Andy Cohen was not afraid to bring up those Prince William and Rose Hanbury affair rumors while discussing Princess Kate Middleton‘s disappearance from the public eye.
During the Friday, March 22, episode of his “Daddy Diaries” podcast, Cohen, 55, speculated that the gossip about William, 41, and Hanbury, 40, might have played a part in Kate’s decision to step away from the spotlight after her abdominal surgery.
“It all seems to come back to this Lady Rose who he’s had an affair — who he allegedly had an affair with,” Cohen said in reference to the resurfaced rumors from 2019 about William and Hanbury. “Don’t forget he broke it off with [Kate] after they dated for years and sowed his wild oats for a time and then went back to her.”
Cohen also called William his “his father’s [son],” referencing King Charles III, who infamously cheated on the late Princess Diana with his now-wife, Queen Camilla.
William and Kate, 42, met while studying history at Scotland’s University of St Andrews in 2001. The couple started dating but briefly called it quits in 2007. After rekindling their romance, they got engaged and later tied the knot in 2011.
Following their nuptials, William and Kate expanded their family with Prince George in 2013, Princess Charlotte in 2015 and Prince Louis in 2018. Years after the wedding, rumors started to swirl about William’s alleged affair with Hanbury, who is the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. (Hanbury attended William and Kate’s 2011 wedding, but she was rumored to have a falling-out with Kate in 2019 due to the alleged infidelity.)
William and Kate have never publicly acknowledged the speculation.
“Kate finds the rumors hurtful, obviously, and hates the thought that one day her children will be able to read about them online,” a source told Us Weekly in 2019. “It forced her and William to sit back and examine their relationship, which they realized they should have been doing more often.”
Hanbury, meanwhile, denied the rumors through her attorney in a statement to Business Insider earlier this month.
Cohen is not the only public figure who has poked fun at the drama. Stephen Colbert also weighed in on the rumors during an episode of his late-night talk show.
“Internet sleuths are guessing that Kate’s absence may be related to her husband, and the future king of England, William, having an affair,” he began during the March 12 episode. “I think we all know who the alleged other woman is, say it with me, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. Now there have been rumors of an affair between William and [Rose] since 2019. According to tabloids, back then, when Kate supposedly confronted him about it, he ‘laughed it off, saying there was nothing to it.’ Aha, always a good response when your wife accuses you of cheating.”
Colbert noted that Hanbury is an “an old friend of the royals” who is married to “a close friend of William’s” named David Rocksavage. “Really? Rocksavage? That sounds less like a British noble and more like a musician from The Flintstones,” he quipped.
After the episode aired, In Touch confirmed that Hanbury’s lawyers sent a legal notice to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
“The rumor appears to have entered into the mainstream media recently as a result of another joke made about it on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Hanbury’s lawyers said in a statement. “We have written on our client’s behalf to CBS and various other reputable media organizations to confirm that the allegation is false.”
