Princess Kate Middleton lookalike Heidi Agan has denied that the royal family hired her to cover for the princess amid her surgery recovery.
“I’m not employed by Kensington Palace,” Agan told Entertainment Tonight on Thursday, March 21. “I’m self-employed, and I just go to fun parties and corporate events and things like that. Nothing as serious as actually impersonating her for her.”
Agan previously worked as a waitress before local patrons kept remarking that she looked like Kate, now 42, upon her 2011 wedding to Prince William. Agan eventually quit her job to pursue the new opportunity full-time.
“It’s a paid job, so I guess it’s kind of like an acting job,” she added on Thursday. “You dress up like her when you go to work. I’ve traveled the world with it. I’ve been unbelievably blessed, and it really is one of the most fantastic jobs in the world.”
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According to Agan, she meticulously studied Kate’s mannerisms and her background to make her portrayal “more realistic.”
“I want to be the best at what I do, whether it’s down to the perfume she’s wearing or, you know, silly things that we have to know the name of the dog,” Agan stressed. “And we have to watch how she interacts with William, how does she interact with the children? What are her little quirks? How she holds her hands. All those kinds of things are kind of what makes the experience.”
Kate, meanwhile, has not made an official appearance since December 2023, one month before undergoing a “planned abdominal surgery.” As Kate recovered privately, she’s only been spotted on three separate occasions in March via blurry photos. The images sparked speculation from royal watchers, who claimed that Kate did not look the same as she had pre-surgery. As speculation ran rampant, social media users theorized that the palace had hired a body double to go out in public dressed as Kate.
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Kate and William, 41, attempted to silence concerns by sharing a new photo of the princess and their three kids: Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5. The portrait, released on U.K. Mother’s Day on March 10, was said to have been taken by William earlier this year.
The image was subsequently flagged for image manipulation by multiple news outlets, who removed it from their sites. Kate later admitted to playing around with photo editing software as speculation about her whereabouts and health condition continued to grow rampant.
A source exclusively told Us Weekly earlier in March that Kate will likely share her condition in due course, speculating that it will take place during an official walkabout. Other outlets have reported that Kate’s official return will be at the family’s Easter service on March 31.
