We heard months ago that Prince William was “working” on a documentary about homelessness in the UK. Most people just rolled their eyes at the news, because A) William loves to copy his brother but he always half-asses it and B) William’s documentaries are always terrible. It’s been lost to history, but William tried to make an environmentalist documentary in 2020 called Prince William: A Planet For Us All, the purpose of which was summed up by this quote from Huevo: “Someone has to put their head above the parapet and say, ‘I care about this’…” He made a documentary about his declaration of keenness. Well, it sounds like William’s homeless documentary will be in the same vein. Someone had to put their head above the parapet and say that they are keen about homelessness.
Prince William is sharing an up-close look at his advocacy work for homeless people in a new documentary. On Saturday, Oct. 5, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ official X (formerly Twitter) account shared a preview clip of the upcoming documentary, called Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, in which William, 42, speaks candidly about why he is passionate about the issue.
“I think it’s really important that we can try and change and tackle the narrative around homelessness,” he says. “We see it every day in our lives. That’s something I want to challenge.”
The two-part documentary will follow William as he meets a fire chief and a former homeless man, the Independent reported. It will also showcase the work the Prince of Wales has done with his Homewards project, which he launched in 2023 with the goal to make homelessness “rare, brief and unrepeated.”
“Over the past year, we have spent time following Prince William and The Royal Foundation through the first year of the Homewards program. We’ve heard some incredibly moving stories from people across the country facing homelessness,” the documentary’s director, Leo Burley, said of the project when it was first announced in July.
“From street homelessness in Newport, to families living in temporary accommodation in Sheffield, and youth homelessness in Aberdeen, the documentary paints a picture of homelessness across the U.K. today, working with many people who never expected to experience life without a place to call home,” Burley continued. “Everyone we’ve filmed with has welcomed the spotlight that Prince William and Homewards are placing on the U.K.’s homelessness crisis.”
I’m including the little video below. I’ve said before that it’s not even that I disagree with William on the issue of homelessness. I actually think the whole idea of William using Royal Foundation money to target homelessness on a local level is smart. But the issue is with William and how he centers himself in this work, and how badly he communicates his message. Homewards should have been communicated as: we’re doing this pilot program to target homelessness at a very local level in several cities, here’s the program and here’s transparency on what we’re doing. Instead, William wandered around, telling people that he’s the savior of homelessness and he’s a thought-leader on the issue and that he’s going to “solve” these issues and by the way, here’s some extra bureaucracy we’re implementing attached to the relative pittance we’re giving at the local level. There’s also an issue with William’s extreme privilege. William is utterly unable to acknowledge that he’s a man with multiple homes AND a vast real estate network, and that he could be doing more, and that he comes across as tone deaf all of the time.
Prince William: We Can End Homelessness
Coming soon to @ITV and @ITVX pic.twitter.com/Lvj6M3hi1J
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 5, 2024
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.