Kate Middleton Was in Full Mom Mode for Princess Charlotte With a “Really Cute” Backstage Request

The Princess of Wales is the queen of creating memorable experiences for her children

Princess Charlotte and Kate Middleton at Trooping the Colour on June 14, 2025.

Kate Middleton may be royal, but she’s also just like any other mom who wants to provide a memorable experience for her children.

Back in 2022, the future queen took her two eldest children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, to see Mary Poppins. After the show, Zizi Strallen—who played the titular character—told Hello! in a new interview that the three “came backstage, and she [Kate] said to me, ‘Would it be okay for Charlotte to have a cuddle with Mary Poppins?’”

“I was like, ‘Yes!’” Strallen added. “[Charlotte] wanted to hug me, which was really cute.” That same day, she added, after the royals came for the afternoon performance, Victoria Beckham and David Beckham attended the evening show with their children Harper, Romeo, and Cruz.

Kate and Charlotte are especially close—after all, the 11-year-old is Kate’s only daughter. “Charlotte seems to be very full of admiration for her mother, which I think is a lovely thing, too,” royal biographer Ingrid Seward previously told Hello!. “Kate and Charlotte are great friends, and I think to Kate, their bond is very precious. The mother-daughter relationship is particularly important to Kate because she has such a close relationship with her own mother, Carole Middleton.”

“Kate is very close to all her children, but it’s lovely to see what seems to be a real, affectionate bond between her and her only daughter,” Seward added.

Particularly during Kate’s 2024 cancer treatment, a source told Hello! that “Charlotte has been a great source of strength for her.” The insider added, “She cheers the princess up when she needs it most and has an uncanny ability to say the right thing at the right time.” A palace source speaking to People previously called Charlotte “a bit of a mini-me” of her mother.

That Mary Poppins performance in 2022 wasn’t Strallen’s first time meeting the Princess of Wales. She also met her ahead of the annual Royal Variety Performance in 2019, when Kate was still the Duchess of Cambridge. The moment was caught on video when Strallen, dressed as Mary Poppins, said goodbye to Kate. “As she walks away, I do the most awkward little girl wave,” she told the outlet. “I was bowled over by how tall, statuesque, and stunning she was, and she and [Prince] William were so normal.”

Up next? Strallen is playing Glinda in the musical Wicked at London’s Apollo Theatre—so perhaps the Princess of Wales will bring her children to that performance, too.