Kate Middleton Meets Princess Diana In The Crown, But Did They Actually?

The last six episodes of the final season of The Crown have dropped on Netflix, and as ever, royal fans are watching closely to see how well the fictional depiction of the royal family lines up with reality. So much of the series has managed to blur the lines between what is verifiably true about Queen Elizabeth’s reign and what is absolutely conjecture. So when a scene from Season 6, Episode 7 of The Crown saw a young Kate Middleton meeting Princess Diana before she died, we wanted to know if this was true.

The scene in question was part of flashback in the cold open of the episode, where Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) is seen doing some Christmas shopping with her mom, Carole Middleton (Eve Best), when the two happen across Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) collecting money for charity alongside a young Prince William (Rufus Kampa). Carole Middleton, who appears to be trying to orchestrate a romance between Prince William and her daughter from the jump, encourages Kate to bring money to Princess Diana. She graciously thanks her while Prince William and Kate Middleton make googly eyes at each other, and that’s the end of it.

But did this actually happen? Did Kate Middleton meet her future mother-in-law mere months before her death?

No, she did not. Kate Middleton said herself during an engagement interview in April 2023 that she never had the chance to meet the woman who was to become her mother-in-law. In a video taken of the event, Middleton was discussing her engagement ring, which had been Princess Diana’s before her.

“It’s the same ring and it’s exactly the same size as when I tried it on,” Kate said of the ring, per Newsweek, which was left initially to Prince Harry. (He gifted it to Prince William when he asked Kate to marry him in 2010.) “So it’s very, very special. It’s an honor to be able to carry on wearing it,” she continued. “I never, sadly, got to meet her ... I never met her, no, sadly. Obviously now with the children — her grandchildren — her being a grandmother... she’d be brilliant. You know, we miss her every day and that’s what’s important.”

The second part of Season 6 of The Crown focuses largely on the early years of Prince William’s relationship with Kate Middleton, when the two were students at St. Andrew’s in Scotland. It’s a shame that the current Princess of Wales never did get the chance to meet Princess Diana, so it was sort of sweet to see what that meeting could have looked like — in the parallel universe that is The Crown.