'Uncut Version' of Kate Middleton and Prince William Podcast Interview 'Would Have Blown Public Away,' Mike Tindall Says

Mar. 15, 2025

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Mike Tindallwants to clear up a few misconceptions about what the royal family is really like behind closed doors.

Writing specifically about the Prince and Princess of Wales, both 42, Mike wrote, “I think the podcast humanized them a little bit, and I kind of wish they’d let us put the uncut version out, because it would have blown the public away.”

“They came across as down-to-earth, fully engaged, funny and knowledgeable,” he wrote in the book, as excerpted in theDaily Mail. “It was a far more enlightening chat than I expected, not because I thought they’d be dull (I already knew that they weren’t) but because I know how everything to do with the royal family is so carefully controlled.”

Mike, 46, is not a working member of the royal family, but he certainly knows what the family is like in private — and wrote, per theDaily Mail, that the experience of being royal is nothing likeDownton Abbey.

They “are a very close family who loved each other dearly,” Mike said, and described relaxed picnic lunches and watching television with the lateQueen Elizabeth— not “meals on long tables and everyone dressed in their finery every night.”

Balmoral, a beloved late summer getaway for the Queen and the rest of the royal family, is where Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022 at age 96.

“There’s a great picture of my daughter Mia sitting with the Duke of Edinburgh that captures exactly what those afternoons were like: members of a very close family who loved each other dearly spending precious time together.”

The photo showsPrince Philip, who died at 99 years old in April 2021, and Mia, now 10, sitting outside a log cabin in front of a wooden table, ready to enjoy a meal.

As for Philip’s wife of over 73 years, the late Queen Elizabeth, Mike wrote, “I’m sometimes asked if the Queen did informality like ‘normal’ people, and the answer to that is yes. Her life wasn’t like an episode ofDownton Abbey.”

“I think I met her in biology,” he said — and might have even foretold his romantic future when doing so.

“Not entirely sure whether I said to her then that I would marry Zara,” Mike continued. “It might have come out my mouth. I’m not entirely sure.”

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Mike and Zara ultimately met in 2003 during England’s World Cup-winning run in Australia and married in Scotland in July 2011, three months after William and Kate married at Westminster Abbey in London. A source speaking to theTimesearlier this year described the parents of three as the “glue of their generation of royals, no matter how serious the occasion. They can help take the family’s mind off the gravity of what is going on. While some family members can be very ‘royal,’ Mike is just himself and is relaxed and playful.”

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Speaking of the gravity of difficult situations, after the late Queen died in September 2022, Mike said, “A 96-year-old lady, you know it’s going to happen, but you’re never ready for when it does." He continued, “I also have loads of regrets about not asking her so many more things … Having nervousness when you sit there, get that lucky seat of being sat next to her.”

He added, “It’s like the world has lost its grandmother in some way.”

source: people.com