Kevin Costner was ready to protect Princess Diana in The Bodyguard 2.
Costner, 69, shared plot details for the canceled sequel on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday, June 18, confirming that a script featuring Diana had been written at the time of the royal’s death in August 1997. (The actor both starred in and produced the 1992 original starring Whitney Houston.)
Costner said the sequel would have seen his former Secret Service agent, Frank Farmer, visiting Hong Kong to look after a prized racehorse when he is drawn into Diana’s orbit.
“He’s on a plane, Princess Di’s up front, everyone has to get off the plane,” he explained. “Di goes off the plane first, she goes into Hong Kong, because she’s going to this [horse] race too.”
“Princess Di, I meet her the next day at a party and I’m looking at her like everybody else. And she finally walks over and goes, ‘I know who you are!’ And I said, ‘What the f–k are you talking about?’ She goes, ‘I know you’re here to watch over me.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not actually. I’m watching over a horse,’” Costner continued. “In the story, she had broken with the royal family.”
Costner said he was introduced to Diana by her former sister-in-law, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, in the 1990s after The Bodyguard came out and he pitched her the movie. At the time, Diana was separating from and divorcing her husband, King Charles III.
“I said, ‘I’m going to do Bodyguard 2 and I think I can build this around you. Would you be interested?’” Costner said. “She goes, ‘Yes … My life’s about to change.’ I thought I understood what she’s saying: ‘I’d like to open my life… I think I would like to do this.’”
According to Costner, Diana even pitched a kissing scene between them.
“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,’” Costner explained, though he added that Diana wouldn’t have been his main love interest in the film.
Following Diana’s death, Costner felt the movie was no longer viable. “I could not replace Princess Di,” he said. “Kind of like, if I couldn’t have done Bodyguard with Whitney, I don’t think I was gonna make it with anybody.”
Costner also detailed how he clashed with the royal family when the news “leaked out” a year after Diana’s death that he was working on the movie.
“The royal family kind of turned on me a little bit,” he said. “It was like, ‘No, that’s not true.’ It got actually kind of ugly. I let it go for a while. It just got uglier and uglier,” he said. “I called them up and said, ‘Stop. You need to stop because it is true.’”
In an interview with People published on Tuesday, June 18, Costner said that Prince William once revealed that Diana had a crush on him.
Costner said he “had a very sweet conversation with Prince William,” who said, “‘You know my mom kind of fancied you?’”
