Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Princess’ on HBO, A Look At Diana’s Life As Told By 20 Years Of News Footage

HBO’s new documentary The Princess is a retelling of Princess Diana’s life told entirely by newsreels and reports about her life between 1980 and 1997 that have been pieced together into a narrative. There is no voice over save for those that are part of nightly news casts and the like, no graphics explaining what year it is or where we are geographically in any given scene, the footage it allowed to speak entirely for itself. Diana’s life was so exhaustively covered by the press that there is perhaps no other person in history whose life could be pieced together so completely without any added context. That was her legacy, and, as the film makes clear, her cause of death.

THE PRINCESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Amateur video footage of Paris at night, shot by a group of young tourists in their car narrating what they’re seeing. They whiz past the Louvre and then The Ritz, where they notice a commotion of onlookers and camera crews. “Wow wow wow, someone’s out. They’re very important,” they say. What they don’t yet know is that the VIPs in question are Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, and this is where the pair had just eaten dinner and would flee the hotel in a speeding car that would crash and kill them both, seemingly just moments after this footage was shot.

The Gist: Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, abdicated their royal duties and titles in 2020. After watching The Princess, what’s surprising is that they didn’t do it sooner to get the hell away from their family, the British press, and England in general. The Princess, directed by Ed Perkins, is being released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Perkins and his team had to cull through thousands of hours of newsreels to find the perfect soundbites and visuals to tell the story of Diana’s ascension in the seamless way that it does.

But the press, the British press in particular, hates you even when they love you, and that is made clear by the narrative they created for Diana, first as the virginal would-be Queen, and later as the scourge of the monarchy. Even in death there were pundits willing to drag her name and question why anyone would, you know, feel something, about her passing. The movie calls out the media for building up Diana only to knock her down, and the filmmakers are clearly sympathetic to her. She certainly has detractors, interviewees who tell the local news that she sullied the monarchy and her behavior was disrespectful to Charles. But in general, the film highlights her humanitarian efforts and her desire to be a present mother which are undeniable. Public opinion often seemed evenly split about whether she courted attention, or never asked for it and simply wanted to be left alone, but ultimately, the fact is that she was never given a choice, from the moment she was associated with Charles, she was under a microscope, and because of that we have a film that is able to tell a version of her life story without any other supplemental footage and still be an affecting bit of storytelling.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Every time I write about a show or movie having to do with the modern British monarchy, I come back to the fact that The Crown is perfect companion viewing, as all the real-life events that appear in docs like this and are then depicted on that show are meticulously researched and so well acted. (The Princess features many old interviews with a younger Prince Charles, and I have to say, he does an incredible impression of Josh O’Connor.) The film is also reminiscent of Diana: In Her Own Words is another documentary that features this era of royal life from Diana’s perspective.

Our Take: The Princess provides the bones of a story and our collective hindsight and provides the connective tissue that puts that story into context. Watching a bunch of young tourists gawking at a celebrity in Paris isn’t a troubling scene to watch, but the hindsight of knowing that they’re some of the last people who will actually see Princess Diana alive is another thing all together. Being able to put some of the clips that are shown in The Princess into that context is not all that difficult, but in some instances, the clips undersell just how brutal certain moments in Diana’s life were. Charles and Diana’s famous trip to Australia in 1983 where she dazzled the crowds even more than this film lets on, that hint at but don’t completely expose the toll that trip two on their marriage. (The Hulu documentary Charles and Diana: 1983 takes a truly deep dive at some of the more dramatic moments on that trip that set the tone for their eventual bitter separation.)

But what we glean from this film is how thoroughly violating it must have been to not just have your life speculated upon by millions (billions?) of strangers every day, but to not ever be left alone, to not be able to walk down a street or drive a car without fearing for your life. In the clips of her funeral, the camera lingers on Prince William and Harry, then 15 and 12 years old, some camera operator likely praying they capture tears or some other emotion from a member of the traditionally stoic royal family. Maybe as he pulled these clips together, director Ed Perkins lingered for an extra moment on Prince Harry at the funeral in an effort to read his face, to see if we could find some hint of his asking what all of this was for and if it was worth it. I’m sure I’m reading into that, but I couldn’t help but wonder. Harry seems to have taken a lesson from what we bear witness to in the film, the fact that living under such intense scrutiny is no kind of life at all.

Sex and Skin: Almost none, save for a brief snippet of one of the secret phone recordings between Princess Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, in which Charles says he wants to live inside Camilla’s trousers I can’t believe I am typing this oh wait and then he joked that he could be her Tampax ew help help mom and dad are making gross dirty talk and it’s SO BAD.

Parting Shot: The Princess does not try to offer more exposition or context than the footage allows. The film ends with Diana’s funeral, her coffin traveling through London and then the English country, as thousands if not millions of mourners pay their respects. The entire film is presented without commentary, and this final scene allows viewers to read into her life in whatever manner they choose. Whether you want to deify or vilify the woman, or just let her be, that’s up to how you perceive the footage presented here.

Sleeper Star: I’m loathe to call out the paparazzi as the “star” of the film, but watching these reporters and photographers harass a woman, violating her privacy and safety over and over again was a real lesson in how to be a terrible human.

Most Pilot-y Line: As footage of Diana visiting the Taj Mahal is shown, an unknown commentator discusses the way that the monarchy has had its way with Diana, saying, “When you put a modern person in an ancient institution, they will be destroyed. Anyone would be destroyed. But once an institution starts destroying people, it’s time to recognize there’s something fundamentally wrong with that institution and not with the people that it destroys.”

Our Call: STREAM IT! As with so many other documentaries about the royals and Diana in particular, there is a finite amount of footage that exists, and this one certainly features some footage you’ve likely already seen a dozen times: the famous interview with Charles and Diana after their engagement, images of the royal wedding, shots of her fatal car crash. But interwoven between these are home videos, including the moment one group of friends hears her death announced on television, and other lesser-known man-on-the-street style interviews with regular folks discussing their opinions of the royal family. While you definitely know how this story ends, there are many new elements and different perspectives offered, making this a must-see for those who love royal gossip or anyone who likes fresh takes on historical moments.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.