Canadian comedy legend Eugene Levy, 78, beloved for his roles in SCTV, American Pie and Schitt’s Creek, landed the biggest interview in recent memory. He bagged an extremely rare one-on-one with William, Prince of Wales, for his Apple TV+ travel show, The Reluctant Traveler, getting a tour of Windsor Castle and a heartfelt exchange with the heir to the throne over cider in the pub. The interview yielded real insights on William’s mindset regarding his eventual accession to the throne.
The headline quote from HRH revealed more about William’s intentions for the future than he has ever articulated before. “I think it’s safe to say that change is on my agenda. Change for good and I embrace that and enjoy that change. I don’t fear it. That’s the bit that excites me, is the idea of being able to bring some change. Not overly radical change, but changes that I think need to happen.”
The choice of Levy, an actor in the medium of an entertainment program (as opposed to a heavyweight news-sector griller), was clearly a deliberate move on Buckingham Palace’s part. Canada is, of course, a member of the Commonwealth and footage early in the episode showed Levy reminiscing – as so many Canadians do – about pledging allegiance to the Crown and singing God Save the Queen at the beginning of each school day. Levy also revealed he was old enough to remember watching the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on television, an innovation devised and executed by her “strength and stay” Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, to bring the monarchy into the cathode-ray age.
Given the stakes swirling around British Royal Family sitdowns, the negotiations to set up the interview would have been lengthy, with the segment filmed way back in February and released just last week. Apple TV+ is a known quantity to the Palace – see King Charles III’s Commonwealth favourites playlist – and, notably, a different streamer than Netflix, where the estranged Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archwell production company has their much-discussed deal.
The episode, Living the Royal Life in the UK, begins with Levy decamping from London’s Goring hotel, where he spent the night before heading down to Windsor Castle to meet the Prince – as Catherine, Princess of Wales, did before the royal wedding to her Prince Charming. Levy waits outside the Castle as William whizzes into view wearing a blazer and trainers aboard an electric scooter, which, it turns out, he uses to get around Windsor Great Park. It’s a very modern commute, in keeping with his message of sustainability, which he reinforces through his Earth Shot Prize – William is going to do things differently.
Levy does a solid job of asking some real questions. While William was definitely practiced in his responses and clearly had a manifesto to lay down, Levy jostled free some vulnerability and a great deal of warmth. William was simultaneously able to articulate his vision for his future as a modern and more relatable monarch.
William has been clear about his fraught relationship with the “insatiable” British press – hence choosing this Levy interlude. He discussed how he doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past, specifically those of his parents. “I know that the drama and the stress when you are small really affects you when you are older,” he told Levy. In the days after the interview, Palace courtiers put out signals that William was not, in fact, criticizing his father, the King. He was concerned, rather, about the media’s intrusion in Royal Family life and that, along with his wife Catherine, they were concentrating on providing George, Charlotte and Louis “safety, security and love.”
We also learned that the Wales’ family focuses on dinners together, sports for the kids and a firm ban on phone usage. He also admitted that 2024 was his toughest year ever, with both Kate and Charles battling cancer. “Life is sent to test us … and it definitely can be challenging at times. I’m so proud of my wife and my father for how they have handled all of last year.”
It’s steady as she goes in the House of Windsor. King Charles, who is still undergoing cancer treatments, is keeping up a full diary this fall. The Wales family is moving to their new “forever” home, Forest Lodge – an eight-bedroom Grade II-listed Georgian mansion on the grounds of Windsor Great Park. However, touring Levy around Windsor Castle and reinforcing his grandmother’s attachment to the place was also part of the subliminal messaging, an attempt to stem criticism that William’s reign will stray too far from the tradition of Buckingham Palace as the spiritual and physical home of the monarch.
On the lighter side, William joshed around about how small yet rotund Henry VIII’s armour was. He fondly recalled his solo tea dates with his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II during his Eton College days, as the school is just across the river from Windsor, so the castle was a 10-minute stroll away. As she aged, William says the late Queen became less sculpted by formality, and they became closer. “As I got older and they got older, it got warmer and warmer, and I definitely think my relationship was best with my grandparents when they were more in their 80s and they were sort of relaxed a little bit.”
He spoke about how his kids have it easy when dashing around the castle’s vast St. George’s Hall, the scene of the recent state banquet for U.S. President Trump, as it now has carpeting and won’t give them splinters as it did to him and his gang of cousins. This info all added a warm and folksy – again, the goal is relatable – element.
Now that King Charles and Prince Harry have visited after over a year, royal watchers were hoping that William’s mention of his brother during the interview was an olive branch, signalling a similar rapprochement between the feuding siblings. “I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do, a world and a job that actually does impact people’s lives for the better. That is caveated with, I hope we don’t go back to some of the practices in the past, that Harry and I had to grow up in. I’ll do everything I can to make sure we don’t regress to that situation.”
The rarity of this kind of interaction with Levy makes the interview special. No wonder it has become such a talking point. Catherine’s direct outreaches to the public – when she first announced her diagnosis in a personal video statement filmed and released via the BBC, and then when she announced her remission in a social media video – are part of this concerted effort to take charge of the narrative of the monarchy’s next generation. William is looser and less formal than his father, who is looser and less formal than his mother.
The question moving forward for William will be how to balance modernization with tradition. Tradition is a safe place: those set-pieces around which the royal calendar revolves, from Trooping the Colour to Commonwealth Day and Remembrance Sunday; the balcony waves and fly-bys; the Sandringham church walks. Communication in an era of instant social media chaos is a trickier thing to stay on top of.
Long live the King. Hopefully, William will have much time to find his footing and establish a path forward in a world very much changed from that of his forebearers. This interview was a very successful attempt to reclaim the narrative. And, it didn’t feel canned and prepackaged – Eugene Levy deserves a lot of credit for that. Levy toasted the prince at the end of the interview saying, “I’m hoping every other prince I run into is as nice, open and human as you.” To which William responded, with a wry chuckle, “There’s a prince everywhere now, [it’s] very common. You’ll find quite a few.” But none, perhaps, as adept at balancing tradition and modernity while still being approachable and genuine – a trait that William learned from his mother, Diana, who mastered that formula.
