It’s the photo that quietly marked the start of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce as a couple. However, it turns out the future king wasn’t thrilled about the extra guest. After Prince William joked on The Graham Norton Show that he tried to move Travis out of his backstage selfie with Swift, Jason Kelce has weighed in with a playful move around the situation.
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During the October 28 episode of The New Heights Podcast, the graphics team photoshopped Jason into a modified version of the photo as part of their joke to replace Travis and accommodate Prince William’s wishes. As the show’s official IG account released the image and it made rounds on X, Jason gave his reaction to the picture.
“Hey, this was a private photo!!” Jason Kelce wrote on X.
The backstory of the fiasco stems from a viral 2024 selfie that accidentally became one of the biggest pop-culture milestones for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
On June 21, 2024, Prince William celebrated his 42nd birthday by taking Prince George and Princess Charlotte to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour at Wembley Stadium in London.
Backstage, the royals met Swift and Travis, where they snapped a happy group selfie, which Swift later posted to her Instagram. Because this was the very first photo of Travis ever featured on Swift’s official social media, the internet collectively went wild, dubbing it their “Instagram official hard launch.”
Fast forward to October 23, during a surprise appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Prince William dropped the behind-the-scenes lore of the viral picture. He admitted that at the time, he had absolutely no idea the photo was going to be a relationship milestone. William joked that he was actually trying to gently nudge Travis Kelce out of the frame.
“I hadn’t appreciated the significance, and actually, I was trying to move him out of the photo,” William said. “But Travis kept coming back in, and I couldn’t work out why he kept coming back in. I was trying to move him out so it was just me and Taylor and the children.”
However, despite the attempt, Prince William’s selfie somewhat confirmed Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift. As such, the two were reportedly dating each other since the late summer of 2023, but by choosing a photo featuring the British royal family as the very first picture of Travis on her official Instagram grid, the fans deemed it a hard launch by the pop star.
After years of dating, Kelce and Swift tied the knot with each other earlier this year on July 3. However, looking back at the viral selfie with Prince William, the Kansas City Chiefs TE also shared his honest thoughts about being removed from the picture.
“I get it, man,” Travis said on the aforementioned New Heights Podcast episode. “I was just a boyfriend at that point. You know? I wasn’t her husband yet. We don’t really know if this is gonna last, so it’s kinda just move out of the way real quick so we can keep this photo forever.”
To which Jason replied, “Hopefully, this doesn’t go south. Otherwise, this photo is not gonna be as good.”
At the end, it’s all fun and banter, where the Kelce brothers sportingly took Prince William’s admission about trying to remove Travis from the 2024 selfie.