Footage from the controversial 1995 Panorama interview with Princess Diana, will be used in the upcoming Ed Perkins documentary, The Princess. This comes just a week after the BBC swore to never again air or license the segment. The documentary will depict Diana's heavily publicized life using old footage and interviews, including the Panorama segment, where the Princess spoke openly with now-discredited BBC reporter Martin Bashir.
Following an independent investigation, the BBC's director-general, Tim Davie, previously vowed to never again air or license the program, where Diana got vulnerable about her struggles, including her eating disorders and marriage. The report found out that Bashir used "deceitful tactics" to obtain an interview with Diana, in which he reportedly falsified remarks to make it appear as if Diana's staff were selling stories about her. But despite the BBC's decision and Diana's son Prince William's denunciation of the said interview, calling it a "false narrative," a Sky spokesman reiterated that the footage will still remain in the upcoming documentary about Princess Diana's life.
Davie disclosed in a statement that there were already indications that the interview had been improperly obtained. "Instead, as The Duke of Cambridge himself put it, the BBC failed to ask the tough questions. Had we done our job properly Princess Diana would have known the truth during her lifetime. We let her, The Royal Family and our audiences down."
Davie said in a statement:
“Now we know about the shocking way that the interview was obtained I have decided that the BBC will never show the programme again; nor will we license it in whole or part to other broadcasters. It does of course remain part of the historical record and there may be occasions in the future when it will be justified for the BBC to use short extracts for journalistic purposes, but these will be few and far between and will need to be agreed at Executive Committee level and set in the full context of what we now know about the way the interview was obtained. I would urge others to exercise similar restraint."
The Princess trailer highlighted Princess Diana's life through old footage. The logline for the documentary says that the upcoming documentary is an "intensely emotional" hark back to Diana's life, including her marriage to Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and her 1997 fatal car accident in Paris that made headlines for decades. The documentary will air on HBO on August 13th, with streaming accessible on HBO Max. It will also be broadcast on Sky and Now TV on August 14, just before the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's tragic death. You can watch the trailer below: