In The Crown, Prince William (Ed McVey) complains to his father about photographers, saying they are who he hates most in the world.
In episode five, the show recreates when William and Harry traveled with Charles to Vancouver in 1998. The plot sees Charles (Dominic West) telling his sons they need to do a photo call before their ski holiday can begin. William (Ed McVey) immediately refuses, and Charles tells him, “Willy, that’s the way it works: We give them something, and they leave us alone.”
To which William replies, “You know I hate this stuff… It’s already been a thousand times more than I agreed to.” Charles tries to say this is something they have to live with, but William continues, “But I hate it. Hate the press, hate the crowds. Why tell us we’re going somewhere alone, then put us in front of the people we hate most in the world?”
While we do not know young William’s feelings on photographers and paparazzi, he has spoken about it (via spokespeople and more indirectly) a few times throughout his life.
In one incident, when William and Kate were photographed leaving a club in 2007, a Clarence House spokesperson went on the record. “Prince William was concerned by the threatening behaviour of the paparazzi in London,” spokesperson Paddy Harverson said in 2007. “Having already been photographed leaving the club, he and Kate Middleton were then pursued in his car by photographers on motorcycles, in vehicles and on foot. The aggressive pursuit was potentially dangerous and worrying for them. It seems incomprehensible, particularly at this time, that this behaviour is still going on.”
In Spare, which may not be the most accurate portrayal of William, Prince Harry writes of his brother, “Willy told me that both he and Kate felt trapped, and unfairly persecuted, by the press and by Pa and Camilla, so I felt some need to carry the banner for all three of us in 2015… I didn’t understand until months later that there were even more reasons why the press was gunning for Willy. First, he’d got them all worked up by ceasing to play their game, denying them unfettered access to his family. He’d refused sever times to trot Kate out like a prized racehorse, and that was considered a bridge too far.”
Photographers wait outside St Mary’s Hospital for William and Kate to depart with their third child, Prince Louis.
In 2017, Prince William and Kate sued Closer, a French magazine, for publishing photos of them on a 2012 vacation. They were awarded $150,000, which the Sydney Morning Herald reported “was among the highest awarded for invasion of privacy in a French court, though it was significantly less than the couple’s ambit claim when they fought the case.”
“In September 2012, my wife and I thought that we could go to France for a few days in a secluded villa owned by a member of my family, and thus enjoy our privacy,” Prince William said in a statement at the time. “We know France and the French and we know that they are, in principle, respectful of private life, including that of their guests. The clandestine way in which these photographs were taken was particularly shocking to us as it breached our privacy.”
He said the photos being published was “particularly painful, because they remind us of the harassment at the death of Princess Diana, twenty years ago, in a pursuit by paparazzi.”
In 2022, a video leaked of William shouting angrily at a paparazzi photographer filming his family.
Emily Burack (she/her) is the news writer for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.
