So Cat Deeley thinks she can cover a royal wedding? Well, she’s keeping fingers crossed.
The British-born host of “So You Think You Can Dance” is being dispatched to London by CNN to co-host the news network's live coverage of a little tying-the-knot ceremony you just may have heard of – the nuptials of England’s Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton – and she confesses to some pre-air jitters as she heads off to Westminster Abbey.
“I am nervous because there are so many people watching – I think on CNN there’s going to be over 750 million people,” says Deeley. “I’m hosting with Piers Morgan and Anderson Cooper. It’s going to be a big day, but, it’s definitely not the challenge I would run away from, because I just think it’s going to always be one of those moments where you turn around and go ‘Where were you when—?’ I can’t think of two finer gentlemen to be sharing the screen with on such a kind of huge momentous day.”
Deeley was only four-and-a-half when Prince William’s parents, Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, were wed in 1981, but she retains lingering memories of the royal family’s last major wedding/media sensation.
“We had a big party in the back garden with all the kids from the neighborhood and we had a big long table and all flags hanging in the trees and lots of jelly and ice-cream and cream,” Deeley recalls. “There’s certain bits that I remembered, images that are definitely ingrained in my mind, but I just remember more the feeling of the day and how much fun it was – how it was like this feeling of hope and joy and the fairy tale and all those kind of things. So hopefully it will be exactly the same this time.”