Katrina Darling, Kate Middleton's cousin, covers the September 2012 issue of Playboy. The 22-year-old is a burlesque dancer ... and a beautiful one at that!
She and Kate are not close; in fact, their connection was only revealed last year.
Darling first learned of her royal relation shortly before Kate’s April '11 wedding to Prince William via a phone call from a member of the UK press.
“It was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” the club and cabaret dancer says, with a laugh. “It’s not every day something like that happens.”
Last year, lines began forming outside the underground venues where Katrina had been performing her own burlesque show, God Save the Queen.
Yes ... however random and distant her Kate Middleton ties might be, the name of her routine suddenly took on a wonderful (and sexy!) irony.
“Burlesque is a platform for me to explore these kinds of things. The more into it the audience is,” says Katrina Darling, “the more into it I am.”
Katrina has upcoming U.S. shows, entitled “A Royal Dream,” at the Dream Hotel in South Beach August 31 and Dream New York September 6.