Home video of Princess Diana laughing with her children is adorable: 'Harry, shush!'

31 August 2023, 08:16 | Updated: 31 August 2023, 08:17

Princess Diana's home movies. Picture: NBC/Diana The Secret Tapes

By Giorgina Ramazzotti

The Princess of Wales can be seen joking with the interviewer in her Kensington Palace apartment as her children play behind the camera.

Season 5 of The Crown spent much time exploring Princess Diana's life behind the closed doors of her Kensington Palace home.

The Netflix series gave an imagined version of relationship Diana had with her children, the breakdown of her marriage to the then Prince of Wales and the subsequent BBC Panorama interview she filmed in her royal apartment.

Yet footage of the Princess of Wales on camera in her Kensington Palace home in c.1991, shows just how similar the fictionalised version of Diana's home life looked to the real thing.

Diana's home films. Picture: NBC/Diana The Secret Tapes

In a YouTube short, Princess Diana can be seen relaxed and jovial as she sits on a sofa whilst being interviewed by someone she presumably knows well.

The video starts with Diana rolling her eyes and sighing as she looks off camera to her children who have come into the room, presumably to bother their mother while she works.

In a moment every parents will empathise with, the Princess says sternly: "If you come in here, you sit down and be quiet,"

The clip then switches back to the interviewer saying to the Princess in a serious voice: "You're currently concentrating very much on..."

Before the Princess cuts him off, laughing: "I've got nothing else to do!" and collapses into giggles.

"Harry Shush 🤫"

One of her boys can be heard saying "take two", as the Princess continues to laugh.

In the next take, Diana stops speaking and says "Harry shush!" before turning back. to camera and saying "I can't even string my words together."

Older brother William can then be heard repeating "Harry shush" before Diana turns back to scold her youngest: "Harry, sit down, just sit!"

The footage captures the Princess's easy manner and lack of airs and graces that endeared her to so many.

Elton John, who was firm friends with Diana from when they met in 1981 up until her death in 1997, praised her down to earth nature in his 2019 autobiography, Me.

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“[She] was blessed with an incredible social ease, an ability to make people feel totally comfortable in her company," he wrote, adding: “If I was bowled over by Diana, it was nothing compared with the impact she could have on straight men.

“They seemed completely to lose their minds in her presence: they were just utterly bewitched.”

The footage comes after the fifth season of The Crown – exploring the marriage of Diana and Charles and their subsequent divorce – became one of the most popular streamed shows of 2022.

November saw The Crown become the No.1 most watched Netflix show in 37 countries, including the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and France, with a total of 84.3 million hours viewed one week alone.