The Crown’s Season 6 has been filming for months, but in the past week, paparazzi have gotten a lot of shots of the two young actors playing Prince William and Kate Middleton. Ed McVey is the late-teen William and Meg Bellamy plays College Kate. The Crown is actually filming in St. Andrews, and some of these photos definitely look vaguely like the paparazzi photos of William from his actual university years. The Crown’s casting can sometimes be all over the place, but I think Bellamy and McVey appear to be well-cast. Is McVey more attractive than William? Yes.
Vanity Fair had a piece analyzing the photos from the set, and they suggest that the scenes being filmed are of William seeing Kate around campus and “longing” for her or something. So… maybe we should have another conversation about William and Kate’s actual history? Because Kate had been trying to throw herself in William’s path for years before she even followed him to St. Andrews. Even Kate’s hagiographer Katie Nicholl said that flat-out: Kate had been trying to get in with William’s crowd for a while, they met before university, she copykeened his gap year plans and then followed him to St. Andrews. Robert Lacey confirmed it too – William ended up dating and marrying his stalker.
So… yeah, I will be curious to see how the start of Will & Kate’s relationship is handled on The Crown, especially given Robert Lacey’s involvement as a royal historian/advisor on the show. Will they show even a smidge of the real history? Also: I love the late ‘90s and early ‘00s college fashion. Yes, everyone wore super-flared bootcut jeans back then.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Actors Ed McVey, as Prince William and actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews, Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy (Playing Prince William and Kate Middleton) Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 16 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Actors Ed McVey, as Prince William and actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews, Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy (Playing Prince William and Kate Middleton) Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 16 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, and actor Ed McVey, who plays the part of Prince William, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews in Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 17 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, and actor Ed McVey, who plays the part of Prince William, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews in Scotland. Featuring: Meg Bellamy Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 17 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, and actor Ed McVey, who plays the part of Prince William, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews in Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 17 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
She may imitate kates guffaws . There were two movies about w and k already including one on lifetime channel
I was about to say she’s got the grin right at least.
They got her tacky cigarette-filled purse right.
I@SavvySue I wonder if she stopped smoking after she landed the big blue.
Savvy Sue, you think her purse is tacky? It looks fine to me. That style of purse was in at the time and it’s a nice neutral color. I didn’t know she was a chain smoker, though.
Yes the photos of her cigarette packs in the purse have been whitewashed but she smoked. So did William and Harry.
I’ve never watched The Crown (not even the Diana years) but I may have to! Very interested to see how they handle Kate and William’s relationship. It’s probably going to be sanitized and depicted as “true love.”
Of course it will be sanitised 😂they won’t show Khate and her mother arranging for her to change uni’s and then change courses so that she is closer to William. They won’t show her in her completely see through dress on the catwalk, they won’t show her pssd and falling out of clubs (she did) and they DEFINITELY WILL NOT USE either of the two nicknames the other students have her, because BOTH show what she really was and how the other thought of her
They will show the catwalk, that’s her most “famous” moment/picture.
But they won’t portray it as her choosing to wear a skirt as a dress, and without the slip the designer intended to go with it, deliberately to show off her body. They’ll show the designer asking her to dress like that.
They’ll portray it as her being a sexy bombshell and William being in awe, and it being the start of a great love affair.
As opposed to her wearing it deliberately to seduce William when he already had a girlfriend, and then the two of them cheating on the gf behind her back.
The lifetime tv movie showed the catwalk episode.
I’m very curious as for what was the other students nicknames for her.
Yes, what are the nicknames???
The f’ed up Diana’s life in the Crown, sanitizing it for Charles’s sake. Surely they’ll do the same so as not to ignite William’s rageaholic tendencies. Not interested unless they get it right.
I have the same feeling too. The press largely treats the Waleses with kids gloves, and The Crown will likely do the same. With some exceptions, the show by and large is more than generous to the Windsors.
This makes me sooo mad!!! Why are they lying? Why? Many will probably believe that, especially the young people who watch it.
Everyone needs to know what kind of fake snake Kate actually is and that William only took her out of sheer desperation and only when she stripped half naked in front of him. Sry but kate didn’t even look average as a young adult…
I was disappointed with the most recent season because they really did focus on Charles and while Debicki has Diana’s look down pat, they made her sit around at home and look very passive.
If they try to make it look like William wanted kate from day one, it becomes harder to explain why he waited so long to propose after university. And since everyone knows that Harry didn’t wait forever when he met Meghan, it puts the long wait in starker contrast. Also, are they going to invent jobs for Kate because she really did nothing.
Totally agree, I finally finished this last season the other night and I was really disappointed with how they made Charles seem so sympathetic and Diana was hardly there. They made him seem like some amazing forward thinking guy that was all about the people and was trying so hard to get his parents to change their ways but we all know he’s exactly the same, if not worse than they were. Yes he has the princes trust but miss me with Charles being hip to all the young people (mostly POC) and their hardships in those last episodes.
Side note- but bootcut and super flared jeans are now back in and apparently I’m extremely outdated if I wear skinny jeans. I can get back into flared and bootcut but it will be impossible for me NOT to feel outdated in them since I wore them in college! Everything I wore in high school and college is coming back around.
I also wanted to add that as an old millennial I think it’s pretty funny that Gen Z uses millennial as a derogatory term but also that they label millennial style as outdated and lame when all they are doing is recycling what we already wore in the 90’s.
Diana was depicted as.sitting home in the crown pining for Charles. And even had khan break.up with Diana after the panorama interview in actuality Diana and hasnet were together through ca mid 1997 . Diana did not just sit home she worked on caused s and charities and Charles was not the only active one in charity work.
This is what I think – they are going to really sanitize the relationship and gloss over a lot of the stalking and waiting and lack of jobs etc. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. William’s general a-holeness is definitely going to be downplayed.
The last season of the Crown was disappointing in that they had a range of brilliant actors who were terribly miscast, and the one person who wasn’t miscast (Debicki) was put in scenes where she behaved with the empathetic ability of a gnat and completely missed the mark on Diana’s character, and the ones where she wasn’t were lackluster.
Even the Penny story was total crap, I felt like I was watching an 80’s teen movie and not in the good way.
So I think this will just be a boring cursory overview.
It’s going to be pure, super sweetened pablum.
I ain’t watching it because I don’t want to go into sugar shock or start throwing things at my TV. It would be illuminating if they addressed that she was a stalker and that this was her mother’s plan, too.
Yeah, I wonder how much truth they will show. Lacey knows the real story but he also seems a little co-opted by KP, after they essentially narrated those extra chapters for him. I actually wonder if these cute college-aged versions of William and Kate will give the Wales a popularity bump. The actors are younger and more attractive and glamorous than the real thing.
The Palace meltdown on this is going to be EPIC.
Can’t wait to see an army of “royal sources” screaming to the press, “friends” giving interviews.
Tom and Lorenzo made a good point when they said Queen Elizabeth has endured a lifetime of parody without a word, maybe they should take notes from Grandma’s.
I didn’t see that, but my goodness, it’s true. I can’t believe I never thought about all the spoofs of the queen that were probably pretty insulting. Huh. That’s funny. Although, didn’t she have problems with the Crown? Or were there just other royals that had problems with the crown while the queen was still living?
Who knows, but I would be surprised. I think the courtiers and the other royals were pissed.
We knows Charles is petty AF, and the Cambridge can’t tolerate anything…
Looks like the Crown producers is going to give Waity and Ragey the Charles and Cammie treatment. That would be unfortunate and foolish.
I agree, there are too many who know first hand how this royal courtship went down.
@girlninja, especially as most of us in the UK can remember two very nasty nicknames she was known by at uni. Nasty, but earned apparently.!! Here’s a clue to the lesser evil of the two, you put it on a bed over the springs for comfort! But put the word Royal in front of it!
Are we going to get the story of how she was his side piece until his girlfriend found out and dumped him? Are we going to get the see-through dress moment? All the names security had for her? Or is this going to be like the Fred and Gladys story of true love at first sight?
Ooh, what were the names security had for her??
The RPOs called her the mattress.
I’ve watched all five seasons but may have to fast forward through W&K’s relationship in season six. Not at all interested. And the actor playing William has too much hair. William was already balding in college.
After last season I gave zero faith they will get it right.
Because if they don’t portray Kate and Carole as a modern day Gypsy Rose and her mother, complete with a stalker board with a picture William and red string with pictures of all of his connections trying to figure out how to get in with his crowd, it’ll be a damn lie.
https://media.tenor.com/9ppNC0UBHbUAAAAd/charlie-day-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia.gif
Great costuming and casting. I’m going to pass on it considering what I heard about how they soft balled last season.
After the absolute shit fit from Charles, you can’t tell me they don’t have a line of communication open with the show now. William is even MORE sensitive about his image than his dad (superinjuction anyone), so this is going to be a pathetic effort. Will be interesting to see what receipts spring up on Twitter I guess.
I have low expectations for the accuracy of the storytelling after last season but while this guy is definitely more attractive than Angry Bill was back then, the mannerisms (in the stills anyway) look pretty spot on.
I have to disagree, this was the short time where Will was chiseled and handsome. Way cuter than this guy.
I hate that I agree. Young Will was way more attractive than this guy. He looks too old to be playing him too
I hate that I agree too. Bulliam had a brief moment when he really did look so much like Diana. He looked like a Disney prince.
Looks like you really do grow into the face you deserve.
Agreeing with the unpopular opinion crowd—Will was way cuter than this basic hot guy. I’m a few years younger than W&K and remember thinking at the time, I totally get why Britney Spears keeps calling so much that the Palace had to ask her to stop 😅. What a brief window in time—any wisp of Diana he had, he shed in tandem with his hair.
He is doing well with the hunched shoulders and showing the terrible posture. I can kind of see how the hunched shoulders might be a defense mechanism and trying to avoid photographers? But at some point, you gotta take care of your back.
Or we could just watch YOU on netflix .
I saw that in the original post on Twitter and it was hilarious.
Ha! I genuinely did not see that!
I’m just over the BS the Crown pushes.
I predict that it will be protrayed as a love affair
@AMYBEE and if they do they are going to lose a lot of subscribers and twitter will have a melt down with all the posts that will go out about margarine /mattress and the rage monster
Margarine? 🤔
Lololol the fact that k is played by girl called Meg. She’s surrounded. The Meg playing her is really pretty, just like the meg she abused is really pretty
LOL! Meg is really freaking cute. Love that Meg is a hot girl name now 💅
Who’s playing shady Uncle Gary? And Carole? Can’t imagine there aren’t actors champing at the bit to play those roles.
I am sure they will sugarcoat it. The way they portrayed Diana, Charles and Cam last season was downright offensive to me.
I think the actress playing Kate is really cute, though. Kate was cute at one point. She lost her looks when she stopped eating.
I agree. I think Kate was beautiful when she was younger. She has an unusual look, with a very soft face. When she became super skinny (she was always thin) she lost that softness and became more ordinary looking. She was always treated terribly by the toffs. She has her flaws, but I’m not going to laugh at the mean names the papers and aristocrats called her. It was classist misogyny and we shouldn’t forget that.
The Crown was fantastic in the few seasons when they could lean into the costumes and sets and history. Once they got to the Diana seasons, it became a Lifetime movie where it’s been ever since.
I’m not impressed with throwing $1M an episode at bootcut jeans. I can go pick those up at Forever 21 today.
I found loads of them at local thrift stores in Houston when I was selling vintage jeans and clothes on Etsy (I stopped with the jeans because the market was so saturated). They did a good job with the costumes but yeah, that’s not an expensive look to create at all. It’s not like finding 1950s dresses in perfect condition.
What could be the compelling interest of the Crown continuing to these two? This is as boring as watching paint dry. They should have ended the series with the death of Diana or pivoted to another era completely like the Georgian or Victorian periods. I totally skipped the last season because heard they completely mangled and distorted the Diana story line to gloss up Chuck and Cams because they couldn’t handle the meltdowns from the UK press and palace.
@loreli, margarine spreads easily 🤣😳
If the producer aiming for profit they will tell the truth with all the gritty details of Kate and William affairs.
But if they want OBE instead the drama will lost a lot of money in making the most boring sanitized story.
Thematically the show should end at Diana’s death, especially as the creator started this all off with the movie The Queen, which covered the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death.
Anything beyond that doesn’t have enough historical distance to do anything decent. And because there isn’t enough distance, they won’t be honest with how the kate and William college years really played out. Already they pulled back on the Charles and Diana story despite the public events that most are aware of.
Are they filming in St Andrews? Looks like it could be Edinburgh in some of those shots.
I hope they do cover the stalking and waiting – back in the day the St Andrews student body were leaking the press like sieves. They pretty much confirmed that she stalked him from day 1 (apparently she told a classmate that she was going to ‘get’ him) – she was the talk of the campus over it at one point IIRC.
On her gap year she told someone “he’s mine, you know”. Her mother had been telling her since she was little that she was going to marry him. When she was at primary school she would dress up and pretend to be princess Diana.
This is it for me. How are they going to cover the reality of Kate (and the Middletons) stalking William, and her hostile behaviour towards other women during the pursuit?
I watched the first few seasons, but stopped watching midway through the most recent season. This looks like it will be just as dull.
I was so disappointed by the show’s treatment of Diana and have little faith they’ll get the story of Waity and Willy right.
I’m with you, QuiteContrary. There is so much scope to film Kate’s real life pursuit of William, which I understand got quite ugly at points, as well as his mercenary behaviour back (using her desperation whenever he wanted). Also, they surely must include the reality of her deranged mother! If they just paint it up as hearts and rainbows….well, I’ll switch off. Kate and her family must be in turmoil about this.
I still haven’t finished watching the latest season. I found it a bit tedious and just couldn’t get into it. I think the last two seasons might stand alone- there seems to be a change of focus, and season five just seems to try to be efficient story-telling with historical, social, and character nuances.
I loved the first 2 or 3 seasons of the crown. It was a look behind the scenes when the queen was glamorous and a lot of British history that I didn’t know about. Now that it’s about Charles and Diana, who were covered closely in real time, seems more like a Lifetime movie.
The Crown was fascinating when it was an historical drama about a young Queen Liz. But they did Diana dirty in season 5. I’m not even sure how season 6, as the final season, can do justice to all that happened in the 90s/00s in ten episodes. I wouldn’t say no to a W & K spin off series though.
Ed McVey looks to me like a cross between Prince William and Val Kilmer. Amazing.
Waity also stalked him all the way to Chili for “charity”. That seems to be forgotten but I was watching an old documentary and the journalist or palace representative (I cannot remember) spoke about her going to chili and he noted how weird it was lol. He basically said she was a stalker without saying the word stalker.
From what I remember he didn’t go in the end pulled out at the last min and she ended up there on her own with no Prince to stalk.
No she went to the same place, same trip, but got put in with a different group, so she arrived later, after he’d Left.
He was planning on going to Florence to study art, so Kate went as well, and then he changed his mind, and she still went. Whilst there, when she told people she was going to St. Andrews they said perhaps you’ll meet prince William and marry him and she said “actually I do fancy wills” and on another occasion said “he’s mine, you know.”
To be honest I’m shocked they’re even going into this much detail. I figured it would be like “Oh hi this is my girlfriend Kate” in one scene and that was it.
I doubt they’ll show anything but the perfunctory official story. That said these pics are making me nostalgic for Kate’s classic uniform of the dating years – blazers, boots, plaid skirts, lol.
Whatever they do it won’t be as depressing and off-putting as the real thing.
Nice! You’ve summed it up perfectly.
William had a meltdown about Meghan correcting the dress story in the Oprah interview. Because how dare she tell the world Kate apologized and call her a good person?!!
Man, can you imagine how incandescent he will be if the crown is even half accurate?
Meg Bellamy resembles both Katie Holmes and Ione Skye. I can’t wait to see how she embodies Khate.
The Crown will have to compete with the Harry and Meghan docuseries and Spare for impact. It also has to compete with with the nasty stories about the Sussexes that put the Windsors in a bad light. People may not want to do Season 6 because they would think it’ s a propaganda exercise for the Crown.
With the H&M comparison we all have now, I actually wondered if they might do a little revisionist history around press attacks, hounding etc knowing that royalists always point to “Kate had it as bad as Meghan!”.
Will they show the big break up of 2007 or try.to make it look like she worked before. The engagement happened