'Was getting drunk with Prince William on your bucket list?' What the heir told Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy, famous for (depending on your generation and nationality) SCTV, the American Pie movies and/or Schitt’s Creek, recently had a pint of Guinness with William, the Prince of Wales. (William, born in 1982, loved American Pie.)
The Canadian comedian and actor has been circling the globe of late for The Reluctant Traveller , an AppleTV+ show that has seen him visit places as far-flung as Finland, Tokyo, South Africa and Utah.
Season three was devoted to his bucket-list locales, and the latest of those is London, England. And, as it turned out, an audience with a prince, after a hand-signed note arrives at his hotel, ending with: “Would be great to see you, with best wishes.”
“Was getting drunk with Prince William on your bucket list?” William asks as they head for a pub near Windsor Castle. Levy replies: “That’s the bucket itself!”
It’s a remarkably down-to-Earth, apparently unscripted meeting, as the prince arrives (to Levy’s great delight) on an electric scooter and offering a cheery: “Eugene, good morning!”
The BBC’s coverage announced: “ William’s interview with Eugene Levy is the most open we’ve ever seen him.” Or as Levy told the camera at the end of the episode: “ He was fun to hang with.”
But it’s not really an interview as such. William shows Levy around Windsor, the oldest continuously occupied castle in the world, which was built beginning in the 1060s and almost razed by fire nine centuries later, in 1992.
“How do you know where you’re going?” Levy asks. “I don’t usually,” William says.
They visit the King’s drawing room. (“It’s kept in very good nick,” says the prince.) Levy meets Orla, the prince’s dog, who is for the record a black cocker spaniel and not a corgi.
And he asks about all the noisy, low-flying jets heading to nearby Heathrow, suggesting the Royal Family do something: “You’ve got cannons.” William chuckles and tells the story of the tourists who asked: “Why did they build the castle so close to the airport?”
William talks a lot about his family, especially his grandparents, the late Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip. “My grandfather was incredibly amusing,” says William. “Sometimes not deliberately, sometimes by accident. But we had a lot of laughs and he had a great sense of humour.”
And he talks a lot about change.
“I think it’s important to live for the here and now,” he says at one point. “I think if you’re too intrinsically attached to the history, you can’t possibly have any flexibility, because you worry that the chess pieces move too much and therefore no change will happen. And I like a little bit of change.”
He adds: “I want to question things more.”
Later, over a pint in the local pub — sweet cider for the Prince of Wales, Guinness for his guest — Levy asks if the notion of one day being king weighs heavily on him.
“It’s not something I wake up in the morning and think about,” William says. “Because to me being authentic and being myself and being genuine is what drives me.”
He adds, with a mention to the next heir to the throne: “I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do.”
Levy suggests that a future monarchy under King William IV (or whatever name he chooses) might look different from what people are used to.
“I think it’s safe to say that change is on my agenda,” William says, nursing his cider. “Change for good. And I embrace that, and I enjoy that change. I don’t fear it. That’s the bit that excites me, is the idea of being able to bring some change. Not overly radical change, but changes that I think need to happen.”
Levy asks if William considers himself an optimist.
“I’m generally a very optimistic person, especially when I’m with someone like you, Eugene.”
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