Princess Diana’s Panorama interview is Prince William’s ‘wound that will not heal’

I’ve already expressed my concerns about this new book, Dianarama, written by Andy Webb. Webb’s investigatory focus is on Princess Diana’s 1995 Panorama interview, where she spoke openly about bulimia, her affairs, Charles’s affairs and whether she believed she would ever become queen. She also suggested that Charles wasn’t up to the job of being king. Instead of focusing on Diana’s actual words, the conversation in recent years has been focused on how Martin Bashir manipulated Diana and lied to her to secure the interview. Strangely, Webb never acknowledges what the Dyson investigation acknowledged four years ago, which is that Diana wanted to talk and she was looking for an outlet and interviewer to get her side out before the inevitable divorce. Both things were true: Bashir secured the interview through lies and forgery, AND Diana would have talked to someone else if Bashir hadn’t come along. Well, Webb is still hustling his book and he said some odd things to Fox News.

Prince William is still in agony over Diana’s interview: “I’ve been discreet because I’ve gone as far as I was advised to go,” Andy Webb, author of “Dianarama,” told Fox News Digital. “I describe William as having a wound that will not heal. It’s been made clear to me that he needs to know what happened. I think the impact on William must have been absolutely traumatic. He’s decided that the time has come. He needs to know. He really wants to know what went down 30 years ago.”

On Diana’s paranoia: “They said Diana was paranoid,” said Webb. “And I always think to myself, ‘That’s really unkind,’ because you have to remember, this was the BBC telling her they had firm information and documents proving people were out to get her. That’s what Diana was acting on. At that point in her life, she knew her phone had been tapped, private calls had been recorded and even broadcast publicly. It was very embarrassing for her. She also worried whether a former friend she’d had a relationship with, who died in a motorbike accident, might have been targeted. She asked herself, ‘Is that a coincidence?’ That was the material Martin Bashir knew he was working with — that Diana was already deeply suspicious of being under surveillance. He knew she was concerned about the death of this particular man. Then he came along with his documents, and he was very convincing.”

How William feels: “I think it’s hard for William to realize that things might have been different,” said Webb. “If only Diana had been told what really happened — what Martin Bashir had done. It’s difficult to live with that knowledge.” In 2021, William said that “the interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse and has since hurt countless others. It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.”

William was mad because Diana talked about her affairs & trashed Charles: “What teenager wants to watch TV and see his mother there being asked questions about, ‘Did you have sex with this boyfriend?’” asked Webb. “In the interview, Diana is encouraged to effectively trash William’s father when she’s asked, ‘Do you think he should be king?’ And she says, ‘No, I don’t think he’s got it in him.’ So William, at the age of 13, is sitting there watching this. What do his school friends think the next morning? You don’t have to be a prince to be horribly embarrassed by that.”

William wants Diana to be silenced forever: “William does not want this interview to be shown again,” said Webb. “He calls it illegitimate. What’s particularly sad is that, yes, some parts were valuable — but in reality, Diana gave that interview in a state of terror and fear.”

[From Fox News]

I’m still disgusted that the major takeaway for both Andy Webb and Prince William is that Diana should be silenced forever and that it’s wrong to speak out about the royal family’s abusive and toxic culture. I’m also disgusted that William is openly doing his father’s bidding here – again, Charles has been trying to silence Diana for decades, and Charles was always incandescent with rage over the Panorama interview too. Charles has wanted the interview buried for thirty years. And now William wants it buried too. Harry is the only one in this situation who acknowledges that Diana was simply trying to survive and tell her story.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, screencap courtesy of BBC/GMA.

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21 Responses to “Princess Diana’s Panorama interview is Prince William’s ‘wound that will not heal’”

  1. Inge says:

    Sure, once again he’s blaming his mother and not his cheating dad, someone in his 30s who went for a teen because she was a virgin

    • Sunniside up says:

      Values were different then, When I grew up brides were supposed to be virgins and men were supposed to be experienced so they knew what they were doing, nobody explained were the men were supposed to get their experience from apart from six workers along with a dose of the …. Things did become more realistic in the late sixties but Princess Margaret wasn’t allowed to marry a divorced man and now the divorced King is married to the divorced Queen.

      • Duch says:

        Nah, even in 1981 that was seen as anachronistic. It was seen as somewhat bizarre and a throwback to the 1950s.

      • Tessa says:

        Charles used Diana and proposed to her when she was 19. He did not love her. But did not tell her that. She was not cynical and thought he loved her when he proposed.

  2. Yes they wanted Diana silenced and they found a way to do it without being blamed. She was going to talk and it really doesn’t matter to whom. She was going to get her story out there and she did! Peg should be ashamed of himself for taking his cheating father’s side but I truly believe that Peg is just like dear old dad with cheating and I also think he may be more abusive. Birds of a feather in Chuckles and Pegs case.

    • jais says:

      At this point, I don’t even think it’s about William taking his dad’s side. There’s very little love lost between him and Charles. This about William’s side. William does not want anyone talking ever for whatever reason. Not his mom. Not Harry. Not Meghan. Not Kate. Bc it benefits William if no one ever tells the truth. I’d be curious to hear what William thinks of the Dimbleby interview when Charles first admitted to cheating on Diana with Camilla. Should that also be buried? Or is it just Diana’s interview? Did that not also embarrass him as a young boy? Or was it just his mom’s? In that way, it’s taking his dad’s side but I think it’s more about just protecting himself and setting up all protections for the monarch…which ultimately benefits him as the future monarch.

      • Well if is just like dad then yes he would feel he needs to protect himself. I believe he is just like dad only he takes things a step farther with his incandescent rage fits and this is what he doesn’t want out there. Diana was speaking about Chuckles but Peg knows he is just like dad and worse.

      • jais says:

        Yep, like Charles, is William likely a cheating liar who is obsessed with making sure no one ever calls him out for his behavior? Yes, yes he is.

  3. Dee(2) says:

    I think William and Charles have a vested interest in people that they have wronged not being able to get their side of the story out there. If they could find a way to prevent people from finding clips of the Oprah interview, banning access to the docu series, and preventing Spare from being sold I think they would do it.

    It’s why to this day, the media has spent so much time parsing everything that is said, to make Harry and Meghan seem like liars. And why almost 5 years after the Oprah interview and 3 years after the docu series and Spare they still write articles at least once a week about how something said in either one has been ” debunked”.

    I don’t think that Kate is going anywhere, but they are definitely setting the stage for anyone that wants to expose the intricacies of the family, has to be discredited. Whether that’s for Harry and Meghan, Kate, Beatrice and Eugenie, Andrew and Fergie, who knows.

    • Tessa says:

      If scooter finds someone he prefers keen will be out. His dad was able to move on and remarry

    • jais says:

      This. If they could ban the Oprah interview and the Netflix series they would. They both have the same shared interest in silencing anyone who leaves the cult.

    • BayTampaBay says:

      Wrong Place

    • Becks1 says:

      Agreed. They only want one version of history out there – their version – and this is how they’ll get it, by discrediting the Panaroma interview.

      and look, we all know Bashir was sketchy. we all know that his actions contributed to Diana’s fear that the royal family was spying on her, etc.

      But at the same time, she said what she said. she WANTED to give an interview. She had already worked with Andrew Morton by that point. She was desperate to get her side out there. And even here Webb admits that her phone was tapped and her private calls were being recorded.

      I’m sorry that his parents divorce playing out so publicly was embarrassing and hard for William – I honestly mean that. but that doesn’t excuse his desperate attempts to silence his mother almost thirty years after her death.

  4. Tessa says:

    Diana only mentioned Hewitt in the Bashir interview. Charles already had outed Camilla affair one year earlier. How come scooter was not upset over dad’s interview the year before. Also Charles sympathizers like Seward were actively trashing Diana. Did scooter care. Diana wanted the interview out there.

    • QuiteContrary says:

      Yeah, this is all very lopsided, typical of the way the rota and the institution protect the royal men, especially Charles. And they are determined to forever silence Diana (in more ways than one).

      Charles trashed his parents in the Dimbleby book and revealed his affair with Camilla well before Diana’s interview. Wasn’t the Camilla revelation embarrassing to young William? How about tampon-gate? Why don’t we ever read about William being mortified about that?

    • jais says:

      Yep, why isn’t William as obsessed with silencing the Dimbleby interview?

  5. Eurydice says:

    “Fear, paranoia and isolation” says the man who is terrified that his brother might come back and is locking himself away in a 150-acre estate.

  6. Laura D says:

    The main difference between the two brothers is that although Harry also hated how the BBC got their information he did not want his mother silenced. He showed this when he made sure that The Sun publicly apologised for how they treated her. William may have agreed with the gutter press, KCIII and Camilla when they argued that Diana was “paranoid” but her younger son made damn sure everyone knew that this was not the case. It was noticeable that after William threw a huge tantrum and got his mother’s interview banned from TV, Harry made sure pertinent clips were included in his docu-series. IMHO Harry giving his mother her voice back and highlighting her causes where ever possible is why he will always be a Spencer and William a Windsor-Parker Bowles.

  7. Amy Bee says:

    William desperately needs therapy.

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