About

Kate Middleton Before vs. Kate Middleton After refers to a series of Kategate memes parodying a supposed change in Princess Kate Middelton's appearance in her photographs and videos after her prolonged absence from public in early 2024. The format achieved virality after a paparazzi video of Kate Middleton shopping with her husband Prince William was released by the British tabloid The Sun in mid-March 2024.

Origin

On February 26th, 2024, during the initial period of Kategate conspiracy theories, X^[1] / Twitter user @EmmaSzewczak posted a meme imagining that Kate Middleton being replaced by a lookalike, akin to an actor being replaced in a television series. The meme, captioned "kate middleton before and after 'abdominal surgery' pics" and showing EastEnders actors Joshua Pascoe and Harry Reid, both of whom portrayed Ben Mitchell at different times, garnered over 20 reposts and 590 likes in one month (shown below).

On March 17th, 2024, British tabloid The Sun^[2] posted paparazzi footage of Kate Middleton shopping at a farm shop with her husband Prince William. On March 18th, TMZ uploaded the video to YouTube^[6] and X,^[7] where it received over 223,000 views and 27.3 million views in one day, respectively (shown below).

#KateMiddleton seemed to be in good spirits while out and about with #PrinceWilliam Saturday. https://t.co/kLUsfvt3b2 (🎥: TMZ/The Sun) pic.twitter.com/EqbtVojBcw

— TMZ (@TMZ) March 18, 2024

Spread

Following the release of the video, users on social media posted memes referencing the speculation that the person in it was not Kate Middleton but a lookalike, posting images of actors and actors who replaced them in movie and TV series. On March 18th, 2024, X^[3] user @MikeBeauvais posted a meme that received over 7,000 reposts and 65,000 likes in one day (shown below).

More similar memes followed on March 18th and 19th. On March 18th, X^[4] users @anihtek posted a meme that garnered over 4,400 reposts and 23,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). On March 19th, X^[5] user @_benjamingv submitted a version that gained over 250 reposts and 1,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References