reads online.
He said: ‘Some of the stuff is just so harsh, and I know it’s fake. You just try to chalk it up to internet culture, and that’s just the way people are around celebrities.
‘I’ve even seen [stories about me] – there’s an article, it’s not one of the popular stories, but this said that me and Meghan were dating or something like that.
‘It’s a picture where we were young at the time and she had just, I don’t know, a little belly or whatever. We were just kids but there were people speculating on TikTok.’
Shawn added: ‘There was another story where she was doing some kind of charity work or whatever, and then people just said, oh, that’s fake.
‘Or she’s just doing that for attention – she just can’t do anything right whatsoever. I always remember her as the person who couldn’t really do too much wrong – it’s so strange to see it switched up.
