Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip

by Jeannette Walls

  “Dodi knows all the right buttons to press” another “friend” said, “and he presses them all night long!” read one tabloid.

  “A Guy for Di” the cover of People magazine blasted.

  “It’s destiny,” Al Fayed was quoted as saying.

  “We welcome Diana into the family,” Dodi’s uncle, Adnan Khashoggi, gleefully announced.

  The stories about Dodi’s sexual prowess elicited scorn from some of his former girlfriends. “We never had sex with the lights on. There was virtually no foreplay,” said Texas model Denise Lewis said. “And I can’t recall one session that lasted longer than twenty minutes.” Another former girlfriend, Traci Lind, claimed that Dodi was abusive and volatile, that he hit her, tried to choke her, and had threatened her with a gun. The romance also came as a real shock to Kelly Fisher, who claimed she had slept with Dodi just hours before his tryst with Diana. Dodi had, ironically, bought an engagement ring for Fisher that was almost identical to the one Charles gave Diana when they were betrothed. Fisher hit Dodi with a $2 million lawsuit.

  Nevertheless, the unlikely love birds were the talk of Great Britain—and much of the rest of the world. It was Diana’s first public romance since her divorce from Charles. Dodi Fayed, according to the gossip circuit, was going to set Diana up in Hollywood. He was going to make her a movie star. There was talk that he would finance Bodyguard II with Kevin Costner. A script was written with Diana playing the beautiful but lonely princess. There were nude scenes. Diana had several conversations with Kevin Costner about the movie, he said. “Diana had a crush on Kevin Costner,” says a source. “It was a harmless infatuation like she was always getting over celebrities…. She talked endlessly about the time she danced with John Travolta.”*

  Stories circulated that Diana was planning to marry Dodi; that he was buying Julie Andrews’s former mansion for $7.3 million so they would have a Hollywood home together; that she was ten weeks pregnant with his child. The stories were so pervasive that several of Diana’s friends called her to caution her against doing anything too hasty. Diana assured them that no wedding was in the works. She also was not ten weeks pregnant with Dodi’s child—despite rumors and even a fake medical test that was later leaked to the media.†—”Don’t worry,” she assured one friend, “I’m having a wonderful time, but the last thing I need is a new marriage. I need it like a bad rash on my face.” She told another pal: “I haven’t taken such a long time to get out of one poor marriage to get into another.”

  By late August, some say that Diana was starting to have a few doubts about her new suitor. It wasn’t just on account of Dodi’s caddish behavior; reports circulated that Dodi liked to secretly videotape himself having sex with his girlfriends and there were rumors that he planned to tape Diana. The Princess told friends she resented the way the Fayeds were so obviously trying to buy her affection with expensive trips and gifts. “I don’t want to be bought,” she complained to her friend Rosa Monckton, and giggled about the Fayeds’ vulgar furnishings and ostentatious taste, such as the private jet decorated with pharaoh heads and plush pink upholstery.

  Diana was, however, still eager for the romance to get into the papers. At 6:30 on the evening of August 30, Diana briefed reporter Richard Kay on her plans. Maybe she would marry Dodi, she told Kay, and maybe not. She might, she said, withdraw from public life altogether—as long as she could still remain an international humanitarian.

  That night, the paparazzi followed Dodi and Diana to the Ritz in Paris. Dodi wanted to drive to his father’s Paris villa. He had another expensive gift he wanted to give Diana.* The Princess, according to some reports, didn’t want to go. It was late and she was tired. She didn’t feel like being photographed or having to outrun the paparazzi. Diana suggested they get a room at his father’s hotel. They argued. Dodi was overheard assuring Diana it would be all right. Dodi Fayed was smitten; he had found the woman who got him on the cover of People magazine.

  It was the sort of international tragedy that news people live for. Networks all over the world canceled all regular programming and covered Diana’s death around the clock. It wasn’t just the biggest story of the day, it was the only story. Andrew Morton called it “one of the most awful tragedies of the late twentieth century—if not the greatest.” The public was deeply grief-stricken by the death of a woman they had never met but felt they knew. Through the constant coverage of Diana’s soap opera-like life, the Princess had become part of the public consciousness. Diana was, perhaps, history’s most profound example of the artificial intimacy that results from celebrity. “She was a friend,” sobbed one mourner. “She was a big part of my life. I can’t imagine going on without her.”

  Diana’s funeral was the most watched event in the history of television: an estimated 2.5 billion tuned in. It was broadcast live on every continent except Antarctica. In the United States, competition among the media got fierce. A battle broke out between ABC and NBC over the rights to the BBC feed. Then, CNN president Rick Kaplan, a friend of President Clinton, called the White House the day before Diana’s funeral to get help in getting BBC footage of the funeral—eliciting outrage from ABC.

  Although it was a tabloid story, no news outlet was above covering it. Diana’s death was a moment of the complete melding of elite news and tabloid news. Perhaps that’s why CBS blew it. The so-called Tiffany Network, which had also botched the story of Elvis’s death, initially didn’t want to commit resources to the death of Princess Diana. Reports of the car crash reached CBS headquarters around 8:20. CBS staff called Lane Venardos, the vice president for hard news and special events, who was making decisions that Labor Day weekend. Venardos, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the network, was not a big fan of celebrity news. He urged his staff to hold back on the story. This didn’t seem like such a big deal, he said; early reports indicated that while Dodi Fayed and the driver were killed, the Princess had apparently survived. Venardos told his staff to wait until all the facts were in, so, while the other networks were marshaling their forces, CBS waited. Even after CBS got official news of Diana’s death, it didn’t act. Venardos was trying to reach CBS News President Andrew Heyward at his Westchester country club, but, Heyward later explained, he was in a “black hole” where his beeper couldn’t be activated. Some in the newsroom say he admitted that he had turned off the beeper. The CBS staff didn’t reach Heyward until after midnight. The other networks and most cable stations had long since switched over to full coverage of Diana’s death; CBS’s bewildered and outraged affiliates were being fed footage of pro wrestling. At 1:15 A.M., CBS finally decided to give affiliate stations a feed from Britain’s Sky TV.

  It was a debacle that went beyond embarrassing; press critics blasted the network for “the stench of incompetence” and “stunning ineptitude.” Heyward later sent angry affiliates a letter of apology and assurances that nothing like that would ever happen again. Venardos was demoted, and Heyward turned to Don Hewitt to help CBS News save face.

  “It’s irresistible,” Hewitt said. “A high-speed crash kills the mother of the future King of England. She was beautiful, glamorous, running around with an Egyptian playboy whose father owns Harrod’s. You couldn’t make this up!” Hewitt, the consummate showman, put together a special segment of 60 Minutes devoted entirely to Diana. A great story, Hewitt once said, needs a bad guy—and in this case, the tabloid press was the bad guy. The program took the media to task for pursuing stories about Diana’s private life—never mentioning Diana’s role in leaking those stories. Mike Wallace interviewed Katharine Graham, who cautioned viewers about the difference between paparazzi and the “legitimate” press. Dan Rather, choking back tears, said the princess was “a victim of the uncontrolled cult of fame and celebrity gone mad.” Then 60 Minutes added its own celebrity touch: Elizabeth Taylor, the world’s second biggest tabloid fixture after Princess Diana, was interviewed by Eleanor Mondale. “I know what it’s like to be chased by paparazzi, and it’s one of the most frightening, claustrophob
ic-making feelings in the world,” Taylor said. She didn’t mention that she was a longtime friend of Dodi’s uncle, Adnan Khashoggi, brother-in-law of Mohammed Al Fayed. It didn’t matter how drugged or drunk the chauffeur was, Taylor said, Diana was killed by the tabloids. “They’re responsible,” a tearful Taylor declared. “The world’s Princess was killed by the greed of the paparazzi.”

  The Diana special edition of 60 Minutes was applauded by critics. “It did more in that sixty minutes to help the reputation of CBS News,” wrote one reviewer, “than did the previous twenty hours.” Hewitt’s showmanship had once again redeemed CBS.

  For days, television, magazines, and newspapers relentlessly covered Diana’s death—often lamenting the media’s relentless coverage of celebrities. Even tabloid editors joined in on the tabloid bashing. Steve Coz, the Harvard-educated editor of the National Enquirer, went on TV to blast media excesses. Coz, continuing his bid to reposition the Enquirer as celebrity friendly, said that he had been offered exclusive U.S. rights to the pictures of blood-soaked photographs of Diana. He had turned them down, he boasted, and he piously urged other tabloids to do the same. When it was pointed out that the National Enquirer that week had paparazzi shots of Dodi and Diana with the headline “Di Goes Sex Mad!” Coz, mumbled something about “unfortunate timing.”

  Reporters and editors tried to come forward to say that they had good relationships with Diana. New Yorker editor Tina Brown, who while at Vanity Fair wrote one of the snidest stories in print about the Princess, devoted much of that issue of the New Yorker to Diana. She also wrote about the off-the-record lunch she had with the Princess and Vogue editor Anna Wintour. It turns out that Diana had begun cultivating the United States media in much the same way that she had been courting the British press: the Princess had befriended Barbara Walters, Katharine Graham, and Oprah Winfrey, among others. “I never thought I would say this publicly,” Walters said on ABC. “I never have until tonight, but I considered her a friend. She was warm, huggable, and I grieve.” Graham wrote an essay for Newsweek entitled “A Friend’s Last Goodbye.”

  Magazines and newspapers that reported on celebrities were scrambling for the high road. People magazine, which at the time of Diana’s death had put her on the cover more than any other person—a record forty-three times*—ran an editor’s letter about how much Diana liked People magazine, including the articles about herself. “Unlike much of the tabloid press, we do not pay story subjects or sources,” People editor Wallace wrote.* “We work hard to avoid buying pictures taken by so called stalkarazzi photographers who menace their subjects, trespass or operate under false pretenses.” People abruptly canceled plans to excerpt Kitty Kelley’s The Royals, for which it had reportedly paid $25,000. Among the book’s revelations were that Diana wasn’t a virgin when she married Charles and that she had bad breath and an insatiable sexual appetite. “I happen to think it’s a legitimate piece of journalism and history, and that we should not back away from it,” said her publisher, Warner Books head Larry Kirshbaum. “I think People is gutless. I find it shocking that so many journalists have gotten squeamish about telling the truth.” At the New York Daily News, the book editor broke down in tears and begged her boss not to excerpt The Royals. “People will hate us,” the editor sobbed. She won the argument.

  Diana’s death unleased a torrent of celebrity hatred toward the press. One of the first stars to blast the press was, unsurprisingly, Tom Cruise. “What’s this world coming to?” Cruise complained to CNN a few hours after the crash. “It is so disgusting…. We need laws concerning what is harassment when these people put price tags on people’s heads.”

  Cruise was quickly joined by his close friend, George Clooney, who had also been leading a campaign against the media. Like Tom Cruise and Dodi Fayed, Clooney was represented by PMK. On the news of Diana’s death, Clooney held a press conference to blast the paparazzi, and mocked Coz’s promise not to buy the crash photos. “Pictures of a dying Princess trapped in her car—I’m impressed,” Clooney said. “What ethics!”

  Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was run off the road by paparazzi while driving with his wife, joined the chorus: “Many of us in public life have had the chilling experience of being chased and hunted down like animals simply for a photograph.”

  Michael Jackson, who had repeatedly leaked stories about himself to publications like the National Enquirer, joined in on the press bashing. “I’m not Jacko! I’m Jackson!” he fumed to Barbara Walters for a 20/20 segment. “Wacko Jacko! … Where did that come from? Some English tabloid! I have a heart and I have feelings.”

  Carol Burnett—who waged one of the longest and most expensive battles against the tabloids—rejoiced when she saw that some supermarkets in Los Angeles had removed the tabloids from the racks and customers who wanted to buy them had to ask.

  Fran Drescher angrily called on the American public to boycott the tabloids. The Nanny star had apparently forgotten that in her autobiography, she made fun of Diana when the Princess “started to get bitchy, and I thought to myself, ‘Nobody likes a bitchy princess, Princess.’

  Almost anyone who had come under media scrutiny joined in on the tirade against the press. O. J. Simpson compared his plight to Diana’s. “I, like Princess Diana, have been hounded by the press,” he said. “It has gone too far.” JonBenet Ramsey’s mother, Patsy, called Larry King Live to urge a boycott of the tabloids. “We are normal, everyday Americans and [the tabloids] have ruined our lives,” Ramsey complained. “I would ask in the memory of my daughter for everyone worldwide to boycott these publications.”

  The world’s biggest publicity hounds were blasting the media. Donald Trump refused to give the Daily News the name of his date one evening. “He wants to keep his private life private,” said a spokesman. “He said it is not fair to expose this girl to the mean world of the paparazzi.” Trump also said that one of the few regrets in his life was that he never dated Diana.

  Ivana Trump, not to be upstaged by her husband, said that she learned of Diana’s death while appearing on the Home Shopping Network in Canada. She was so overcome with grief, she had to leave the air. “I wept for a true friend,” she said. “When her marriage to Charles was near its end, Diana turned to me for advice…. Both of us also knew the bitterness of betrayal by the one we trusted the most. Sometimes we’d laugh about the bad choices our husbands had made. Other times, we’d just exchange knowing glances.”

  “People have the same fixation with her that they do with me,” Madonna told the London Times. They had met and talked once for ten minutes. Madonna told the Princess that she was “about the only person who seemed to get more attention than me.” Demi Moore called Madonna to compare notes. Madonna called George Clooney and discussed organizing a tabloid boycott.

  Any suggestion that Diana courted the press was met with disgust and outrage. “They say she wanted it,” said Mad About You star Paul Reiser. “That’s how they talk about rape victims!”

  Even after the photographers were exonerated, they were not forgiven. It was the nature of their work that disgusted people; they were like parasites or vultures, as Sylvester Stallone said, like “birds that sit on tombstones.” After it was revealed that the driver had almost four times the legal limit of alcohol in his system, the anger still focused on the photographers. “One could almost hear the audible, smug sighs of relief at the news that the driver from the Ritz was legally drunk,” wrote Liz Smith, “not that this group of tabloid assassins was prepared to accept any criticism even if the driver had been cold sober.” No celebrity crusades were organized against drunk driving. “I think that as far as the issue of this guy who was driving the car being drunk is a kind of bizarre joke on everyone,” said Alec Baldwin, who had recently been found not guilty after punching out a photographer who tried to take pictures of his newborn child. “I certainly hope that this guy’s intoxication doesn’t wind up letting these [paparazzi] off the hook.”

  After Dodi’s death, Mohammad Al Fayed kep
t PMK on retainer, and some reporters who tried to write stories not favorable to the Al Fayeds were told they risked losing access to the impressive roster of celebrities represented by PMK—including Tom Cruise and George Clooney. “We were working on a story about the real Dodi Fayed,” said a producer. “We got a threatening call from PMK and decided that the tradeoff wasn’t worth it. We dropped the story.”

  A “Cult of Diana” quickly emerged. “Bigger than Jackie!” the London papers declared. “Bigger than JFK.” “Bigger than Grace Kelly.” Diana’s burial site, predicted one headline, “will become the new Graceland.” Diana’s brother Lord Spencer cashed in on the cult by charging people to visit the “New Graceland.” Charles Spencer—who had been at war with the tabloids since they revealed his marital infidelities, but who had also worked as a royal commentator for Today and had sold pictures of his newborn son to a British tabloid—asked that tabloid editors be banned from the funeral. Although some editors had already accepted invitations, they agreed not to attend.

  One tabloid reporter who could not bear to stay away, however, was James Whitaker. Shortly after the crash, Whitaker told a television reporter that sometimes the Princess would “use” photographers to advance her causes. The public was so outraged by Whitaker’s comments that his editors forced him to apologize. “I regret now that I said anything that caused offense to anybody listening to what I thought was a balanced appraisal of Diana and her complicated life with photographers,” a repentant Whitaker wrote. Whitaker was as grief stricken as most Brits. He was haunted by a conversation he had had with Diana not long before her death. “Would you come to my funeral if I were to die?” the Princess asked. Shocked, Whitaker assured Diana that she would outlast him. To the reporter’s horror, Diana persisted with the morbid conversation.

  “Why would you want to come to my funeral?” she asked.