New documentary shares tale of nasty fight between Princess Di and her mother
In the Smithsonian Channel’s newest documentary ‘Princess Diana’s ‘Wicked’ Stepmother,’ the focus is on the rivalry between Diana and Countess Spencer, her Stepmother. However, it also features accounts from Diana’s personal butler who shared details about the nasty fight between Diana and her mother before the princess’ shocking death.
Princess Diana of Wales never reconciled with her mother after the horrified matriarch called the British royal “a whore” for dating Muslim men.
The shocking claim was made by Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell, who came forward in Smithsonian Channel’s newest documentary “Princess Diana’s ‘Wicked’ Stepmother,” which shines a light on Countess Raine Spencer and how she also had a lasting impact on “the people’s princess” before Diana died in 1997 at age 36.
The special features interviews with close friends and staff of both women.
Burrell, 61, served as a footman to Queen Elizabeth II before he began working for Diana in 1987 until her death a decade later. While the documentary focuses on the rivalry between Diana and Spencer, it was the royal’s relationship with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, that will leave audiences stunned.
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Diana, Princess of Wales with her mother Frances Shand Kydd at the wedding of her brother Viscount Spencer to fashion model Victoria Lockwood at Althorpe in September 1989. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/WireImage/Getty)
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Burrell told Fox News he could never forget Diana’s last conversation with Shand Kydd.
“I was in my little pantry underneath the main staircase of Kensington Palace and I could hear this sobbing coming out of [Diana’s] room,” claimed Burrell. “Then she shouted, ‘Paul, please come. Come quick.’ So I ran up the staircase, and I found the princess crumpled in the middle of her room with the telephone to her ear, and she beckoned me to come closer. I could hear what her mother was saying. She said, ‘Listen. Listen to what mummy’s saying.’
“Mrs. Shand Kydd had had a few to drink that night,” Burrell continued. “She was berating the princess and then calling her a whore. She said, ‘That’s what you are. I’ve raised a whore, whoring around town with Muslim men. You should be ashamed of yourself.’ Diana was sobbing, saying ‘Mummy, please don’t say those words to me. Please don’t call me those names.’ She begged her. She kept begging her not to say it.
“Of course, she’s repeating it in her drunkenness. Diana eventually said, ‘I’m going to put the phone down and I’ll never speak to you again.’ And that’s exactly what she did. She never did speak to her mother again.”
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A permanent memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed is pictured in the Harrods store in London, 31 August 2006, on the ninth anniversary of their death. Diana, 36, and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, 42, were killed in a car crash in Paris in the early hours of August 31, 1997. (Photo by JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP via Getty Images)
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Burrell claimed Diana broke off her relationship with Shand Kydd after the phone call. Not long after, Diana was killed in a high-speed Paris car crash in 1997. She was with her lover Dodi Fayed, who also perished that night.
Diana previously had a relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, Reuters reported.
“Her mother had to live with that guilt after Diana’s death,” said Burrell. “She came to me and said, ‘Surely I’ll be forgiven now, won’t I?’ I said, ‘Mrs. Shand Kydd, I can’t give you absolution. I’m not the right person to come to. I couldn’t.”
Meanwhile, Spencer, who reconciled with Diana after a decades-long feud over the royal’s father, Earl Edward John Spencer, was in favor of the princess’ relationship with Fayed, the son of billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed.
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Princess Diana with her stepmother, Countess Raine Spencer. (Getty)
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“She loved it, of course,” said Burrell. “She felt it was the coming together of the Fayeds and the House of Spencer, in a way. And she saw this… as a match made in heaven.”
“Raine came to see me the day after Diana died,” Burrell claimed. “I gave her tea in the drawing room, as I know the princess would want me to do. She took my hand and said, ‘If only they could have lived, they would have been so happy together.’… I didn’t personally think the princess was in love with Dodi Fayed. I think her love was still with Hasnat Khan. But I couldn’t go through all of that. Raine was devastated.”
Diana was enjoying a whirlwind romance after a very public divorce from Prince Charles in 1996. Burrell said the devastated royal knew the marriage was over after the couple welcomed their second son, Prince Harry, in 1985.
Charles married Diana in a televised wedding that attracted about 750 million viewers worldwide in 1981. They welcomed Prince William the following year in 1982. However, Diana had long suspected Charles kept an ongoing affair with his ex-girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana and Charles ultimately called it quits after 11 years of marriage. Charles, 70, married Bowles, 72, in 2005.
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Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
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“The princess told me herself, ‘Paul, I knew it was over the night Harry was born,’” Burrell alleged. “He came into the room, looked into the cot and saw the red hair. He made a comment about it. She said, ‘Look, Charles, you know that’s the Spencer gene. They’ve all got red hair.’ And he dismissed it and said, ‘Well, at least I now have an heir and a spare, and now I can get on with my life and go back to Camilla.’ She told me, the princess, that the night Harry was born, she cried herself to sleep knowing her marriage was over.”
Burrell alleged the divorce of Diana’s parents long haunted the princess. The couple was married from 1954 until 1969. Edward married Spencer in 1976 and that union lasted until his death in 1992 at age 68 from a heart attack.
“[The divorce of her parents] was a huge impact,” said Burrell. “I think that’s when the princess’s psychological problems began because she felt abandoned as a young girl by her mother. She didn’t understand why her mother had left her four children behind to go and live with another man. As a child, she blamed herself. And so, I think that’s what she always turned back to, the fact that she wasn’t good enough, she wasn’t good enough, she wasn’t loved enough. So really, it did had a massive impact on her life.”
Viscount Althorp, son of the Earl and Countess Spencer, with his fiancee, 18-year-old Hon Frances Roche, daughter of Lord and Lady Fermoy, on the day before their wedding, 31st May 1954. They are the parents of Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Burrell said Spencer was also devastated by Diana’s sudden death.
“She was the first person who rang the doorbell at Kensington Palace, the first person,” Burrell recalled. “The police let her in because they knew who she was. I brought her in and she was in tears. She was in pieces. She said, ‘We’ve only just found this friendship and so much good was happening and it’s been taken away from us all.’ She was really, really beside herself.”
Shand Kydd passed away in 2004 at age 68 following a long illness. Spencer died in 2016 at age 87.
Burrell hopes audiences will discover a new side to Diana, one that is rarely discussed concerning one of the most famous women who ever lived.
“I think if you watch the program, you’ll see the dynamics between the princess and the stepmother,” said Burrell. “It changed over the years because the dynamics changed. [Spencer] went from being this wicked stepmother to friend, confidante and mother figure… And it’s a fascinating ride.”
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Paul Burrell today. (Firecrest Films Ltd.)
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“Princess Diana’s ‘Wicked’ Stepmother” airs Oct. 28 at 8 p.m. on the Smithsonian Channel.
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