Five hours of never-before-heard taped conversations the late Diana, Princess of Wales, recorded in secret in 1991 will form the basis for a new docuseries telling her life story in her own words, the project’s production team announced.
Diana made the clandestine recordings with close friend Dr James Colthurst to document the disintegration of her marriage as she navigated the ins and outs of royal life.
Colthurst smuggled the tapes out of Kensington Palace and passed them to her chosen biographer, Andrew Morton, who used them as the basis of his 1992 book, Diana: Her True Story. But less than an hour of the recordings has ever been made public.
That’s about to change. Production company Love Monday has teamed up with Morton and Colthurst and obtained “full and exclusive access” to the tapes, The Hollywood Reporter revealed. The company is also partnering with production company 53 Degrees Global.
Bearing the working title Diana: The Unheard Truth, the series will disclose details of the princess’s life as she candidly discusses her bulimia diagnosis, as well as her thoughts about her two sons, the young princes William and Harry, and even her suicide attempts. She also reportedly dishes about in-laws Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) and wife Sarah Ferguson.
Diana’s prep schoolmate Delissa Needham will appear in the series, speaking on camera for the first time, plus hairdresser Sam McKnight, astrologer Penny Thornton and confidante Daily Mail journalist Richard Kay. Her former bodyguard Ken Wharfe and royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter are also contributing, according to Variety.
Love Monday promises a “revelatory” series that will “change the public perception of Diana forever” and show that she was anything but a victim of her circumstances.
“Through the tapes, we come to know a resilient, perceptive and relatable young woman, finding herself in the brightest of global spotlights, and navigating the challenges with grace, self-awareness and determination,” the company said in a statement to The Telegraph. “We hear her infectious humour and twinkling laughter as she reveals the truth about life inside the most famous family in the world.”
Among the recordings’ revelations, Diana accurately predicts that Charles and Camilla will wed, and talks about a new chapter of her own life, Love Monday said.
That chapter was sadly cut short on Aug 31, 1997, when Diana was killed in a Paris car accident as her driver tried to elude pursuing paparazzi. Diana: The Unheard Truth will be released next August, around the 30th anniversary of her death. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
