Spotlight on Diana as death-anniversary looms
It’s open season again on the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
With the 20th anniversary of her fatal car crash approaching on Aug. 31, the woman whose marriage to a not-so-charming prince led to celebrity that neither divorce nor death could diminish is back in television’s crosshairs.
And just as in the days when paparazzi dogged her every step, Diana remains both highly visible and stubbornly elusive in ABC News’s two-hour special tonight, The Last 100 Days of Diana. It’s hosted by British journalist (and former Nightline anchor and MSNBC host) Martin Bashir, whose 1995 interview with the princess about her broken marriage apparently persuaded the Queen that the warring couple, already separated, should divorce.
Bashir, who’s never sounded more unctuous as he talks about the “wounded princess,” is focused on a period that might well have proved a blip had Diana, who was 36 when she died, lived to see her sons grow up and her grandchildren replace her on the cover of People.
Was she, in her final summer, caught between what the British monarchy might have seen as two wildly inappropriate lovers, canoodling with one, as seen in grainy, long-lens photos, in an attempt to make the other jealous? Or was Diana, who also spent some of that time working for her charities, simply having a little fun as she tried to distract the British tabloids from the story of her ex, Prince Charles, throwing a birthday party for his longtime mistress (and future wife) Camilla Parker Bowles?
Following close on the heels of Friday’s two-hour NBC News special The Life and Death of Princess Diana: A Dateline Investigation, and HBO’s announcement of a documentary this year to be built around interviews with Diana’s sons, Princes William and Harry, The Last 100 Days won’t be television’s last word on the late princess. Or even ABC’s.
The Story of Diana, a two-night documentary mini-series from ABC’s entertainment division, is scheduled to air Aug. 9-10. On May 22, CBS News weighs in with Princess Diana: Her Life — Her Death — The Truth,” a special produced by the 48 Hours team that will be hosted by CBS This Morning’s Gayle King.
There almost certainly will be others before FX’s Feud: Charles and Diana arrives in 2018.
The Last 100 Days, though, is as good a place as any to start, as it demonstrates just how malleable the princess’ story was, and continues to be. (For those who might not remember her years as a character in the long-running soap opera of the supermarket checkout line, think about the way Jennifer Aniston appears to have achieved a separate existence as a kind of avatar who’s always getting divorced or reconciled or pregnant, depending on that week’s story line. Then multiply those stories by 10. Or 100.)