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This August will mark the 20 year anniversary of Princess Diana of Wales’ death. Princess Diana’s death was and remains one of those tragedies that was acutely felt by the public, and even today it’s difficult to think about the Paris crash without remembering the miles of flowers that once adorned St. James Place. However, as public of a loss as Princess Diana’s death was, it’s one that has remained largely unacknowledged by those closest to her. HBO’s latest documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, changes that.
Directed by Ashley Gething and executive produced by Nick Kent, Diana, Our Mother offers a deeply personal look into Princess Diana’s life through the people who knew her best. Featuring exclusive interviews from members of the late princess’ inner circle as well as conversations with Prince William and Prince Harry about the impact their late mother had on them, Diana, Our Mother is a deeply personal documentary. Watching it is akin to pulling back the curtain on the Royal Family and allowing them to be human.
A lot of that intimacy comes from Gething and Kent’s close relationship with the Royal Family. Prior to Diana, Our Mother, the duo released two films about the Royal Family — Our Queen and Our Queen at Ninety. “We filmed with the Queen and the Royal Family for a year to make [Our Queen]. That film was very successful. And then when the Queen was going to turn 90 last year, we approached the royal family about making a birthday film,” Kent said. “So we’ve built up over the last three or four years a relationship of trust with them, and that’s why I think we were trusted to make this film.”
It took Gething and Kent roughly a year to create Diana, Our Mother. “About two years ago, Nick and I worked on a film called Our Queen of Ninety and in the course of that production I interviewed the Duchess of Cambridge for the first time on TV. Then, I interviewed Prince William and Prince Harry and the experience was really good from our side,” Gething said. “So we began talking to the Royal Family around this time last year about making another film.”
Though the film is a celebration of Princess Diana’s life and legacy, it’s just as much about how her death has influenced Prince William and Prince Harry. According to Gething, they met with the princes in February of this year to discuss a documentary about Princess Diana, but during the course of their conversation, the film’s focus shifted. “We just sat down with them earlier this year and talked about the scope of the film,” Gething said. “I think initially, Nick and I thought that it would be a film looking really at the princess’ working life and working legacy, but in the course of that conversation with them it became clear they were also happy to make a film that was rather wider and reflected the memories and childhood experiences they’ve had with their mom. They were happy to make it a much more personal film.”
“All of us realized that it was an opportunity for the two people who knew her best and loved her most to tell their story for the first time,” Gething said.
“Obviously there have been scores and scores of documentaries that have been made about Princess Diana over the years,” Kent said. “But this is really an untold story because nobody has ever seen her through the eyes of the two people who know her better than anyone else and who loved her more than anyone else — her sons.”
The documentary watches as an extraordinarily intimate look at this often reserved family from start to finish. “When you talk about it being a personal film, I think … we hoped we’d make a film that, when it was finished, Prince William and Prince Harry in years to come would feel it was something they could share with their own children and say this is who your grandmother was,” Kent said.
“I think the other thing that was important for them, for Prince William and Prince Harry, is that since Princess Diana died, a whole generation has grown up who didn’t know her,” he added. “So this was really an opportunity to introduce Diana to that generation as well as to give a different point of view on who she was.”
Diana, Our Mother does a wonderful job of capturing Princess Diana’s legacy without being disingenuously flattering. “One of the things that we wondered was, ‘Was she really a significant public figure?’ And the answer is emphatically yes,” Gething said. “She destigmatized issues like HIV and AIDS. She left a major legacy in the Bosnian land mine ban.”
Despite the fact that the film focuses on such a well-known figure and features interviews from several people who have never before spoken publicly about Princess Diana, the documentary remains rooted to Prince William and Prince Harry. According to Gething, that was intentional. The director mentioned Prince Harry’s story about his mother sneaking sweets in his socks during soccer practice as one of the film’s highlights. “I think that’s obviously one of the emotional extremes of the film. This is just the ordinary joys of childhood,” he said. “And then on the other scale is obviously the absolutely devastating moment when [Prince William and Prince Harry] talk about the last phone call that they had with her. I think that these are the two poles that the film moves between — The joys that we all recognized from our childhood, the love that we all have for our moms and just that awful, tragic, numbing bereavement that they experienced.”
“This film, in some ways, just shows you how these two boys, these two sons, have faced up to that in their own lives. How they’ve sort of tried to keep the memory of their mother alive,” Kent said. “They’ve done it through what they do, you know, the way they behave, the causes they champion.”
For example, the film highlights how Prince Harry has continued his mother’s work fighting to ban land mines in Bosnia. “Three weeks before she died, [Princess Diana] was in Bosnia meeting victims of land mines. And twenty years later, in the film, Harry meets those same victims and is carrying on the fight,” Kent said. The producer also points to the way Prince William is raising his own children as a reflection of his mother. “It’s very much rooted in their experience of being brought up by Princess Diana,” he said. “There’s a sense in which, when she was with her sons, that was the time when Diana could feel she could really be herself. You know, she was away from the public spotlight and she was with people who loved her and who she loved. And in many ways, that was the real Diana.”
Intimacy more than anything else stands as the focus of Diana, Our Mother. “We felt from pretty early on that this should emphatically be the princes’ film, and that became the sort of compass for the film,” Gething said. “You’ve obviously seen that one of the things we do include is also interviews with her brother and with a very small group of her very closest friends who’ve never spoken before. I think all of these interviews are kind of linked by the intimacy and the personal knowledge of the princess and also love of her. Hopefully, that’s something that communicates itself through the film.”
“After we made the film, Prince William said that he and Harry have never spoken in depth about Diana in this way before. He also said that we don’t plan to do so again in the future,” Kent said. “So, I think this is a really unique film. It’s a one off in terms of giving you an insight into the real Diana.”
