Princess Diana’s marriage to now-King Charles III changed her brother Charles Spencer’s life by giving him an unexpected career.
“Leaving the tragedy of 28 years aside, it was an extraordinary thing for my family,” Spencer, 61, said during a recent appearance on the “Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth” podcast. “I had a career off the back of it, if I’m honest, of 10 years working at NBC as a correspondent.”
Spencer initially had a job “in the record industry” before someone suggested that he give journalism a try. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were getting married in 1986, and the network needed “a commentator for the wedding.” Initially his job was doing “some reports” for NBC — but something changed when he covered the wedding.
“I took a month’s job doing some reports for NBC, the other two networks — ABC and CBS — cut to] commercials because they’d run out of things to say, and I was still wittering on about God knows what when they came out on the balcony to kiss,” Spencer recalled, alluding to NBC being the only network that had the moment on live TV. “The executive producer said, ‘Oh my God. … I’m going to give you a job,’ and that morphed into a 10-year career.”
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Spencer also spoke candidly about his late sister’s marriage to the now-king.
“She just looked so happy,” Spencer said of Diana, noting that he remembers “bits” of her wedding day. After the ceremony Spencer wondered if it would “all go back to normal” now that they were married.
“Nobody knew what she was going to become,” he explained. “I just thought, ‘Well, they got married. That’s nice.’”
Charles and Diana were married from 1981 to 1992. Throughout their marriage, Charles carried on an affair with his now-wife, Queen Camilla.
Years after their divorce was finalized, Diana died suddenly in August 1997 at age 36 after getting into a car accident while in Paris.
During his “Rosebud” podcast appearance, Spencer explained what made him change the eulogy he read at Diana’s September 1997 funeral.
“[I] got off the plane in Heathrow [Airport], called my mother, I said, ‘I can’t think who’s going to give the eulogy. And I’ve got an awful feeling it’s going to have to be me,’” he recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, it is going to be you. Your sisters and I have decided it.’”
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Spencer initially crafted a “very traditional eulogy” about Diana and her life. “Well, this is ridiculous, that’s not who she was,” he decided before changing things up. He wanted to “speak for her” with the speech.
“And I knew I’d been left at that stage — it had no legal standing — but I knew she’d left me as guardian of her sons,” Spencer added, referring to Prince William and Prince Harry who were 15 and 12, respectively, at the time.
“Obviously, the other parent being alive, that meant nothing, but it meant something to me. That sort of duty, I think,” Spencer said, acknowledging that Charles would be taking care of the boys. “And then I wrote [the eulogy] in an hour and a half, and, yeah, that was it, really.”
