How Princess Diana Would Have Felt About Prince Harry’s BBC Interview

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If you’ll remember, she had a pretty well-known BBC interview of her own 30 years ago.

• A royal biographer is weighing in on how she thinks Princess Diana would have reacted to Prince Harry’s May 2 BBC interview, which left King Charles “frustrated and upset.”
• The late Princess of Wales had an explosive BBC interview of her own in November 1995, nearly 30 years ago.
• Ingrid Seward reflected on whether Diana had any regrets about that interview, which sent shockwaves around the world at the time it aired.

A veteran royal biographer has weighed in on how she thinks the late Princess Diana would have reacted to her son Prince Harry’s emotional BBC interview on May 2, where he said he had hopes for a reconciliation with his family and that he didn’t know how much longer his father King Charles had to live.

Ingrid Seward told Hello! on the outlet’s “A Right Royal Podcast” that the former Princess of Wales would be “proud” of the Duke of Sussex, telling the show that she imagines Diana would have told Harry, “I’m glad you said what you thought.”

“I think she would, I’m guessing, that she might have been quite proud of him for speaking up and saying what he thought, because that’s what she liked,” Seward said. “She liked to say exactly what she thought and then deal with the consequences afterwards.”

Diana sent shockwaves of her own around the world after her bombshell 1995 Panorama interview—also on the BBC—where she delivered the famous line that there were three people in her marriage, so it was a bit crowded (referring to her husband Charles and his then-mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles).

“I saw her quite shortly after that [the interview airing], so obviously I asked her, and she said, ‘No, I don’t regret any of it,’” Seward said. “She said, ‘The only thing I felt a bit bad about was talking about James Hewitt.’ She had said, if you remember, that she was in love with him, or had been in love with him, and she felt bad for [Prince] William and Harry saying that.”

“She, at that moment, thought it was a successful interview,” Seward added.

Harry’s BBC interview earlier this month reportedly left Charles “frustrated and upset,” and according to Hello!, Charles and William had only found out about the interview with “very brief” notice.

“There was a very brief awareness-raising at the palace shortly before it broadcast,” Hello! royal editor Emily Nash said. “What I understand is that there were, potentially, discussions that might have happened as a result of the case now having been concluded.”

She added of Harry’s court case to restore his security in the U.K.—the impetus for the BBC interview after Harry’s appeal was denied—that “What was made clear all along is that the King didn’t feel he could have these conversations with his son because it would put him in a really difficult, and potentially unconstitutional, situation. He couldn’t be seen to intervene on his son’s behalf or get involved in government matters—his son is suing His Majesty’s government, you know. He needed to stay right out of this situation.”

“But once that had concluded, there was potentially a path to some kind of rapprochement, some kind of olive branch being offered,” Nash continued. “And I get the sense that that was the mood music, but that really quickly got switched off once the interview landed.”

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