It has long been rumored that, following the massive success of 1992’s The Bodyguard starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, that a sequel was in the works starring Costner and, this time, Princess Diana—but that the project came to an abrupt halt following her death in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997.
Now, Costner has not only confirmed that the movie was, in fact, set to happen, but also that, after Diana’s untimely death at just 36 years old, he got into a heated feud with the royal family after her passing, saying, per OK, that “it got kind of ugly.”
He told Howard Stern while on the host’s eponymous show that “When Diana passed, about a year later it had leaked out that I was prepping Bodyguard 2 with her,” Costner said. “And what happened was, the royal family kind of turned on me a little bit. Like, ‘No, that’s not true.’ And it got actually kind of ugly. And I let it go for a while. It just got uglier and uglier.”
Referring to Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York—who then would have been newly divorced from Prince Andrew—Costner told Stern that “Finally I called up Sarah and said, ‘Sarah, you need to tell me who is leading the charge there on this thing.’ She goes, ‘No, no, no, Kev, you don’t want to talk to them.’ I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ I called them up and I said, ‘I’m telling you something, you need to stop, because it is true. And if you don’t stop, I’m gonna start. Because it was.’”
Costner detailed his plans to make The Bodyguard 2 with Diana, who, in the beginning of discussions about the project, was separated from her former husband, the then Prince Charles, at the time. (Charles and Diana separated in 1992 before eventually divorcing in 1996.)
“What had happened was I started talking to her [Diana] through Sarah, and I said, ‘Look, I’m gonna do Bodyguard 2, and I think I can build this around you. Would you be interested?’” Costner said. “And she goes, ‘Yes. My life’s about to change.’ I didn’t really go into depth with it, but I thought I understood what she was saying.” He added of the former Princess of Wales that “She was very sweet, and we talked. The second time we talked, she said ‘Is there going to be a kissing scene?’ I said, ‘Do you want there to be one?’ She said, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Then we’ll do that.’ I wasn’t going to make the full romance about her. But there was going to be a moment that we did. And she was so sweet about this.”
A quick aside: Costner recently revealed a conversation with Diana’s eldest son, Prince William, about his mother, revealing “I happened to be in England, and I got this message that the prince would love to talk, and I said, ‘What?’...and then I went ‘Okay,’” Costner said. “We met in this room, and it was just us. He walked up, and we shook hands. The first line out of his mouth was, ‘You know, my mom kind of fancied you.’”
But, alas, The Bodyguard 2 was not to be—following Diana’s sudden death, Costner scrapped plans for the film altogether.
“I could not replace Princess Di,” he said.
