The Princess director on why doc includes Martin Bashir's Diana interview
The BBC agreed to "never" air the 1995 Panorama interview after it was revealed Bashir had made a "serious breach" of its guidelines to obtain it.
Sky's The Princess documentary is set to tell the story of Diana, Princess of Wales.
While it's a story many fans know well, the film plans to take "an entirely immersive approach, drawing solely from audio and video footage from the time".
It will therefore include excerpts from Martin Bashir's 1995 BBC interview with Diana, which caused huge controversy, with Diana and Prince Charles divorcing a year later.
Never before had a royal spoken so candidly in public, and there were concerns about how the interview had been obtained.
The BBC later revealed that it would "never" air the interview again, after it was found that Bashir had made a "serious breach" of its guidelines in order to obtain it, as it made an "unconditional apology".
So, naturally we were intrigued to see that it had been included in the upcoming Sky documentary, which will air on Sunday 14th August.
Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Academy Award-nominated director Ed Perkins revealed his reasoning behind this, admitting it was an "important if deeply unfortunate moment" in the late royal's life.
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He said: "So our documentary tells the story of Diana exclusively, sort of only using contemporaneous archive from the time, so there is no commentary from today in our film and as such, yes, there are excerpts from that interview that are featured briefly in our film as a moment of the historical record. So that interview was an important if deeply unfortunate moment in her life, and it has been included as such as part of the historical record."
Asked whether he considered leaving it out, he added: "We don't go into every part of Diana's life as you can't in 90 minutes, but we have tried to distil her life into the most important moments and we've tried to bring them back to life contemporaneously. I think like a lot of the other pivotal moments, whether that's the wedding or various other speeches she gave or other moments in her life, we tried to bring all that back to life."
The Princess arrives on Sky Documentaries on Sunday 14th August.
Read more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what else is on.
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