Awkward moment Kate Winslet almost flashed King Charles | Royal | News

Kate Winslet almost flashed King Charles III at the tender age of 20, she admitted on a US chat show. The Titanic actress forgot she was wearing “transparent lace”, and hadn’t quite comprehended that she was going to meet the future King at the premiere of Sense and Sensibility in 1996. It wasn’t the final time the two would cross paths – fast forward 20 years and she would have yet another nerve-racking encounter.

“The first time I met him, he had come to support the royal premiere of Sense and Sensibility,” she said. “I was only 20. I hadn’t realised that we were going to meet him.” At the time, he was the Prince of Wales.

She recalled: “I forgot about the fact that I was wearing a kind of transparent lace outfit. And thank god I’d worn a coat because as he’s making his way towards me, I’m like… Nipples, nipples, nipples, oh my God. I basically covered myself in a cape and was like, ‘Your Majesty!’”.

The chat show host Jimmy Kimmel joked: “That makes me feel sorry for the king because he’s the only one that doesn’t get to see nipples. He’s just watching everyone curtsy all the time, there’s no fun in that.”

Now an Oscar-winning actress and ambassador for The King’s Foundation, Kate Winslet encountered Charles once again this summer, alongside Meryl Streep and David Beckham.

“Actually, there was a conversation about [protocol],” she said. They may be a star-studded line-up, but royalty in Britain still carries reverence. She continued: “So Meryl and I, as we were walking to meet the King, she says to me, ‘Do you think we have to curtsy?’ 

“I said, ‘Absolutely, we have to curtsy’. She was like ‘Ok, is it a big curtsy? What do we do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, we’ll just make the most’, and she was like, ‘I don’t know if we need to do that’.”

Winslet nobly spared Streep the embarrassment and volunteered to go first. “There was a big panic,” she recalled. “We didn’t know what the form was. I’m always volunteering to go first because I feel like leadership is important. Someone has to get it wrong and it’s usually me that does, so I don’t mind taking the hit.”

Jimmy Kimmel wondered: “So who is more nervous, Meryl Streep to meet the king or the king to meet Meryl Streep?”. 

On the show, Winslet graciously gave a glimpse into the King’s personality under the crown, noting his “very kind and extremely empathetic and very generous” nature.

“The king has an extraordinary foundation that supports small charities. He’s really an extraordinary person. I mean, he’s a very gentle, personable individual, but he is the king! And it’s quite something to meet him.”