‘The Princess’ Diana Documentary to Arrive on HBO for 25th Anniversary of Her Death

The Princess, the “definitive Princess Diana documentary” that strictly uses archival footage to tell the beloved late royal’s story, is headed to HBO next month. Directed by Ed Perkins, the film relays her story through old interviews, appearances, and news reports.

The film originally premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in January. As Rolling Stone’s David Fear wrote in his review, the use of archival footage was a “stroke of genius.”

“It was the media, after all, that helped coronate her as the ‘People’s Princess,’ showing the world an actual fallible human being living among royals that seemed to treat human behavior like a luxury or a liability. It was the media that documented how the public loved her, sometimes in the most ironic and extreme ways (see: a news interview with a National Front skinhead giddily waiting to get a Charles& Di tattoo on the day of their wedding).”

“It was the media that constantly cut her down, held her under a microscope, blinded her with a spotlight then bitched about her holding a press conference in which she begged to be left alone,” Rolling Stone’s review reads. “And it was the media who declared the Princess of Wales’ love story to be ‘the stuff that fairy tales are made of’ and then become the ogre at her door. They were her judge, jury and yes, executioner.”

Rather than approaching the film as a documentary that traces her early life, the new project scrutinizes the spectacle that inundated her life once she was famous. And while it might have been “a reflection of society at the time” as the film’s press release states, the documentary also questions if “anything really changed” a quarter of a century after her tragic death.

The Princess will make its HBO debut on Aug. 13 at 8 p.m. ET, marking the 25th anniversary of Diana’s death on Aug. 31. It will also stream on HBO Max the same day.

From Rolling Stone US.