A royal rewind. Princess Diana‘s fast track to fame is the subject of the upcoming HBO documentary The Princess.
The film’s first trailer dropped in July 2022, showing Diana’s royal life in clips from the ’90s and earlier. At the beginning of the teaser, the late Princess of Wales sits beside Prince Charles as they discuss their engagement.
“I remember thinking what a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was,” the future king says to the camera, turning to Diana and joking, “I don’t know what you thought of me.”
She replies, “Pretty amazing.”
As more flashback footage appears on screen, news reporters weigh in on the dynamic between Diana and Charles, with one even hinting that Queen Elizabeth II‘s eldest son fell into “second place” behind Diana in the public’s perception. At other points, the royal pair are seen with their children, Prince William and Prince Harry.
Diana and the Prince of Wales called it quits in 1992 after more than a decade of marriage. Their divorce was finalized in 1996, one year before Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris. She was 36.
“For me, [her presence is] constant,” Harry told Today‘s Hoda Kotb in April 2022 of his late mother. “It has been over the last two years — more so than ever before.”
At the time, the Duke of Sussex noted that he speaks to son Archie about Diana. Harry welcomed his first child with Meghan Markle in May 2019, followed by daughter Lilibet Diana in June 2021. “I don’t tell him all the stuff that happened, but certainly, ‘This is Grandma Diana,’ and [I] brought a couple photos up in the house,” the U.K. native explained. “She’s watching over us.”
Harry and William have been candid about Diana’s legacy and impact on their lives, frequently paying tribute to her through their own charitable efforts. “It’s almost as though she’s done her bit with my brother and now she’s very much back to helping me,” the Archewell cofounder told Today. “[She] got him set up, now she’s helping me set up. That’s what it feels like, you know? He’s his kids. I’ve got my kids. You know, circumstances are obviously different. But I feel her presence in almost everything that I do now.”
Like his mother, Harry has faced intense public scrutiny and heightened attention. The pressure prompted him and Meghan to step down from their senior royal duties in 2020, a move that Buckingham Palace made permanent the following year. During a sit-down interview with CBS in March 2021, Harry predicted Diana would have been proud of the pair’s decision.
“I think she would feel very angry with how this has panned out, and very sad,” he said at the time. “But ultimately, all she’d ever want is for us to be happy.”
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