Princess Diana's personal hairstylist for the seven years before her death says it is "hard to watch" fictional representations of her on-screen because he sees "all the mistakes" productions make.
Speaking to haircare expert and media personality Jonathan Van Ness on a new episode of the Pretty Curious podcast, celebrity hairstylist Sam McKnight opened up about his years with Princess Diana, describing their first meeting at a Vogue magazine photo shoot in 1990.
"We were booked on a shoot to shoot young royals for British Vogue and she happens to be the last one," he said. "We didn't know it was going to be her... and then this sort of tall, leggy blonde comes bouncing up the stairs and you know what, she had us at 'Hello'. She was just so disarming and charming and funny and stuck her hand out with a big smile, and 'Hi, I'm Diana. What are we gonna do?'"
McKnight described how he pinned the princess' 80s permed hair up to give the impression that it had been cut short, anchored with a tiara, for a now-famous photo captured by fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier.
After the sitting, the stylist said the princess approached him eager for a change.
"At the end of the day, after we'd done the shoot... she said, 'What would you do with my hair if I said 'do anything'?' and I said, 'Do you know what? It's 1990. I would cut it all off and start again.' Get rid of the perm, make it more streamline and that's what we did," McKnight told Van Ness.
"We did that before she went home. We kind of got the kit back out, 'OK, let's do it,' and that was it. And that was seven years I spent with her after that."
Reflecting on his relationship with Diana and how she has been portrayed in drama shows and movies such as 2021's Spencer and Netflix drama The Crown, McKnight compared the characterization as "pantomime."
"It's hard to watch in a way that because it's not her. I just see all the mistakes, you know?" he said.
"To most people, they're not mistakes because they're only going on what their perception is, but because I knew the real person, it just looks like pantomime to me. Although, I have to say I thought the clips I saw of Elizabeth Debicki in the last season of The Crown, I thought she actually was the first one who kind of [caught her].
"The first girl, Emma [Corrin], caught a glimpse of her too, but the wigs weren't so great. But, Elizabeth Debicki, I feel that they kind of got it right, you know. It was as close [as they've got]."
Corrin and Debicki both won Golden Globe Awards for their portrayals of the princess whose death at the age of 36 in 1997 was dramatized in The Crown's final season.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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