Royals and celebrities are being warned by their representatives and advisers to watch what they say when they are out of the house – or palace – as a lip-reading phenomenon means videos can be posted online and translated in seconds.
Prince William was recently embroiled after a video of him speaking to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was translated by an expert lip-reader who was working as part of a forthcoming Channel 5 documentary, Lip-Reading the Royals.
The video, according to the lip-reader, allegedly shows Mountbatten-Windsor attempting to apologise to his nephew, who brushes it off. It is claimed Mountbatten-Windsor said: “I’ve learnt from what I’ve done, but before I forget, and if I can, I’d like to ask you if you can forgive?” This was met with silence.
The disgraced royal relinquished his royal titles in October after new information came to light about his links to Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and child sexual abuse offender.
The documentary also shows King Charles apparently saying “fuck me” while getting into his royal carriage, and Princess Anne allegedly gossiping about the Duchess of Sussex.
The rise of lip-reading has greatly irritated the royal household. A royal source told the Guardian: “As with many high-profile individuals, members of the royal family are aware of the unfortunate and growing trend for lip-readers to be used, with varying degrees of inaccuracy, to snoop on conversations that anyone would have a right to be considered private.”
Dickie Arbiter, who was press secretary for Queen Elizabeth II for a decade, said royals were being warned about speaking in unguarded moments that could be recorded by TV cameras or members of the public with a mobile phone.
“One was always aware of it, and even in my time there were experts who claimed he could read lips,” he told the Guardian.
“Sometimes, they came out with some outrageous things. Often the member of the royal household in question wouldn’t remember if that is indeed what they said, as when they are on a walkabout they speak to so many people.”
The widespread lip-reading phenomenon was a fairly new one, said Paddy Harverson, former communications director to the Duke of Cornwall, now King Charles. “I left the palace 13 years ago, and back in my day lip-reading wasn’t really a thing, thankfully,” he said.
Arbiter, who appears in the documentary, said the rise of social media had turbocharged the problem. “Things get clipped up and spread around whether or not they are true,” he said. “Social media is a cesspit, but we are all on it, aren’t we?”
He added he had warned the royals he worked with to keep conversation appropriate during walkabouts, when they walk around mingling with the public. “I said: don’t say anything silly on a walkabout which could appear in print,” he said. “And lip-reading is a craft which many people have. I actually did it once, during Prince William and Catherine’s wedding – when they left in a carriage, she quite clearly turned to him and said: ‘Are you happy?’”
Conversations at the tables of the Golden Globes and other celebrity events are usually somewhat private; though they are filmed, the stars are not wearing microphones. But the resultant videos have been ripe for lip-readers to translate and post on social media platforms, including TikTok.
Some of the conversations are banal; a recent video with 1m views on TikTok shows the reality TV star Kylie Jenner apparently complaining to the actor Jennifer Lawrence at the most recent Golden Globes about someone coughing near her and having a fever, which could have made her ill.
Others are more problematic. A 2024 video from the Golden Globes apparently showed the singer Selena Gomez complaining that she asked to take a picture with Timothée Chalamet, and Jenner, his wife, apparently “said no”. Private, off-guard moments have also been captured and apparently decoded by lip-readers.
One TikTok video with more than 5m views claims to show the singer Olivia Rodrigo with the actor Iris Apatow at a Los Angeles Lakers game, discussing a man with whom she had been exchanging text messages. The actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who divorced in 2025, have been filmed having what appear to be arguments at glitzy events.
Celebrity agents have been warning their clients to assume that anything they say while out and about could be filmed and lip-read.
Andy May, the director of JHM media agency, said: “Yes, we are absolutely talking to our clients about this, and have been for some time. The nature of the advice has simply evolved with the times.”
He said that while celebrities used to be able to enjoy unguarded moments away from microphones, now in public they have to watch what they say.
May said: “Twenty years ago, the golden rule was straightforward: be careful around microphones and broadcast cameras. That covered most of the risk. Today, the advice is categorically different – assume the cameras are always rolling. Every phone in every sports stadium and every post-match walkway is a potential broadcast. As is everyday life, even when ‘off duty’. Everyone is a content creator now, and all footage invariably finds an audience.
“In an ideal world, a talent agent would never need to teach a client to be a good person. But understandably, everyone has an off day, and the difference now is that an off day can travel around the world in minutes.”
