In November 1995, Stewart Pearce, a voice coach who had already worked with Margaret Thatcher and the Royal Shakespeare Company, arrived at the restaurant San Lorenzo in London for a meal with a friend, Mara Berni, and a mystery guest who was in need of some help. When he reached the Knightbridge eatery’s private room, he was shocked to find Princess Diana at the table.
“I walked in and I said ‘I don’t believe it, I’ve been set up!’” Pearce recalled in a recent video interview. “And Diana stood up, grabbed hold of my arm, and said, ‘You will work with me won’t you?’” According to Pearce, she had watched her now-infamous interview with the BBC’s Martin Bashir and was concerned that she seemed a bit meek and detached on camera.
For nearly two years, Pearce worked with Diana in confidential one-on-one sessions, where they worked on improving her confidence as a public speaker in what he calls a “holistic” manner. “For strong women in the world, I help them see ways of being able to literally embody what their message is, what their statement is,” he said. “It’s the entire maquillage, you know, dealing with image consultancy and suggesting certain colors to wear, clothes to wear.” In his work with Diana, this also meant coming to understand her struggles with her mental health, serving as a confidant, and, of course, having fun when she came to his apartment for their sessions.
Earlier this month, Pearce released a book, Diana: The Voice of Change, reflecting on the nuts-and-bolts of the sessions with his famous client, including the exercises he used to help her find a more powerful voice, and her legacy as an inspiration to women around the world.
In honor of Diana’s 60th birthday, he spoke to Vanity Fair about what it was like to spend time with the princess and her legacy in the decades since her death, and the impact she had on Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their decision to move to California. “Diana gave permission for the formal behavior that stultifies love to be reinvented,” he said. “For emotional aloofness to be made transparent, for starch stuffiness to be given a human face, for feeling expression to be given its rightful place, and for dismissive criticism to be turned into discerning care.”
Vanity Fair: What was your first impression of Diana when you met? How did you decide you wanted to work with her?
Stewart Pearce: She was right in my face, this beautiful, beautiful being, these extraordinary eyes. I mean, she was extraordinary and I said, “Well I’m a bit on the spot, but I feel that the way that I can serve you best is if our relationship is completely confidential.” She was still surrounded by a circus, and she was just getting out of it. She had just done the Martin Bashir interview, and when she saw herself on screen and didn’t really like what she saw, she knew she could do better. That was the premise, but because I work very holistically, we got stuck to one another for two years.
Where did your sessions take place? What was it like to spend time with her?
She always came to me, I never went to her. She always came to my studio in an area called Chelsea, which she loved because it meant she got away from all of that [formality of Kensington Palace]. She would come for a session, and say, “Do you have any washing up I can do?” She just wanted to get grounded. Because, obviously, she would drink a cup of tea and then suddenly, it would be taken away by somebody else, a servant. She would say, “Can iron your shirt? Because I love your shirts.” And I said, “Look darling, I’ll leave crockery for you to wash up, but I don’t think I can have you ironing my shirts! Please!”
She was so wonderful like that, you see, very grounded, very earthy, very ordinary, and hoots of fun. Sometimes we would actually laugh and laugh until we forgot what we were laughing about, on and on. She was just wonderfully playful.
You were initially helping Diana with her voice, but it seems like you came to support her on a deeper level?
Our voices are at the very core of our being. I mean that literally. Sound is at the core of creation, and so if we feeling uneasy about our voices, we’re fundamentally feeling uneasy about ourselves. So the only way that I can actually open up someone’s voice, if they’re willing to go there, is to go deep into well what is dispossessing you, what is disempowering you, what is disharmonizing you. Diana was just so immensely transparent and she was so honest that she would go there immediately. For her it was all about feeling.
And so, of course, we began to exchange on a very deep, if you like, metaphysical level about what is the purpose of life, what is the purpose of her existence, what is all the suffering about, and what will be the glorification that will arise out of harnessing the suffering and transmuting negative into positive. So that’s what I mean by the work that I do is holistic.
She was also so aware of her body. Her body was a very, very strong physical presence, and my first thing was to alert her to how she could use her body in a certain way that would always communicate confidence and allow her to feel confident. It wasn’t to do with this [Pearce hunches over], even though she was a tall lady. It’s a question of lifting up, and so you know, one of the other things that I did—just a very small thing, I said why didn’t why don’t we get Sam McKnight, who was then her new hairdresser, to cut your hair short, so you can feel the breeze. I held her hair so she could feel the coolness on the nape of her neck. She said, “That feels amazing! That lifts me immediately!” It was all part of a subtle disguise.
How did you know that your work with her was helping? Were there any times you really felt like she broke out of that minimizing, submissive manner of the Bashir interview?
It was an extraordinary gala where she was presented with an award, I remember it was given out by Henry Kissinger. I wasn’t there, but she told me the story. She looked extraordinary but—as she gave this speech about her charitable efforts for children from socioeconomically disadvantaged positions—somebody in the audience said, “But where are your children?” She said, “At school, where I’d like them to be!” She had a five minute standing ovation from the audience. Now that was a “yes” moment for her, because before she would have been so disturbed by that. The fact that she was able to, not defensively, not reproachfully, just simply say, “At school, where I think they ought to be.” I think she chuckled. The whole situation was dissolved. That was a huge scoring point for her.
Do you have any ideas about what she was planning for her future? What issues do you think she would be involved with now? I imagine she would be proud of Prince Harry and Prince William for their climate change and mental health activism.
Because she was free and no longer needed to have personal protection around, she was deciding on certain projects to commit to, where she would be making documentaries. The documentaries would be a major exposé about whatever the concern was, something like mental health issues, emotional intelligence, or literacy in socially deprived areas of the world.
One of the coincidences, which I find really extraordinary, is that I remember in June or July of 97, Diana was feeling so good about herself. She was having a real fun time with Dodi [Al-Fayed, her boyfriend when she died], and I mean Dodi was a real gentleman. He was charming, he was sensual, he really supported her and provided her with a level of protection. She was talking about buying a property in Malibu, in the Hills. I find it really interesting that [Harry and Meghan] have moved into Montecito.
So the question of her issues—she would be into all of it. Really in the way that the boys are, they were led by her, particularly in this issue of mental health. After all, most of her challenges were to do with a form of chronic depression, which then expressed itself through bulimia, through self-harming, through all of the self-diminishment. She would be absolutely behind the stroke of liberation that both Harry and Meghan have made.
Do you think the changes she brought on in the monarchy are still apparent?
We can still see her legacy living through William and Harry, especially in the sense that Harry does it differently. In other words, he is immediate and authentic and doesn’t remove through the notion of protocol. [Royalty has] an association with addressing the richness of the formality of the occasion, just as we all would in any situation we’re brought up in. We have those social parameters. What Diana was able to do was to bring in the inclusive. That was what was so extraordinary about her.
I find it very interesting that, for example, Harry and Meghan are celebrated in the United States, but she is vilified bitterly [in the U.K]. In other words, the press are literally projecting onto her the negative aspects of their own psyches. They don’t realize that she’s a screen onto which they’re projecting; they feel that they’re just reacting against her because she’s a liar. When are we going to grow up, and instead of blame and accuse, seek out insight and resolution?
But wherever they’re positioned and how bitterly they’ve suffered—I mean nearly to the point of suicide, as we know, with Meghan—they have been protected by another force, which is the love that Harry has. And that’s the love of Diana pouring through. Though she may not be here in the flesh, there’s something very extraordinary taking place about her spirit and the legacy of her spirit. Otherwise I don’t think we’d be having a celebration of her 60th year.
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