Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, says she has yet to meet Lilibet, the newborn daughter of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
“We haven’t met her yet. I hope that will be soon,” Kate said Friday, when asked by reporters about her new niece while participating in a visit to an English preschool with first lady Jill Biden.
Asked if she had seen or spoken through FaceTime with her week-old niece — who was born at a Santa Barbara, Calif., hospital last Friday — Kate replied, “No, I haven’t.”
“I wish her all the very best,” Kate told NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
The revelation comes amid ongoing turmoil among Britain’s royal family that has spilled out into public view in recent months.
In a bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in March, 36-year-old Harry and Meghan, a former “Suits” actor born Meghan Markle, said that racism played a role in their decision late last year to move to Meghan’s home state of California and step away from their duties as full-time working members of the royal family.
In the same interview, Meghan claimed, contrary to media reports at the time, that Kate had made her cry ahead of her 2018 wedding to Harry. Meghan referred to the episode as a “turning point” in her relationship with the royal family.
After her birth, Harry and Meghan said their first daughter — a younger sister to the couple’s two-year-old son, Archie — was named after her great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, whose family nickname was “Lilibet.”
“Her middle name, Diana, was chosen to honor her beloved late grandmother, The Princess of Wales,” a statement said.