Secret video- and audiotapes delve into Diana’s ‘own story’

NBC’s “Princess Diana: The Secret Tapes” revisits the old territory unveiled in Andrew Morton’s 1992 bestseller about the princess’ unhappy marriage, but with a new twist: Viewers will for the first time hear the tapes, secretly recorded by Diana, that formed the basis for the book.

NBC will include them along with never-seen video footage of Diana, taken by a speech coach she hired, in the two-hour program that airs the next two Thursdays at 10 p.m., preempting “ER.”

Diana made the audiotapes to tell her side of the story of her marriage without appearing to have cooperated with Morton in the writing of “Diana: Her True Story,” and it was only after her death in a 1997 car crash that their existence was revealed.

“Those tapes changed the course of events as her private life came out in the open and the tabloids were unleashed,” said Jason Raff, director and supervising producer of NBC’s program. “It changed her whole relationship with the press.”

NBC got access to the audiotapes “by accident,” Raff said, discovering they were still around while a network executive was exploring doing a different royal family story. NBC, which paid Morton’s publisher, Michael O’Mara Books Ltd., for use of the tapes, is producing the program through NBC Studios and not its news division. Raff, the supervising producer of reality dating show “Average Joe,” and a former NBC News producer, said the program will nonetheless “look like a documentary. It will be accurate and truthful.... It will not be the reality-TV version of a documentary.”

Raff said the program is “Diana telling her own story. It’s really an autobiography. If she had lived a long time, she would have written her memoirs.” On the audiotapes, he said, “you hear her laughing and swearing a little bit.... It’s the human side of her.” The videotapes, which were acquired separately, were made when she hired a speech coach because “she knew she was going to be separated [from Prince Charles] and wanted to get her voice out,” Raff said.

The program also includes interviews with Morton and other friends of Diana. But how the royal family feels about the tapes finally airing is unclear. “I haven’t heard anything back. It’s safe to say they will not be taking part,” Raff said.