Prince William Said No to Another Diana Documentary - Is His Work the Tribute That Matters?
EXCLUSIVE ANALYSIS: The Prince of Wales may mark Diana’s 30th anniversary through his work rather than another documentary.
PRINCE William’s reported decision to step away from documentaries marking 30 years since Princess Diana’s death may be less about looking back and more about how he has chosen to carry her influence forward.
The Prince of Wales has reportedly turned down approaches to participate in television projects ahead of the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death in August 2027. Those close to William have suggested the documentaries he made around the 20th anniversary were deeply personal. According to The Sunday Times, the 2017 film was a point at which he said publicly all he wanted to about his mother.
William and Prince Harry previously appeared together in ITV’s Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, sharing childhood memories and discussing Diana away from the public image that had come to define her. At the time, William described making the programme as cathartic and healing, but also indicated that it was unlikely to be repeated. “We won’t be doing this again,” he said.
Almost a decade later, with the pain of the past seemingly being dragged up by their uncle, that comment carries particular significance. William made it years before the current difficulties in his relationship with Harry and long before discussions began about how Diana’s 30th anniversary might be commemorated.
He already drew a boundary around how often he wanted to discuss such a personal loss publicly. That does not mean Diana has disappeared from William’s public life, and his reported reluctance to participate now therefore does not require a new explanation.
Her influence can be seen particularly clearly in his longstanding work on homelessness. Diana took William and Harry to The Passage when they were children, introducing them to an issue that William would continue to support long into his adult years. He later became patron of the very same charity, The Passage, as well as Centrepoint before launching the Homewards initiative through the Royal Foundation in 2023.
Homewards is a five-year programme working with six locations across the UK with the ambition of demonstrating that homelessness can be made rare, brief and unrepeated. William has spoken about seeing the issue through a different lens because of those early experiences with his mother.
Rather than repeatedly speaking explicitly about the role of his late mother, what she introduced to him as a child has seemingly become the very foundation of the work he undertakes as an adult. For William, this may increasingly be where her influence is most visible.
It also leaves room for Harry to choose a different path of his own. The Duke of Sussex is reportedly exploring ways of commemorating the anniversary, and a documentary is among the possibilities reportedly being discussed, although no such project has ever been formally confirmed.
Harry choosing to speak publicly would not make William’s quieter approach less meaningful, just as William declining another documentary would not diminish Harry’s right to share his own memories. Three decades later, their relationships and their memories need not follow identical paths.
For audiences, another documentary could provide Harry with an opportunity to reflect on Diana from the perspective of a 42-year-old father rather than the 12-year-old boy who lost her. For William, there may simply be no need to revisit conversations he deliberately chose to have in 2017. In that year, William wanted people who never knew his mother to understand her warmth, humour and humanity. He also spoke about ensuring that her legacy continued through the work he and Harry continued to undertake. A decade later, he may feel that the second part of that promise matters more than another appearance in front of a documentary camera.
Earl Spencer’s new memoir has brought private family recollections back into public discussion, all while William and Harry separately declined to even engage with questions about their uncle’s claims during their recent public appearances. William's silence does not tell us what he thinks about those accounts, nor should declining a documentary be interpreted as an attempt to distance himself from Diana or even his brother. His public record points towards something more understated.
The 30th anniversary will inevitably bring renewed attention to Diana's life, death and legacy. But three decades after Diana introduced her young son to the realities of homelessness, he's now trying to turn that early lesson into a long-term project. Perhaps that tells us more about how he has chosen to remember his mother than another documentary ever could.
Whilst Harry may think there's value in adding his voice to another TV project to honour his late mother, William's approach seems to simply carry on with his work instead.
