Supporting their mother. Prince William and Prince Harry were just children when the late Princess Diana gave her famous interview to Panorama, but they haven’t been shy about sharing their thoughts on the controversial conversation as adults.
The late Princess of Wales sat down for the explosive tell-all in 1995 and opened up about her tense marriage to King Charles III. At one point, she referenced his alleged affair with Queen Camilla, saying, “There were three of us in this marriage.”
After the interview, Diana and the former Prince of Wales announced their split, finalizing their divorce in August 1996. One year later, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris.
Twenty-five years after the Panorama interview aired, the BBC launched an investigation into how reporter Martin Bashir obtained his sit-down with the princess after reports surfaced that the journalist had used unethical tactics to convince her to speak. In October 2020, the U.K.’s Sunday Times alleged that Bashir created false bank statements in an attempt to show Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, that someone was leaking information about their family to the press.
When the BBC announced its inquiry one month later, Diana’s eldest son expressed his support, calling the investigation “a step in the right direction.” In May 2021, the BBC released its findings, announcing that the Panorama interview “fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are [the network’s] hallmark.”
More than one year later, the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, issued a formal apology to Diana’s sons. “It is a matter of great regret that the BBC did not get to the facts in the immediate aftermath of the program when there were warning signs that the interview might have been obtained improperly,” Davie said in a statement in July 2022. “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 also apologized to Alexandra Pettifer (formerly known as Tiggy Legge-Bourke), who was caught in the crossfire when Bashir alleged that she had an affair with Charles. Pettifer — a former nanny to William and Harry — won a defamation claim against the network, which paid her an undisclosed sum in damages.
“The BBC has agreed to pay substantial damages to Mrs. Pettifer and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize publicly to her, to [Charles] and to the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex for the way in which Princess Diana was deceived and the subsequent impact on all their lives,” Davie said. “Now we know about the shocking way that the interview was obtained I have decided that the BBC will never show the program again; nor will we license it in whole or part to other broadcasters.”
Keep scrolling for everything William and Harry have said about their mother’s Panorama interview:
