The Duchess of Cambridge is so many things to so many people. She is the Peacemaker, the Keen Lynchpin, the Che Guevera of the Windsor klan. She is the lightness and Millennial hope of the monarchy. She is the wiglet that saved a nation. And now she’s one more thing: a keen vlogger, a YouTuber who is trying to make cute videos of her “work” only I’m left with more questions than answers. To support the Hold Still coffee table book, Kate called some of the photographers and photo-subjects to chat. Instead of, say, filming Kate live and maybe putting the phone on speaker and just doing it that way, the Kensington Palace vlogging team did this:
They took beauty shots of Kate preening with the sapphire and looking busy and then they just recorded the calls. Okay. I mean, I’ll give KP some credit – this does not look completely amateurish. I was expecting it to look really cheap and stupid and it does not. I still think they could have done it differently though, but what do I know. Kate’s really revealed her love of posing with a landline-phone in her hand during the pandemic, huh?
As for the calls, apparently she recorded them in Autumn 2020. Which means she already got “credit” for this work last year (“private meetings”) and now she gets to add another “event” to her schedule because KP released the phone calls. How many of these rainy-day phone calls and videos do you think KP has stockpiled? As for her accent… the poshness comes and goes, I think when she’s on the phone, she gets tired of forcing herself into the strained posh accent.
Here are some photos from Kate’s visit to the National Portrait Gallery last Friday. I had not seen the interior shots before now! I hate that she went to one of her patronages for her big keen coffee table book and… she didn’t take her coat off. I hate when she does that.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Kensington Palace.
Why is no one telling them how stupid they look in pictures of themselves on the phone? Or is someone there wiping their brow telling them what a super keen job they’re doing?
I can’t do like 6 minutes of this. Very tacky I find. This was 2020! Come on, we’re half through 2021!!! How many times are we going to push hold still?? If they are doing this to keep being in the news, they shouldnt. I mean it looks so small compared to the other couple , just maks them look bad! Just come up with something substantial and real and really fun for you personally! my god – how long do you have to think! 10 years still?
Bless her heart. She is ‘repurposing her content’ like the social media experts advice. Wow! How lazy does someone have to be to get so much mileage from one project that she actually hijacked for her embiggening campaign. I suppose it’s the Peter Principle. You get promoted to your level of incompetence and boy she has been promoted waaay beyond her competence.
During that call she also scribbled something on a post it note. See exclusive photographischen on Christmas!
In these shots at the galley, who is she talking to? Why are all these shots of just her.
I could not get the volume to work so I watched it as a silent movie with subtitles. It is pretty cringeworthy but definitely an improvement over their old social media styles.
She was doing something…why NOW? I mean why they didn’t post this kind of thing at the time? The project was cool, it could have hyped the sales, or promote other things.
I think the crisis managers are desperately trying to make them seem busy and create you tube content.
Well the book is released this month and i assume its in promotion of that. Plus this month is mental health month and since they also spoke about mental health i think they wanted it released this month.
In the hands of someone else this project could have been huge. In the hands of Unable, well what can I say. She has no standing when it comes to mental health issues. She and her mother were the gas lighters in chief of her sister in law.
This is what I am saying: the project itself was cool, they could have handled this better.
The project is already huge. The book itself rank #2 on Amazon UK. I think it’s a good achievement.
Weh weh I respectfully disagree. The UK is not the world. They book is number 2 but could have been a world wide best seller like Meghan’s preorders which was number one in many countries. The small island thinks too much of itself.
That must be her “work chair” because the pic of the kids stood out to me – I saw it on another post and yes, same chair but a video call. In my early years out of college I volunteered for a political campaign and I made some calls to constituents. I will change my resume to read: Ran a successful political campaign. I am taking lessons from Katey Keen.
She keeps the coat so the peasants understand that she will be leaving as soon as the photo shoot is over. With her is usually one event that ends up counting for 5 in the circular. Girl choose an interest and stick to it.
This was my first reaction on seeing the coat. It’s a sign she didn’t and doesn’t plan to stay long.
At least unbutton it though! It’s all bunched up and uncomfortable looking. Like she looks physically uncomfortable and I would be uncomfortable sitting across from her looking at her coat all bunched up like that. Men button and unbutton their suit jackets when they stand up and sit down. She could do that. But I guess since she chooses these coats with a thousand buttons from ankle to neck and buttons every single one of them it would be a process.
Awful. I actually want to heckle them. She and the husband are lazy, racist bums.
Phone calls would be a great thing to put on your podcast. Why the heck did they start a YouTube channel if the content they had was all audio? This is not the platform for that!
I read this as “lazy, racist buttons,” and didn’t even question it with all the nicknames for Duchess of Buttons
I was really enjoyed it until she started talking about mental health, then I was like “the hypocrisy.” But I am enjoying the little bit of irony that this highlighter subject is heading to sunny California now.
Back in 2020, Kate didn’t know their phony interest in mental health was going to be outed by Meghan talking with Oprah about her severe mental health issues and the firm’s refusal to help her get professional help. Really, it seems tone-deaf that they didn’t take the mental health reference out of this phone call. I guess the Lamebridges are going to continue to market themselves as mental health warriors despite the world knowing otherwise.
Oh didn’t you know? Only attention seeking show-offs take their coats off at engagements. All good modest button-loving duchesses know to keep theirs on at all times.
As for stock piling, it just shows more and more how the Cambridges “work” is all about timely PR strategy and nothing more. They don’t care about service or raising awareness for anything until it is useful for their own image and promotion. A real savvy person wouldn’t need to save months old phone calls to use later to promote a book, they would have better ideas for a roll-out. Where are the gold standard advisors when you need them?
Making this call 9 months ago, only to release it now is typical keen. So what was she working on for all of this time? The only thing she contributed were these phone calls, which don’t put much emphasis on the actual contestants. Putting a slide show of Kate looking like a working woman is ridiculous. It also just shows how lazy she is. Counting the original call as an engagement, as well as this video with the same call as another and then hoarding it is insane.
And when william becomes king he plans on doing even less than this. Lord. I truly believe he will be the last monarch of the uk because if they do so little people will start wondering why they’re even there
Is the British media criticizing Katie Keen for recycling this content? They should be.
Yeah, I feel like they are only releasing this now because they are trying to create a little good PR wave for the book release–can’t let that other Duchess take up all the room with the talk of good book sales and all!
The stock piling of things from events and then drip feeding them to the press is something they, esp Keen, have been doing for the past 3/4 years – she does it more than William does. It’s pretty obvious now that she does NOT like ‘singing’ for her supper and does not care that we can see it.
If the calls were done last week then this wouldn’t be so bad but calling someone months ago and presenting it now just looks stupid.
I noticed they didn’t call Kate “Ma’am”. Odd since the Cambridges are suppose to be sticklers for protocol. Definitely the goal is to reach the 18-24 demographic. Still don’t get warm and fuzzy from Kate.
I don’t think there is any protocol around what to call Kate. It’s the Queen who gets called Ma’am after you have addressed her as “your majesty” the first time. Kate’s only a HRH and I don’t think there are strict protocols around what to call her. I’ve definitely seen people call Sophie and Anne by their names instead of saying “your highness” and Ma’am.
Reminds me of when I hand my 18 month old cousin a remote and tell them they have a phone call…
HAHAHAHHAHAHA. I can’t unsee the phone as a remote control in Kate’s hand now.
That’s what it looks like, LOL…pretend
I don’t know who he’s talking to or what he’s doing, but he’s definitely handling his business…at least until that damn Cocomelon theme song drops 😂
Lol
Your cousin is probably more articulate.
I think this was a really beautiful project. That is all.
Nobody besides Kate got credit or publicity for this book. I would never want her involved with my charitable cause. The focus is more on her than the book or the patronage.
This. A patron or champion for a charity is supposed to call attention to your cause or mandate as well as help with fundraising. Bill and Cathy do a bad job every time.
And on her clothes
I am sorry but it does look cheap, stupid and lazy! If they want to use a dumb phone photo of Kate she already has a dump photo with a phone. I don’t freaking know but they look lazy af.
It would have looked a lot more spontaneous and maybe showed some personality if they had done a zoom and simply recorded that and found a savy way to insert the photographs taken. Now you are listen to a phone call and all you see is a pic of kate on the phone. It weird
Well, her hair looks nice. And yeah, the accent stood out to me, it didn’t sound as forced as it usually does, wonder if she loses interest in keeping the fake posh accent on the phone?
Honestly this is a good project as we all have said but the way they are really dragging this out for the engagement count is SO obvious. It reminds me of the Early Years – it wasn’t just that the survey was so bad, but also that it was clearly something being used just so Kate could up her numbers as much as possible.
I HATE when she doesn’t take her coat off. People on WKW used to insist that was royal protocol and she couldn’t take it off because then people would think of a royal undressing and that was just so inappropriate. I mean……
That excuse makes no sense lol. Her stans make the lamest excuses for her. I know Meghan and Harry have taken their coats off at engagements, so it’s definitely not protocol, it’s just that Kate wants to leave ASAP.
Sometimes they insisted it was because there wasn’t anything to do with her coat. Like no assistant to take it or no place to hang it up etc. It was laughable.
Even if Kate stays hours at these events (we know she doesn’t but let’s pretend), keeping her coat on for the whole time just gives the impression that she is about to bolt at any second. I know the Queen leaves her coat on but her coats are always part of her outfit (i.e. you can see some of her dress underneath and they’re coordinated together etc).
@Becks1: The queen also has taken her coat off before. That engagement her and Meghan had, there was an inside sit down portion and you can see the queens full dress and Meghan also took off the cape(?) part of her dress
Its the gardens all over again. Kate won’t have anything new until September.
Actually, there’s only 1 engagement counted for hold still. So far, they’ve never listed a social media post like this on the court circular. So, I doubt this will count towards her numbers.
I really wish that Kate hadn’t abandoned the early years project to “focus on COVID.” I think people greatly misunderstood the whole thing. The survey wasn’t meant to be a scientific study on the subject. It was meant to be a survey of the public’s general knowledge. It had potential. Then again, I’m of the opinion that Kate would like to work more, but is unwilling to rock the boat with Will. I’m not saying she’d be up to Charles’ numbers, but I think we’d see more of her if she thought she could get away with it.
@Ainsley7 When has Kate ever worked more? She hadn’t worked in the decade before she married in and is still doing nothing now. Will is not holding her back. This is just who she is and why would she change? The palace is doing f*ck all about it and the press hasn’t called her out since Meghan. Even when the BM had the balls to call her lazy, she still didn’t get off her a**. Kate does about 116 engagements a year, which comes out to about 30 days or something. All of nothing for millions in return. Not only does she have it made, but both W&K plan to do even less in the future.
@ainsley7. I don’t think kate wants to work more at all because if she liked to work she would have done it in those 7 years she was supposedly “learning the ropes”. I get that she had 3 kids but come on, meghan had very successful projects all within less than 2 years and while she was pregnant and postpartum and apparently suicidal.
About early years, no doubt it was an important research but the roll out of it was simply poorly executed. They could have made it clear that those 5 big questions were to draw attention to the actual research and then give the researches credit for the findings. Instead they pretended as if those questions encapsulated the whole research. When kate presented the answers to her 5 questions she only presented 4 and then included a finding about how the covid pandemic effected young kids or something. Keep in mind that she did those questions in 2019…….It was simply a mess
I disagree with that because nothing we have seen indicates that she wants to work more. William works more than she does. She didn’t work before she married William, she’s not working now – I think its clear at this point that she has zero desire to work.
If people “greatly misunderstood the whole thing” then she needed to do a better job explaining and promoting it. That’s on her.
ETA and there’s definite more than one event for Hold Still in the court circular, unless you are just referring to the past week?
If Kate wanted to work more she would’ve had a real job BEFORE she married William, instead of twiddling her thumbs as his beck-and-call girl. That also says a lot about William if you feel she doesn’t work just so she doesn’t set him off, and NONE of it good.
She really should have combined the two. That was a missed opportunity with her. She could have done so much with early years and COVID.
Asking people if nature or nurture was more important for raising kids shows that they didn’t actually think about the questions at all. It is like asking people if they like the colour red more than the colour blue. Both are pointless questions that have no purpose.
A first year psychology student would have crafted a better survey and this was only ever a make work project.
I feel like if it was all about how she really did want to work more but she didn’t want to outwork William and have all kinds of engagements and be out there all the time overshadowing him, then the very few engagements and projects that she does would be much more impactful. More quality over quantity of she’s not allowed quantity. If she was seriously about the work and wanted to make a difference but was being held back, then I think we’d see maybe one really good piece of work a year. Something that actually helped her charity and that would continue to raise money for them throughout the year even without her consistently having to show up and be in the papers. Like Meghan’s smart works. Or Meghan’s cookbook. Those were amazing projects that are still bringing in the funding long after their initial release.
But Kate is consistently doing all sorts of these glamour shot type of PR things. She’s always in the papers, even if it’s just multiple articles a week about how she’s the one and only person who can keep the monarchy alive. She makes William seem like a emotional child that she has to manage in these articles, so I’m not sure that she’s worrying about overshadowing him or stealing his spotlight. Everything she releases is all about her. These pictures of her apparently meeting with people at the national portrait gallery for Hold Still are beauty shots of her. They don’t even include the people at the patronage that she’s supposedly working for.
@Ainsley
Came here to say that you absolutely don’t need to “abandon” a project to focus on COVID….for goodness sake, tie in Early Years WITH COVID! Children and parents were severely affected by the pandemic, with schools closed and homeschooling forced on many working parents. Kate had the greatest opportunity ever — once in a lifetime, really — to combine issues of mental health and children and all I can remember KP doing was “releasing a project to do at home w your child every Monday on Instagram” (can someone pls let me know if they kept that up, because I don’t follow them). And yes, she combined the results of her inane survey with a pandemic survey but it still all came to…nothing,
The reason why she’s incapable of giving good advice to parents or helping them is because she doesn’t relate and cannot understand their needs. Nor does she try to. And if, giving her the benefit of the doubt, she does, she refuses to do anything about it. Taking a photo with a pie-chart and going on a Choo Choo tour are the very definition of “sound and fury” busy work that ultimately signified nothing.
I agree about the accent, at times I was thinking, who’s speaking now? when she reads off her cue cards she is extra nervous, i guess, so that adds to those pauses she has between words and sentences that make it so cringe.
Also, she speaks really badly – lots of ‘sort of’ and ‘like’ and ‘and things’… I expect more from someone whose been in training for 10 years now
I could never be a royal. I sweat too much to wear a coat all the time. Who knew nonexistent sweat glands were a requirement for a member of the BRF.
It’s really just Kate that does the coat wearing inside. Sophie and Camilla don’t dress like that. Also what’s being unsaid is that Kate is so thin she’s probably cold all the time now.
I’m sure the people she called were thrilled to be finalists and good for them and good for her. At the same time, my cynical heart looks at all this sweetness and thinks “empty calories.”
Do they plan on dragging this out till the end of summer? The Cambridge’s have form for doing all their ‘work’ within a day, but change their outfits to make it look like they’re ‘hard at work’ over many weeks. Katie Keen, don’t try and fool us like this!
why is there a random throw pillow balanced on top of the radiator/heater behind her??
I know! First thing I noticed, then I couldn’t really look at anything else.
I bet the cushion is placed there so she can recycle this photo op when her interest in textiles comes back in vogue. “It’s an interesting fabric, can you tell what type it is by smell?”
Looks like a fire hazard.
There will never be an unedited video of her again since her patronage called her out for not visiting for eight years. Vanity project, I could only listen to a small bit but I don’t think they even identify to whom she is speaking to.
Hold Still has become this years garden of 2019 and early years survey of 2020. I’ve said it’s a good project and it’s more in line with I think Kate should be doing (promoting her patronages as opposed to big projects all on her own) but I think after 3-4 phone calls I’m going to be sick of hearing about it.
Although I’m sure the people she’s calling are happy to be speaking to her and it’s a treat for them.
These flurry of activities shows that the Cambridges are determined not to be overshadowed by Prince Harry and Meghan. This is good for the monarchy.
The Queen and Prince Charles should thank Harry and Meghan for pushing Prince William and Kate to action instead of being workshy and enjoying the perks of being royals.
But did Keen do any work here? The calls were made last year and someone else put them together in this video with still picture of her.
It might be better if they had sustained, consistent work, rather than flurries here and there?
She could have put her degree in art history for good use only if she wanted to.. I imagine there are lots of arts projects organizations for her to highlight in the UK but she lacks intrest& enthusiasm
The royals will use and abuse anything/one that makes them look better. They honestly believe they are one step below God and it is your role in life to let them abuse you as they see fit.
I can’t get over how many times she used the word “keen” in that phone call – I think she is trolling us 😂
These people have no idea how social media works. You want to engage people and pull them in? Don’t slap a minutes-long phone call audio on YT. Nice for this mother and daughter to get exposure for their photographs, but they couldn’t come up with a more compelling way to present it? Oh, that’s right….even though she’s supposed to be picture perfect in every way Katie is horrible at off-the-cuff interactions, so an edited and prerecorded segment was the best they could do. Got it.
Right?! I clicked off after a minute. Boring.
I think that’s also why it’s a phone call and not a video chat. On a phone call she can be given written questions based on information already submitted by the entrants. That’s why she sounds more natural. I think it’s a mistake to keep showing so much of the book’s contents on SM where it can be seen for free. How does that encourage sales, if you’ve already seen the photos and heard the stories?
Considering it’s being number one on amazon UK for days, it sold out in France and the NPG has said they’re going to restock due to unprecedented demand, I think we can assure that sales are going ok.
When the Cambridges said they were joining YouTube, this isn’t what I was expecting. I thought there would be actual videos not audio clips. And yes, her accent isn’t as posh when she’s on the phone.
You know how they wanted Meghan to dim her “light” to 50%. Maybe that is who Kate is. She is 50% of the person she could have been. And this is what that looks like 10-20 years later.
Buttons, and thinking families have to look like the one she grew up in to be successful, and doing what she is told for PR purposes, no common sense or intuition used at all.
I don’t think Kate had much light to dim. Even her cousin described her as not much interested in the world around her. Kate is focused on staying thin, looking young and pleasing William. These goals have been the only ones she’s pursued since the early 2000s. There is no evidence in 20 years of Kate’s entire adult life that she has ever cared about anything beyond that.
Well the looking young ship has long sailed passed her.
But her obsession with it has not. I’m always struck by how blurry the photos of her are that are released by KP.
even 50% of Megan’s light is orders of magnitude brighter than Kate at 100%.
Keen Karen laziness has peek this year.
Given that she buys a new coat per event, it makes sense she wears it the whole time, she has to justify the purchase!
The shot of her sitting at a table in her coat looks rather like someone in a cozy dressing gown, hair brushed out, all ready for bed.
I wonder what view she is trying to hide with the pink cushion on the windowsill?
Also, Meghan had a nice cushion prominently displayed beside her in her recorded message for the VAX Live concert – and hey presto, CopyKate felt an overwhelming desire to compositionally center-stage a cushion. Of course.
How is that a copykat when she did the call in autumn. Not everything she does has something to do with Meghan, and vice versa. Both woman have their own works and achievements.
Has anyone determined when the pics were take ? The audio is from fall but the pics could have been taken last week.
I really didn’t understand the coat for that outing, especially since nobody else was wearing a super heavy coat. It’s spring now, not dead of winter. It looks so out of season.
I didn’t watch this Hold Still clip but there was one about a 4 year old girl with cancer whose picture was taken saying bye to her father through the window. Her father and older sister moved out for a few months last year in March 2020 because the little girl needed to get through her cancer treatments. Her family didn’t want to expose her unnecessarily so the mom and she lived apart from father and older sister. I teared up during that call listening to the little girl and mom talk to Kate on the phone. Not so much about Kate but hearing the mom and little girl’s experience during COVID was very moving.
Oy ve that blouse looks like she stole it from my great Aunt’s closet! So so fussy
My god I owned an identical blouse in the 1980s.
Lol i didnt get through the whole video but i love when the first photographer says “thanks for basically selecting the photo”. That’s basically all Kate did.
They said she found her voice, turns out her voice is a staged phone call. Not a surprise to anyone.
Well god job kate for endorsing the book and claiming all the hardwork from the hold still team.
Good job media person for stock piling kate’s work and releasing it bit by bit to make it looks like she had been working for the whole month.
The Cambridges are poor copycats of the Sussexes. The Cs can never do better. Everything they do looks so contrived. So just cut it out please.