Disgraced Princess Diana Interview To Be Included In Sky Doc, Despite BBC’s Pledge Never To License Footage

deadline.com:

Only a week after the head of the BBC pledged never to broadcast again its discredited Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, it emerges that extracts from the 1995 program will be included in a documentary to be shown on Sky and Now TV next month.

The Princess, a documentary directed by Ed Perkins re-telling the late Princess’s life through archive footage, will include footage of the interview, despite her son Prince William also expressing his wishes that this never be aired again.

Perkins’ film has already had a brief run in UK cinemas. The BBC returned the BAFTA award it won for the Panorama interview – in which Diana revealed her distress in her marriage, her eating disorders and her prophecy she would never be queen – after interviewer Martin Bashir’s deceptive practices in obtaining Diana’s agreement to be interviewed were uncovered.

Last week, the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie said in a statement: “Now we know about the shocking way that the interview was obtained I have decided that the BBC will never show the programme again; nor will we license it in whole or part to other broadcasters. “It does, of course, remain part of the historical record and there may be occasions in the future when it will be justified for the BBC to use short extracts for journalistic purposes, but these will be few and far between and will need to be agreed at executive committee level and set in the full context of what we now know about the way the interview was obtained.