Academy Award winning actor Kevin Costner has been one of the biggest stars in the movie industry for decades.
But one of Costner’s career decisions earned him the unlikeliest of enemies.
And Kevin Costner had a nasty feud with the British Royal Family and now he has revealed the awful reason why.
Kevin Costner was all 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 starred Costner as 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 with a budget of just $25 million.
‘The Bodyguard’s’ massive success made it a natural pick for a sequel, but it never happened.
Costner recently appeared on SiriusXM’s ‘The Howard Stern Show’ where he revealed that a sequel was in fact in the works for a sequel to ‘The Bodyguard.’
And the late Princess Diana was going to join Costner in the sequel in her acting debut as his co-star.
But then, 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 on an acting 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, to try and smooth over the feud 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
At the time, 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 co-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 Bodyguard 2’ was completed just one day before Diana’s tragic death.
Costner said after her death he simply scrapped the idea of making a ‘Bodyguard’ sequel.
And now fans are left with one of the most intriguing “what-ifs” in Hollywood history.
Political Animal News will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.