Prince William Reveals the Sweet Way Prince George Is Just Like His Grandma, Princess Diana

He may only be five years old, but Prince George is already showing signs of resembling his late grandmother, Princess Diana. At a reception at Kensington Palace for the finalists of the BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards, Prince William revealed to one of the participants the sweet and creative hobby little George has picked up — one that Diana was a huge fan of.

“George is doing dancing as well, he loves it,” William told 14-year-old Junior, who is the United Kingdom’s freestyle street dance champion. “My mother always used to dance, she loved dancing. And if it’s something you love, you do what you love. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. Keep at it.”

At his prestigious school, Thomas’s Battersea in London, Prince George is learning a diverse range of subjects including ballet, drama, music, art, and technology. So we presume he found his dancing shoes there.

Similarly, his grandma discovered her passion for dance at a young age. The then Diana Spencer dreamed of being a ballerina, but her dreams came to a halt as she was too tall. Nevertheless, she continued to dance throughout her life, and famously danced with John Travolta at President Reagan’s White House reception in 1985.

Diana even surprised her husband Prince Charles by secretly rehearsing a routine with ballet dancer Wayne Sleep for months. When the two headed to the Royal Opera House in 1985 for a show, Diana excused herself and took to the stage to perform a once-in-a-lifetime jig to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” with Sleep as her partner. “We did eight curtain calls… 2,000 people with one gasp of breath together, I’d never heard that before,” Wayne Sleep later confessed in an interview, discussing how Diana surprised the entire audience. “They were in shock and then they realized it was her. I said, ‘Now you have to bow to the royal box’ and she said ‘I’m not bowing to him, he’s my husband!’ I said, ‘Well, I have to!'”

It’s clear that Prince William (and soon Prince Harry, once he becomes a father) want their children to know about the grandmother they never met. In the documentary Diana Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, released 20 years after the Princess’s untimely death, Prince William revealed that he intends to keep her memory and legacy alive. “We’ve got more photos up around the house now of her. It’s hard because Catherine didn’t know her so she can’t really provide that level of detail. I do regularly bring George and Charlotte to bed and talk about her. [I] just try to remind them there are two grandmas, [there] were two grandmas in their lives, and it’s important they know who she was and [that] she existed.”

And according to William, the ever cheeky Diana would’ve been a cheeky grandma, too. “She’d be a nightmare grandma, absolute nightmare. She’d love the children to bits, but she’d be an absolute nightmare. She’d come and go, she’d probably come at bath time, cause an amazing amount of sea and bubbles and bathwater all over the place, and then leave.”