Prince William intends to be known as the changemaker king

The Prince of Wales has revealed he wants to be a modernising monarch, when the time comes, and he won’t be bound by the traditions of those who came before him.

He opened up in a rare personal and insightful chat with the Canadian actor Eugene Levy, best known for his roles in Schitt’s Creek and the awkward dad in American Pie.

The relaxed tone for the interview is cast at the outset when Prince William arrives to meet Levy in the quadrangle of Windsor Castle, riding an electric scooter.

And here too, William is visually communicating that he does things differently from other royals.

“It gets around quite nicely,” William says as he admits he’s usually late for just about everything.

The filming took place earlier this year as part of Levy’s Apple TV series The Reluctant Traveller, but the contents of the interview have only just been released.

“If you want to know about history, I’m not your guy,” William says as he offers to give the actor a “personalised tour” of the castle.

In fact, William admits that his eldest son, Prince George, who is 12 and in Year 8 at school, “is way better at history” than his dad is.

The older prince has to check his historical dates quite often with the younger prince, we learn.

And nor are directions William’s thing: “How do you know where you are going?”, Levy asks his host. “I don’t” came the honest reply.

But throughout the hour-long episode, we do get a much clearer sense of the direction in which William plans to take the monarchy when he is king.

It’s a question many have asked, but it seems it took a Hollywood actor, born in Canada, to get the answers.

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

Firstly, William says he refuses to feel overwhelmed by the weight of history on his shoulders (even though he admits that history is not his strong point).

“Other things overwhelm me,” he reveals. “But not history, no, because I think if you’re not careful, history can be a real weight and an anchor around you, and you can feel suffocated by it.”

The reason, he explains, is because “it’s important to live for the here and now”.

“If you’re too intrinsically attached to the history, you can’t possibly have any flexibility because you worry the chess pieces move too much and therefore no change will happen.”

William adds, as if to make himself clear: “I like a little bit of change … I want to question things more.”

But how do you “question things” when the institution he will one day lead is built on more than one thousand years of history following the 1066 invasion by William The Conqueror?

Tradition will stay, he says, and “tradition has a huge part in all of this”.

But he builds on his ambition to speed up the process of change.

“There are also points where you look at tradition and go ‘is that still fit for purpose today? Is that still the right thing to do?’”

So, will he be a disruptor in the monarchy, when the crown lands on his head, or a steady hand at the tiller?

“I like to question things, is what I am really getting at,” William says.

And then we get to the key point of William’s revealing chat with Levy: his plans for the monarchy of the future.

A different kind of monarchy. His monarchy.

“I think it is safe to say that change is on my agenda. Change for good. And I embrace that and I enjoy that change – I don’t fear it.

“That’s the bit that excites me, the idea of being able to bring some change. Not overly radical change, but changes that I think need to happen.”

History might not overwhelm the future king, but family issues do. The prince admits that he does get unsettled by “worry or stress around the family side of things”.

“When it’s to do with family, that’s when I start getting a bit overwhelmed, as I think most people would, because its more personal, it’s more about feeling, it’s more about upsetting the rhythm,” he says.

Royal sources were quick to point out that Prince William was not referring to family problems with Prince Harry and Meghan but, instead, to the recent health issues that he’s experienced with his wife and father.

‘Stuff to do with family overwhelms me quite a bit,’ William said

As a younger prince, the prospect of becoming king clearly did weigh on his mind but those concerns about the day job have settled with “time and age”.

“In terms of doing the job and things like that, I don’t feel too overwhelmed by that. Not now anyway!”

Which is why William and Kate insist that their children always come first: “The most important thing in my life is family and everything is about the future.”

The Prince and Princess of Wales might be a future king and queen, but for now at least, meetings and official engagements are organised around the school day.

When Levy asks the prince if he works “a nine to five”, William says: “I do try and stick to school timetables as best as possible. So, most days we’re in and out of school doing pick-ups and drop-offs”.

Those inside and outside the palace who have been critical of the light workload of the Prince and Princess of Wales might raise an eyebrow at that admission.

But William explains it’s better for the children in the long-run.

“Getting the balance of work and family life right is really important,” he says, appearing to have picked up a lot of his wife’s work and studies on the early years of childhood.

“If you don’t start the children off now with a happy healthy stable home, I feel you are setting them up for a bit of a hard time and a fall.”

Which means a strict no phones policy in the Wales household and dinner times where they all sit and chat.

“None of our children has any phones, which we are very strict about,” he says, which is why Louis and Charlotte spend a lot of time on the trampoline “beating each other up”.

He explains Charlotte also does netball and ballet whilst George loves his football and hockey.

When asked about his own son and heir and the pressures he might feel about his own destiny, William says: “I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do, a world and a job that actually does impact people’s lives for the better.”

And in a protective note, the prince says: “I hope we don’t go back to some of the practices in the past, that Harry and I had to grow up in – and I’ll do everything I can to make sure we don’t regress in that situation.”

Which includes avoiding the mistakes his own parents made – and he does say “parents” in the plural.

As he speaks about creating the right atmosphere at home for their children – “we are an open family … we talk about the things that bother us” – William reflects on the difficult childhood he experienced.

The feelings of “safety, security, love” lasted only “a short period of time” and so he and Kate “try and make sure you don’t do the same mistakes as your parents” because “the drama and the stress when you’re small really affects you when you’re older”.

Williams said he intends to keep a lid on the media intrusion that was such a big part of his parents’ life when he and Harry were young

When the then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated in December 1992, William was ten years old and Harry was eight, but the marriage had been falling apart for many years.

During a chat over a pint in the Two Brewers pub – William has a sweet cider and Levy orders a Guinness – they turn to the painful subject of cancer, which has affected both William’s wife and his father in the last 18 months.

“2024 was the hardest year I’ve ever had, trying to balance protecting the children, Catherine, my father needs a bit of protection, but he’s old enough to do that himself as well”.

Reflecting on the hysteria that surrounded Kate’s illness before she revealed her cancer diagnosis, William says: “I enjoy my job, but sometimes there are aspects of it such as the media, the speculation, the scrutiny, that make it a little bit harder than other jobs.”

The couple just wanted a bit of space, William tells Levy whilst sipping his cider.

And he intends to keep a lid on the media intrusion that was such a big part of his parents’ life when he and Harry were young.

“Growing up, I saw that with my parents, that the media were so insatiable back then, it’s hard to think of it now, but … they wanted every bit of detail they could absorb, and they were in everything, literally everywhere.”

That childhood experience is the reason why this future king is so protective of his wife and children when it comes to the press.

“The damage that can do to your family life is something that I vowed would never happen to my family. And so I take a very strong line about where I think that line is and those who overstep it, I’ll fight against.”

This is the Talking Royals – our weekly podcast about the royal family, with ITV News Royal Editor Chris Ship and Producer Lizzie Robinson.

As the prince takes Levy around Windsor Castle, they enter the the King’s Drawing Room, which looks out over Eton College.

When William studied there as a teen, he used to pop over to see his gran for tea.

“She had the best teas ever. So I used to get well fed.”

His relationship with his grandmother used to be more formal, he acknowledges, when he was a younger boy and would go to visit the late Queen and her consort, Prince Philip.

“But as they got older and I got older, it got warmer and warmer, and I definitely think my relationship was best with my grandparents when they were more in their 80s when they had relaxed a little bit.”

William said his grandfather was “incredibly amusing”, although he admits the jokes happened “sometimes by accident”.

The late Queen also had a sense of humour, William said, but it was definitely Prince Philip “who would create quite a few laughs”.

“There was always laughter, there was always a family feel and my grandparents loved having the family around them so we were always encouraged to turn up and be around.”

When Levy asked about the 1992 fire which famously destroyed large parts of the castle, William told how St George’s Hall (now carpeted) used to have an old wooden floor.

It would often give him and his cousins “an enormous splinter” or two in their feet, he recalls.

But William said his own family does now sneak into the hall from time to time to play: “We come in after hours and chase each other around sometimes.”

The interview is both personal and surprisingly revealing.

Sources in Kensington Palace said they didn’t plan for this show to extract so much out of the Prince of Wales.

“I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do,” William said

Perhaps, as Eugene Levy told me, it’s because William watched him in American Pie playing the part of Jim’s Dad – William admitted watching it with his friends when he was a child.

But Levy has that knack of being wonderfully disarming when he is doing interviews with a heavy dose of self-deprecation.

So when the Canadian actor asked Prince William about being a future “King of England” (we should of course note he meant the future King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, and Head of the Commonwealth), we get an answer which reads a bit like William’s manifesto for his reign.

“It’s not something that I wake up in the morning and think about because, to me, being authentic and being myself and being genuine is what drives me.

“If I am not true to myself and I’m not true to what I stand for and believe in, then it doesn’t really matter who you are – it gets lost.

“I take my roles and my responsibilities seriously.” he says, but the roles don’t “own you – you have to own them”.

And that means William intends be a very different kind of monarch to his father and grandmother.

If Queen Elizabeth II was about constancy, and King Charles III will be defined by quiet modernisation, then the future William V intends to be known as the changemaker king.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know…