The Duke of Sussex sent shockwaves around the world with his 30-minute BBC interview last week. While it has been reported that King Charles was left “frustrated and upset”, royal author Ingrid Seward, who knew Princess Diana well before her untimely death in 1997, believes his mother would have been “proud”.
Speaking on this week’s A Right Royal Podcast, the royal author discussed Princess Diana’s own shocking Panorama interview, which took place two years before her death, in 1995, and why she had only one small regret about it.
© WireImage“I saw her quite shortly after that, so obviously I asked her, and she said, 'No, I don't regret any of it',” Ingrid admits in the episode which you can listen to below.
“She said, 'I got thousands of letters about other people who suffered from anorexia and bulimia'. So that's how she twisted it.
“She said, ‘The only thing I felt a bit bad about was talking about James Hewitt.’ She had said, if you remember, that she was in love with him, or had been in love with him, and she felt bad for William and Harry saying that.
© Corbis via Getty Images“She, at that moment, thought it was a successful interview.”
On what she thinks Princess Diana would have made of Harry’s interview, which comes six years after his uncle Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis, she says: “I think she might have been proud, ‘I'm glad you said what you thought.’”
© Tim Graham Photo Library via Get“I think she would, I’m guessing, that she might have been quite proud of him for speaking up and saying what he thought, because that’s what she liked. She liked to say exactly what she thought and then deal with the consequences afterwards, which is, of course, what happened to her.”
Elsewhere in the episode, titled An Impossible Reconciliation?, Andrea and Emily, alongside guest Ingrid, discuss when the royal family were made aware of Prince Harry’s interview and why he has no regrets about it. They also discuss Princess Charlotte and Prince Archie’s birthdays, as well as the royals stepping out to commemorate VE Day.
