Kevin Costner has been one of the biggest stars in the movie business for decades.
But one career decision got him the unlikeliest of enemies.
And Kevin Costner revealed this awful reason he had a bitter feud with the British Royal Family.
Kevin Costner was set to star in a movie with Princess Diana
One of the biggest hits of actor Kevin Costner’s legendary career was the 1992 romantic thriller The Bodyguard.
The movie saw Costner play a former Secret Service agent turned bodyguard for the character played by the late pop icon Whitney Houston.
It became the second highest grossing movie of 1992 earning $411 million against a budget of $25 million.
The Bodyguard’s massive success made it a natural pick for a sequel.
Costner appeared on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show where revealed that a sequel was in the works for The Bodyguard.
The late Princess Diana was going to join him in her acting debut as his co-star in the sequel.
But her shocking death after a car crash in August 1997 caused the proposed sequel to be scrapped.
“When Diana passed, about a year later it had leaked out that I was prepping Bodyguard 2 with her,” Costner recalled. “And what happened was, the Royal Family kind of turned on me a little bit.”
The British Royal Family refused to believe that Diana would take a part in a movie.
“Like, ‘No, that’s not true.’ And it got actually kind of ugly,” Costner continued. “And I let it go for a while. It just got uglier and uglier.”
Costner said that he reached out to Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, about smoothing over the situation with the Royal Family.
“Finally I called up Sarah, and said, ‘Sarah, you need to tell me who is leading the charge there on this thing. She goes, ‘No, no, no, Kev, you don’t want to talk to them.’ I said, ‘Yes I do.’ I called them up and I said, ‘I’m telling you something, you need to stop because it is true. And if you don’t stop, I’m gonna start. Because it was,’” Costner said.
Princess Diana almost became a movie star
Princess Diana was divorced from then-Prince Charles (now King Charles) and had a tense relationship with the British Royal Family.
Costner revealed that he connected with the Princess through Sarah Ferguson to pitch the idea of her starring in the movie.
“What had happened was, I started talking to her through Sarah, and I said, ‘Look, I’m gonna do Bodyguard 2 and I think I can build this around you. Would you be interested?’” Costner recalled. “And she goes, ‘Yes. My life’s about to change.’ I didn’t really go into depth with it, but I thought I understood what she was saying.”
“She was very sweet and we talked. 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.’ I wasn’t going to make the full romance about her. But there was going to be a moment that we did. And she was so sweet about this,’ Costner continued.
The script for the movie was complete one day before Diana’s tragic death.
Costner said that after that he gave up on making a sequel and created one of the great what-ifs in Hollywood history.
Read All About It will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
