Kate Middleton returns with a new royal role
As the Princess of Wales resumes her royal duties, she finds herself in an unfamiliar place: front and centre.
In August, Will Warr, a filmmaker who cut his teeth working with brands like Red Bull and Puma, was hired on a confidential assignment to go to Anmer Hall near England’s Norfolk coast to film Catherine, Princess of Wales.
Kate Middleton, the most popular member of Britain’s royal family, had hardly been seen or heard from for nearly a year. Six months earlier, she had appeared in a video looking gaunt, wearing jeans and a striped sweater on a bench on the grounds of her home in Windsor. During a two-minute clip produced by the BBC, she broke the news that she had been diagnosed with cancer. The stripped-back announcement was powerful and raw. Overnight, it ended spiralling social-media speculation about her whereabouts and tamed an information-hungry tabloid media. It also reaffirmed to the British public all that they appreciated about Kate, a dignified yet relatable royal who put duty and family first.
By August, Catherine was no longer receiving preventive chemotherapy. To mark the moment, Warr produced something that was novel for royal circles: an Instagrammable pseudo – home movie showing Kate walking through woods, embracing her children on a hay bale and frolicking in the English surf. It included slow-motion shots of the princess brushing her hand through a field of flowers to soaring music. Staring into a ray of sunlight through the tree leaves. And resting her head on the heir to the throne’s shoulder. Catherine’s voice-over spoke of how she had taken strength from her family and how cancer had reminded them of the importance “of simply loving and being loved.” The Princess of Wales was back, but now it seemed something was different: She was the star of the show.
Outsiders ushered into the House of Windsor rarely fare well, especially if they are women and arrive brimming with ambition. Think of the actress formerly known as Meghan Markle, who didn’t realise she had to learn the words to “God Save the Queen,” suddenly hounded by paparazzi, chafing under regal protocol and encouraging her husband, Prince Harry, to give up royal duties. Or Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, who after marrying Prince Edward tried to run a PR agency before being caught in a News of the World sting saying unfortunate things about fellow royals (she quit her job to successfully focus on royal duties). Or Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, a seemingly carefree character who was snapped having her toes sucked by an American paramour.
Even Queen Camilla, when she was finally allowed entry to “the firm” in 2005, initially had to do so on the pretext that she would forgo any ambition to be called queen and be termed princess consort when Charles became king.
Kate Middleton is proving to be an exception to the rule. Since formally entering the royal family in 2011, she has managed to fly firmly below the glass ceiling. She gives few speeches, hardly ever does interviews and undertakes fewer public events than nearly all the other working royals. But the British public loves her. And so does the media. Barely a week goes by without her smiling face gracing the front of a publication. By not rocking the boat and saying as little as possible, the one-time commoner is now Britain’s most popular living royal.
“You can’t ignore the fact that she is a beautiful woman,” says Sally Bedell Smith, a royal biographer who has written about several members of the family, but “it took some time for her to establish her reputation as a person who was much more than that.” Kate’s cancer diagnosis thrust her yet further to the fore – opening a path for her to take a weightier role in raising awareness about a disease that affects so many. But there is little evidence that she will change her royal strategy.
Kate has said her focus is to remain cancer-free and she will appear at events when she can. Foreign travel is unlikely soon. She is expected to attend a now-annual Christmas carol concert she organises and appear at a military commemoration event in November. In mid-September, Kate officially returned to work at Windsor Castle, hosting a meeting on her early childhood project. A few weeks later, she was pictured hugging a 16-year-old girl suffering from an aggressive form of cancer during an investiture ceremony in Windsor.
While female celebrities face constant pressure to break barriers, speak up about their personal hardships to raise public awareness or push professional boundaries, Kate doesn’t need to do any of those things. The royal family exists as an ode to traditionalism, a 1,000-year-old franchise built around a single monarch and a powerful image: an anchor of continuity in a fast-changing world. The supporting cast cannot take centre stage for too long. And the normal rules of celebrity public relations do not apply. “No one is waiting around for the royal family to engage in radical transparency,” says Risa Heller, chief executive of public affairs firm Risa Heller Communications. “The whole purpose of the royal family is to give people a glimpse into something they don’t have access to. It’s an unattainable thing.” Such is her popularity that comparisons are inevitably drawn between Kate and her would-have-been mother-in-law, Princess Diana. But Kate is in some ways the antithesis of Diana. The previous Princess of Wales was defined by, in fact adored for, her very human flaws, her complex love life, her desire to bust stuffy royal protocol to protect her boys, her openness about battling bulimia and willingness to quite literally embrace those rejected by society.
Kate, conspicuously, does none of those things. Before she was diagnosed with cancer, her big public moment in 2023 was playing the piano during a segment in the Eurovision song contest final. Perhaps the closest she has come to royal scandal was allegedly making Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, cry during a bridesmaid dress fitting (although some aides maintain it was Meghan who made Kate cry).
While British gen Xers and Boomers have been conditioned by traditional media to revere the royals, younger generations are more sceptical, polls show. “To be relevant, the institution will need to change and will need to embrace strong women,” says Mark Borkowski, a British public relations adviser who has worked with numerous celebrities. By necessity, Kate will have to more actively take her place on centre stage, he says. “I think she will become a campaigner, but it will be a slow unveiling.”
For most of her early royal existence, Kate was largely seen and not heard. After her wedding, she didn’t give a televised interview for eight years. Writer Hilary Mantel once described her as appearing “to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen.” But like Queen Elizabeth before her, Kate has a shyness and unshowiness that foster public appeal, says Bedell Smith.
This reputation was further buff as several fellow royals let the side down. In particular, Kate’s willingness to quietly get on with it was thrown into sharp relief by Meghan’s complaints about the strictures of royal life and her decision to air royal dirty laundry with Oprah. As the British media sided firmly against Harry and Meghan, William and Kate were afforded relative privacy and kid-glove treatment.
Kate’s royal evolution also saw her move slowly toward the fore, using social media to bypass journalists and keep iron-clad control of the narrative. In 2021, the couple launched a YouTube channel. That year Warr was summoned to document their 10-year anniversary, a taste of things to come, with warm shots of the family on a windswept beach and children toasting marshmallows. In 2021, Kate also unveiled the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, to promote better research and understanding about the importance of the first five years of a child’s life. Last November she gave her longest and highest-profile speech as a royal, as she gathered experts at the London Design Museum to discuss her campaign.
Behind the scenes, Kate is credited with encouraging her husband to recognise mental health as a key issue on which to publicly focus. When during a trip to the U.S. she met with professors at Harvard on the topic of childhood wellbeing in 2022, she vigorously cross-examined them and took detailed notes by hand.
But perhaps her most important success was creating – in a family scarred by traumatic childhoods – a safe environment for her three kids to grow up in. The family moved to Adelaide Cottage near Windsor Castle. In the four-bedroom house, built for the wife of King William IV, the family tries to foster as normal a life as possible for their children, including picking them up and dropping them off at school, people close to them say.
In 2024, King Charles’s cancer diagnosis after a routine prostate operation raised not only the prospect of William taking the full weight of the crown but also the couple’s young son George becoming immediate heir to the throne, facing the full glare of the press. This worried the couple enormously, officials say.
Then Kate got sick. After abdominal surgery in January this year and the cancer discovery, the family decided to keep the diagnosis secret from their children – and the world – until they were on school vacation. But the information black hole sucked in conspiracy rumours. It was one thing for the British public not to hear from Kate, but it was quite another matter not to see her. For Mother’s Day, Kate published an image with her children that she had clumsily tried to brush up digitally, leading to her first real scandal. The British public now didn’t believe what it was seeing.
Warr’s trip to Anmer Hall and the ensuing slickly produced video made sure that mistake wasn’t repeated.
In other words, Kate did her bit – and the royal family was back in charge of the message.
The Wall Street Journal