Channel 4 to broadcast new Diana footage in feature-length documentary

24 July 2017

 

Channel 4 today announces a brand new 1 x 110 min in-depth documentary featuring footage of Diana speaking candidly on a range of subjects.

Airing shortly before the 20th anniversary of her death, this revelatory film has drawn on a unique historical archive – video tapes recorded by Diana’s speech coach Peter Settelen, who she hired to help her prepare to publicly present her own account of events and reinvent her public persona. Some of this footage is being broadcast for the first time ever and none of it has been seen on British television before.

The footage Settelen captured at her private residence in Kensington Palace in 1992 and 1993 is the only known unmediated video with Diana ever recorded. It shows Diana rehearsing her speaking voice and also reflecting at length on her own biography and offering revealing insight into her upbringing, her courtship with the Prince of Wales, her marriage and her public life. With Diana at her most candid, informal, natural and charismatic the videos provide valuable new insight into one of the world’s most iconic women of the late 20th century and shed new light on her transformation into an enormously influential public figure who frequently dominated the world stage.

Channel 4’s Deputy Chief Creative Officer & Head of Factual Ralph Lee commissioned Kaboom Film & TV to produce Diana: In Her Own Words with the award-winning director Kevin Sim (Once Upon a Time in Iran, Beslan) and award-winning executive producer Charles Furneaux (Touching The Void, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, Treblinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine). 

Lee says: “The tapes, which show a relaxed and off-duty Diana, are hugely illuminating about her personality, humour and charm. Combined with historical context and interviews with her closest confidants, this film provides a nuanced, multi-layered portrait of the most famous woman in the world and a mother who has shaped the future line of the royal family.

“This film gives Diana a voice and places it front and centre at a time when the nation will be reflecting on her life and death. It is her account of events both private and public and is an important contribution to the historical record.”

This film shows footage from Diana’s rehearsals with Settelen in 1993 which she undertook in order to help leverage her own story and hone her public voice - preparation which had begun with her making recordings for Andrew Morton’s book in 1991  and culminated in her infamous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in 1995.

The film places the footage into the context of wider historical events shaping the royal family and wider society. Further insight is provided by in-depth interviews with those closest to Diana including her personal protection officer Ken Wharfe and private secretary Patrick Jephson as well as some confidants who will be speaking on the record for the first time – friend of more than 30 years Dr James Colthurst and Diana’s ballet teacher Anne Allan.

The film will air on Channel 4 in early August.

Notes to Editors

Diana: In Her Own Words is produced by Kaboom Film & TV Ltd for Channel 4 in association with US broadcaster PBS. PBS will air a film that will include similar material in late August overseen by Vice President of Programming and Development Bill Gardner for PBS