Though Reese Witherspoon’s upcoming book, Whiskey in a Teacup, is largely about her life and Southern living, the Oscar-winning actress detailed her meeting with the Duchess of Cambridge back in 2011, and why she’s so awed by Kate.
“Southern women like how the royals value family and how they’re always doing good for others. I felt relatively immune from the obsession with the royals until a few years ago when I was invited to meet Kate Middleton.”
When she received her invitation, Witherspoon recalls that “The scream that issued from the lips upon receiving [the invitation] – you would have thought I was going to die.”
Her husband, talent agent, Jim Toth, said he’d never seen her so excited for an event before.
Witherspoon was one of many A-list celebrities invited to the launch of Tusk Trust’s U.S. Patron’s Circle in Santa Barbara, California, during the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s North American tour in 2011, and she admits that she woke up at 4 a.m. the morning of the event to get ready.
“I wake up early, mind you, but on that day, I was up at 4 a.m. doing my hair. That’s early, even for me.”
Back in 2012, Witherspoon appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and spoke of meeting Kate, saying that, “I must have tried on like, six outfits. I’m meeting a princess. You don’t understand. You have to be wearing the right outfit and the whole thing…”
Witherspoon writes that she was immediately charmed by Kate, saying, “She was just lovely and warm, elegant and composed… she also told a joke, and I immediately fell under her spell. She’s just as magnificent as she seems to be. She’s a very compassionate, socially conscious, deeply caring person.”
Of her public position, Witherspoon writes that “It takes a very special person to decide to commit to that kind of life, to choose to be under public scrutiny every moment… Now that she’s in that position, her entire life is in service, forever. I am so in awe of that dedication.”
