Diana, Princess of Wales, died 24 years ago this month, but her tragically compelling story is having a big pop-culture moment. Again.
When the 2021 Emmy nominations were announced in July, the Diana-centric season of Netflix’s “The Crown” tied “The Mandalorian” for the most nominations. Its 24 nods included a lead-actress nomination for Emma Corrin’s uncanny performance as the young princess trapped in a heartbreaking marriage.
In September, attendees at the Venice Film Festival will be the first to set eyes on “Spencer,” a new drama starring Kristen Stewart as Lady Diana. The original cast recording of “Diana: The Musical,” which had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2019, comes out on Sept. 24. The musical will stream on Netflix on Oct. 1, one month ahead of its return to Broadway.
But before the movie and the soundtrack and the musical comes the latest documentary on the princess whose life was not at all the fairytale the world wanted it to be.
Airing Tuesday at 8 p.m. on KPBS-TV, “In Their Own Words: Diana, Princess of Wales” tells Diana’s story through interviews with friends, historians and experts on all things royal. It doesn’t have any fresh news on one of the most documented figures in recent history, so don’t tune in expecting juicy headlines or hot gossip. But in this year of Diana-mania on so many fronts, “In Their Own Words” does bring new insights into why the Princess of Wales is as conversation-worthy now as she ever was.
It also reminds us why she matters.
For watchers of “The Crown” who couldn’t get enough of the Diana storyline, the hourlong documentary gives us a more complete idea of who she was before Buckingham Palace Inc. got its hooks in her.
In many ways, Lady Diana Spencer was a real catch. She came from one of the most powerful, aristocratic families in the kingdom. When she caught Prince Charles’ eye, Diana was young (19), single and scandal-free. In other words, perfect royal wife material. Also, she was willing to take on the high-profile role that other potential fiancées had turned down. Probably because she had no idea what she was getting herself into.
“She would be the media’s chew toy,” says journalist Andrew Morton, who wrote 1992’s “Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words” from interviews the princess recorded in secret.
And so she was. But as the documentary also points out, Princess Diana was already no stranger to emotional turmoil. Her unhappily married parents divorced when Diana was 7, and she was sent to boarding school two years later. Like other aristocratic young women of that time, Diana did not receive much in the way of an education that would prepare for life beyond the home. Or the palace.
“They were learning flower arranging and French,” says British historian Kate Williams. “It was really about creating the perfect wife.”
As we know, what looked perfect on the surface turned out to be all wrong in practice. The undereducated young woman with abandonment issues and the worldly prince with stiff-upper-lip issues (and a mistress to boot) were not a good match. And because they were in a media fishbowl from the minute they started dating, Charles and Diana never had the time or the space to find out just how mismatched they were until it was too late.
Even if you are not a tea-steeping, commemorative-plate collecting Anglophile, you probably know the outlines of the story already. What “In Their Own Words” provides is shading and perspective. The ending is rushed and the narration can be cheesy, but the articulate interviewees and the well-chosen quotes from Princess Diana herself show us the many big and small ways she defied customs, circumstances and expectations.
We hear about how hungry Margaret Thatcher-era Britain was for good news, and how the beautiful, accessible princess provided that. We see how the ingenue who Morton describes as being “terrified of media and crowds” grew into a graceful, empathetic woman with a distinctly human touch.
She took “obey” out of the marriage vows. She insisted on being a hands-on mother to Prince William and Prince Harry, rather than stowing them away with the nannies as expected. She hugged AIDS patients when the public was treating them like lepers, and she talked about her struggles with an eating disorder when mental-health issues were still very much off the celebrity talking-points list.
“What’s so striking is how much she was underestimated and how much she was overlooked,” Williams says. “She was a young girl when she came into the royal family. People dismissed her, and yet, she had this transformative effect.”
And after she and Prince Charles divorced, she took on the dangers of landmines as her cause, even going so far as to walk across a minefield during a 1997 trip to Angola. Instead of a crown and a designer dress, Diana, Princess of Wales was wearing protective headgear and body armor.
She wasn’t a fairytale princess anymore. She was a hero.
“In Their Own Words: Diana, Princess of Wales” premieres Tuesday at 8 p.m. on KPBS-TV. kpbs.org.
