On-Screen Prince William, Kate Middleton as College Sweethearts

It's just like any budding college romance – self-conscious talk about Monet and Cezanne, a tentative plan to study together, a clumsy exchange of phone numbers.

Except it's even more awkward, because he's the future king of England and she's just your average commoner.


Such were the inauspicious beginnings of Prince William and Kate Middleton's love affair, judging by the early scenes of William & Kate, a TV movie premiering April 18 on Lifetime.

PEOPLE has the first photo and a page of dialogue from the film, in which Nico Evers-Swindell and Camilla Luddington play the fast university friends – and future husband and wife – who try to navigate a new relationship that's both completely typical and anything but.

"You're very popular," Kate tells William in one of their first conversations. "It's not me they like," William replies. "It's the idea of me they like."

They do, of course, become a couple. But that's just the first hurdle cleared. The movie promises much more – following "the ups and downs of their nine-year courtship complicated by social and Royal Family pressures, and intense global media attention surrounding their storybook nuptials."