You cannot talk about princess Diana without mentioning the Martin Bashir interview for
the BBC and Panorama in 1995.
Recently, it has sparked renewed controversy because of the circumstances around how did
they get Lady Di to do it.
- A husband that loved someone else.
- Yes.
Would indicate that I was, again, unstable, sick and should be put in a home of some sort
in order to get better.
- What effect did it have on you?
- Pretty devastating
- They see me as a threat of some kind
- Where you unfaithful?
They falsified bank statements, Involved her brother and it was almost like twisting her
arm, metaphorically.
And even if I don't condone the means of making that interview happen, maybe you'll agree
that it was an unique opportunity for Diana to just express what she really went through
over all those years.
And yes, there were already tell-alls in the form of books that were much more extensive
and detailed than anything that could be said in less than an hour.
But everyone needed to hear that, directly from her.
In her own words, with her body language and her own voice.
That's what made this interview such an event.
No doubts about it, the most relevant topic that everyone wanted to know was how she felt
about Charle's relationship with Camilla.
But I think it was much more critical being able to be open about her depression, bulimia
and self-harm.
The BBC, who owns the right to the interview has blocked every full version of this interview,
but there are enough clips scattered around that are more than enough to do a full body
language analysis, and for those gaps that lack video evidence, we also have the full
transcript.
What I'm going to do is make this first analysis about the interview's most relevant highlights
about how her marriage went crashing down.
If you'd like to have a second part with the rather obscure references and implications
with the British Monarchy, then just like this video.
This is my promise: if this video gets to ten thousand likes, I'll make part two.
Welcome back, my Body Language Buddies! my name is Jesús Enrique Rosas, I'm the Body
Language Guy, and it would be great if you join us... by just subscribing and hitting
that bell.
Let's get down to it!
- Do you think Mrs Parker-Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage?
- Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
It's amazing how much range of emotions we can spot in just ten seconds.
First, we know that by this point Diana had absolutely no emotions tied to that romantic
triangle because she had no reaction upon hearing Camilla's name in one of the most
pressing questions of the interview.
She tries to shrug it off, like saying that she doesn't have anything to do with that,
by raising her eyebrows when saying "a bit crowded".
She's trying to joke about it.
Then there's THIS expression.
Most of the time I trust my gut, and in this case my first impression is that it was contempt.
But staring a bit longer I notice a mix between sadness and mocking.
I would be glad to read your own impression in the comments.
But there's overall sadness here because the whole interview is trying to unveil all those
harsh moments of her life as a princess, so that' something that we should take into account.
When you're trying to decipher facial expressions it's important to be aware if there's an emotion
that is common to the whole video or conversation.
Right after that, she lowers her gaze, as in being ashamed of having to talk about that
topic.
You can overcome a relationship failure but it's normal that you're not going to like
being so public about it anyway.
In other parts of the interview, when Bashir mentions the biography by Jonathan Dimbleby,
her reaction to this topic is similar.
Watch the next clip both listening and spotting the body language clues.
In this case the listening is very important.
You're about to understand why:
- He says that your husband renewed his relationship with Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Were you aware of that?
- Yes I was, but I wasn't in a position to do anything about it.
I suggested that you pay real attention to Diana speaking, because it's her normal poise.
No highs or lows in her voice tone, no stuttering no cracking... there are no emotional markers
that we could perceive listening.
We know that there's distress only by the way she presses her lips a couple times and
swallows hard.
This is an often overlooked body language tip that you could count as a "secret" if
you'd like to call it that way.
And it's to always try to isolate what you hear from what you see.
Imagine that you're perceiving two people at the same time, that you are trying to divide
both channels of perception.
And this is something that you have to do consciously.
You have to consciously think that you're perceiving gestures and sound SEPARATELY,
because the brain usually takes shortcuts, and if one stimulus, for example her voice,
is more notorious than the other, then your mind could trick you into 'hiding' her facial
expressions.
It's just like magicians that use misdirection to conceal the secret of their tricks.
They take advantage of that quirk in our brains.
You can practice overcoming those mind shortcuts by just rewinding a video and trying again.
With practice, you will be able to do it in a real time conversation.
Let's try it again with the following clip:
- What evidence did you have that their relationship was continuing even though you were married?
- Oh, a woman's instinct is a very good one.
You can have a sense of that friction between Diana wanting to speak, to open up and at
the same time having that sense of self censorship, that duty, so to speak, of not disclosing
her emotions.
At some points it was just the constant pushing of Bashir that she decided to give more details.
Notice how Diana relaxes a bit in the next clip.
- Is that all?
- Well, I had, obviously I had knowledge of it.
- From staff?
- Well, from people who minded and cared about our marriage, yes.
When we watch these clips one by one, It's a bit easier for us to spot these changes
in attitude.
That way you can practice so you can apply it on a real conversation.
The idea is being able to tell when people get tense or relaxed with certain topic so
you know how you can proceed.
In this case Diana was beginning to relax a bit maybe because the most direct questions
about the most uncomfortable topic had finished.
Bashir switched to asking about the people around them, around Diana and Charles.
- What effect did that have on you?
- Pretty devastating.
Rampant bulimia, if you can have rampant bulimia, and just a feeling of being no good at anything
and being useless and hopeless and failed in every direction.
Besides the face touching, there are few emotional markers here, and what's relevant is that
she is answering "pretty devastating", a very raw statement together with "rampant bulimia",
that is not an easy thing to say.
In many cases, talking about these topics, and being so calm, even detached emotionally
could make you jump to conclusions and say, this person is lying.
And no matter who you analyze, there will always be the possibility that the person
is, at the very least, stretching the truth.
In Diana's case, I don't think she is lying.
It seems to me that instead, she feels that she will not gain anything from playing the
victim, so she just tells how she dealed with all this.
That being said, even if her body language doesn't give much clues in THIS last clip,
notice how she emphasizes her emotional state four times:
"A feeling of being no good at ANYTHING, and being useless, and hopeless, and failed in
every direction"
Those are FOUR very strong statements.
This is why it's so important to actually listen to what people are saying.
Most of her answers are short and to the point.
These four statements emphasize how she was crippled by Charles' cheating.
And this is how you can spot how important is certain topic to a person.
Yes, there are other moments of the interview when Diana was clear about everything she
could to save her marriage, like when she said:
"I come from a divorced background, and I didn't want to go into that one again."
So that's why she felt "no good at anything, and useless, and hopeless".
That's how important her marriage was to her.
- And with a husband who was having a relationship with somebody else?
- With a husband who loved someone else, yes.
But it was hard not just for the fact that she knew that Charles was cheating on her.
But also his department, his staff, was progressively gaslighting her:
- It was already difficult, but it became increasingly difficult.
- In the practical sense, how did it become difficult?
- Well, people were - when I say people I mean friends, on my husband's side - were
indicating that I was again unstable, sick, and should be put in a home of some sort in
order to get better.
I was almost an embarrassment.
I already pointed out in another analysis of Diana and Charles, how it was so easy for
her to just steal the spotlight.
And maybe steal is not the right word, because she did not understand how she did it.
At the start of this interview you see that she refers to herself at that time, in the
first years, like this:
"as far as I was concerned I was a fat, chubby, 20-year-old, 21-year-old, and I couldn't understand
the level of interest."
And to put it in perspective, In 1983, Diana undertook her first overseas tour, and her
first-ever trip abroad, at just 22 years of age.
Together with Charles and a baby Prince William spent more than 40 days in Australia and New
Zealand, seeing the sights and meeting with dignitaries and locals alike.
She proceeds to tell Bashir, that for forty days, Diana heard the same sentence, over
and over again:
"Oh, she is on the other side".
Bashir went like, What?
what do you mean by being on the other side?
She meant that when she was with Charles and they were together, greeting the public, maybe
walking along a street or a road, there were people on each side of them, so Charles greeted
one side and she greeted the other side.
And she couldn't help but listen people on Charles' side, like this girl here, being
really disappointed and vocal that they had to greet him and not her.
That she was on the other side and away from them.
And in retrospective she understands that it was a shock for a man that was so used
to be in the spotlight, to be in the news, to have all cameras and headlines, and smiles
on him, suddenly play second fiddle to his 22 year old wife.
And we can only imagine the impact of listening the same complain from people, over and over
again, in mornings, afternoons and evenings, for forty days straight.
We already know that Charles is a tremendously insecure man and this was devastating for
his ego.
He had never needed to handle anything like this, so he reacted in the most childish way
possible that was feeling jealous of her and starting to resent her.
If you wonder what could have been the 'healthy' way of reacting to this situation, it would
have been to recognize that your wife has the uncanny ability to mesmerize the public,
and find the way that you can make it useful for your service as Royal.
Charles' reaction is an indication that he is a narcissist, because he couldn't handle
well, or couldn't handle at all, that rejection.
Diana said that she didn't have any training to deal with those public outings, and at
the same time it would have been baffling for the British Monarchy the way her popularity
literally exploded virtually overnight.
Wether it was the virginal tale come to life, her poise, her beauty, it was a spark.
But then became a raging fire the moment that she began to care and listen to people rejected
from society, for example, people with AIDS.
Something never seen, anything like that, in the Monarchy.
That's why sometimes people wonder, Ok, we know that many years before meeting Diana
there was all this chemistry between Charles and Camilla.
And they could not marry because... reasons.
But the fact that he rejected Diana so viscerally was a matter of bitter jealousy.
That's why when all this scandal of their separation exploded, he did all in his power
to neutralize her, including isolation:
- Well, there's no better way to dismantle a personality than to isolate it.
- So you were isolated?
- Uh,uh, very much so.
Of course, there's also the fact that Diana had her own way of dealing with all this,
including her relationship with James Hewitt:
- Did your relationship go beyond a close friendship?
- Yes it did, yes.
- Were you unfaithful?
- Yes, I adored him.
Yes, I was in love with him.
But I was very let down.
That's more subtle pain in her expression, but pain nonetheless.
James Hewitt was someone that she thought that she could trust, that even had a relationship
with him, and he used that trust to publish a book to monetize that relationship.
It's a matter of putting in perspective the way Diana felt so lonely, for so many years
and betrayed so many times in so many different ways... and most people snap under these circumstances.
And it's no wonder she suffered from depression.
- I never had had a depression in my life.
But then when I analysed it I could see that the changes I'd made in the last year had
all caught up with me, and my body had said: `We want a rest.'
Most of the time, you can tell that a loved one is hiding concerns about their own mental
health by just changes in their behavior.
To start developing your abilites in detecting these nonverbal clues, I suggest you download
my 100+ Body Language tips right in the description of this video.
And her depression was weaponized by the royal family:
- ...a wonderful new label - Diana's unstable and Diana's mentally unbalanced.
And unfortunately that seems to have stuck on and off over the years.
I noticed something really funny in here.
Well, funny in the sense of interesting and odd at the same time.
That when Diana says the word "unstable", she has this really defiant stare, like she's
almost proud of that.
I don't mean that she was proud of the label itself, of being seen unstable or have an
unhealthy attitude.
I think that she saw this family, and you'll remember that she called them "f***ing family"
once, in one leaked phone call, she saw them like blocksheads.
Like these people are absolutely detached from what the world is suffering out there.
And they are calling me unstable?
- Are you talking to me
Obviously, the first couple hundred times she was called that, she must have felt hurt.
But as years went by, and she began to heal by her work with real people, she must have
realized... there is nothing wrong with me, at all; it is you, the Royal Family, who are
wrong.
That's why she feels almost proud of being called 'unstable' on those circles.
The problem is that she did not have any kind of support to endure this process.
There was noone that she could trust.
And that's when the Bulimia really kicked in.
So, let me know if you want part 2 of this analysis where I would cover:
- How she overcame her depression - How she thought about the possibility of
being Queen, and - The differences when talking about William
vs. Harry.
All you have to do is like this video, and if it gets to ten thousand likes, I'll make
that second part.
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Take care, my Body Language Buddies!