Kylie Kelce apologizes Kate Middleton
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LOS ANGELES — The Kylie Kelce apologizes Kate Middleton story began, as so many modern royal controversies do, with a podcast. On the September 24 episode of "Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce," the 34-year-old wife of former NFL star Jason Kelce extended a warm, slightly giddy invitation to the Princess of Wales — after watching her play the Scottish sport shinty during a visit to Scotland. "Princess Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, if you ever wanted to come on and chitchat about some field hockey and maybe kids. I don't know. We got a couple things in common," Kelce said. The warmth was genuine. The titles were wrong. And on the October 1 episode, Kelce issued a full, gracious correction.
"I love learning, so I was unaware that calling Princess Catherine 'Princess Kate' was offensive. I didn't know that. Now I know that. Now I will proceed accordingly. I apologize for the mistake. I would like to refer to people in the most respectful way and how they feel respected," Kelce said. She continued: "Princess Catherine, or the Princess of Wales, I apologize. I will get that sorted immediately starting now." Then she re-extended the invitation, with evident admiration: "She is an incredible woman. She has children. She played field hockey. She battled cancer."
What she got wrong: a brief history of the titles
Kelce's errors were understandable and, to royal watchers, glaring. Catherine's formal title is Catherine, Princess of Wales — she has not been the Duchess of Cambridge since September 2022, when Queen Elizabeth II's death and Charles's accession reshuffled the royal deck and she and William took the Wales titles. As for "Princess Kate": the Princess has never held a princess title in her own right, and "Kate" is a diminutive she reportedly finds offensive — the press's affectionate shorthand is not, it turns out, how she wishes to be addressed.
None of this is intuitive to an American audience. The British title system is a baroque inheritance of marriages, accessions, and courtesy styles, and even the British press gets it wrong with regularity. Kelce's mistake — calling the Princess by the name every American magazine cover uses — was the mistake of someone who learned royalty from People magazine rather than Debrett's. What makes the story interesting is not the error but the correction: a public, cheerful, un-defensive apology that treated the title as a matter of the Princess's own dignity rather than a protocol trivia question.
Why this matters: royal protocol meets American pop culture
This is a story about the collision of two cultural industries: the British monarchy, which runs on precision about names and rank, and the American celebrity podcast economy, which runs on intimacy and first names. "Not Gonna Lie" is one of the biggest podcasts in the country; its host is married to one of the most beloved figures in American sports; and its audience learned, in real time, that the woman they've called "Kate" for two decades has a formal identity they'd never quite registered. That is a genuine cultural transmission — royal protocol reaching millions of Americans through a football wife's apology.
It also matters because of the Kelce family's unique position in the current celebrity firmament. Jason Kelce co-hosts "New Heights" with his brother Travis — who is, famously, in a relationship with Taylor Swift, whose Eras Tour stop in London is where Jason met Prince William. William then appeared on "New Heights" in July. The Kelces are now, improbably, a bridge between American pop culture and the British royal family: the podcasters who have hosted the heir to the throne and are now courting his wife. Kelce's invitation to the Princess isn't just fan behavior; it's the next logical step in a crossover that has been building all year.
The critics' corner: gracious or performative?
Not everyone will read the apology as pure grace. The royal-commentary economy thrives on parsing every gesture, and the skeptical reading writes itself: a celebrity makes a mistake on a microphone, gets corrected by the internet, and performs contrition for content. The apology becomes the second episode's hook — and indeed, here we are, writing about it.
But the performative reading misses what actually happened. Kelce didn't wait to be shamed into it; she opened the correction herself, framed it as learning, and centered the Princess's preferences rather than her own embarrassment. "I would like to refer to people in the most respectful way and how they feel respected" is a sentence that applies well beyond royalty. If the apology is content, it's content with a decent moral: call people what they want to be called. The critics who call that performative are, in a sense, proving the segment's point — the royal-commentary machine will metabolize anything, including graciousness, into discourse.
The royal-podcast precedent: will the palace accept?
The open question is whether the invitation lands. Royal podcast appearances are still rare enough to be events: William's "New Heights" appearance in July was notable precisely because the heir to the throne doesn't usually do sports-comedy podcasts. A Princess of Wales appearance on "Not Gonna Lie" — field hockey, kids, cancer recovery, the shinty connection — would be a genuine media moment, and the palace's communications team knows it.
The calculation for Kensington Palace is the usual one: control versus reach. Podcasts are long-form, lightly edited, and intimate — exactly the qualities that make them powerful and exactly the qualities that make palace press officers nervous. But the monarchy's media strategy has been moving toward informality for years, and an audience of millions of American women is not an audience the Princess's charitable causes would sniff at. Kelce's apology, paradoxically, may have helped her case: it demonstrated, on the record, that she takes the institution seriously enough to learn its rules.
What happens next
Watch for three things. First, whether the palace responds — a polite decline, a silence, or the surprise of an acceptance would each be news. Second, whether "Not Gonna Lie" keeps the royal thread alive; Kelce has now made the Princess a recurring character in her show's universe, and the audience will expect updates. Third, the broader pattern: the Kelce-Swift-royal crossover is becoming a durable feature of the celebrity landscape, and every new installment — a podcast invite, a tour meetup, a charity gala — tightens the weave between American fame and British royalty. Kylie Kelce started the week as a podcaster who got a title wrong. She ended it as the woman who might just land the Princess of Wales as a guest. That is not a bad week's work.
Sources
- USA Today — "Kylie Kelce apologizes to Kate Middleton over 'Princess Kate' comment," October 1, 2026.
- InStyle — "Kylie Kelce apologizes to Kate Middleton for unexpected reason," October 1, 2026.
- Just Jared — "Kylie Kelce apologizes to Kate Middleton over 'Princess Kate' comment, explains what she got wrong," October 1, 2026.
- The Spun — "Kylie Kelce apologizes for offensive remark on British royal family," October 1, 2026.