Kevin Costner famously (infamously) fell hard for Whitney Houston when they worked together on The Bodyguard. Nevermind that Whitney had already fallen for Bobby Brown and would soon be married to him. But I remember how Costner was really torn up about Whitney’s death and how much he loved her and adored her. When The Bodyguard became a huge hit, there was always talk of a sequel, of finding some way to put Costner and Whitney together again, or giving Costner’s bodyguard a new, equally famous protectee. There were always rumors that Kevin wanted Princess Diana in a potential sequel, but it always felt like those rumors were mostly just “it would have been cool, but no one ever followed up on it.” Well, several days ago, Costner appeared on Howard Stern’s show and he confirmed the Diana rumors and then some. Apparently, he had even spoken to Diana and she wanted to do the sequel. Costner also said that the palace came down on him HARD after Diana’s death.

Kevin Costner was at odds with the British royal family in the 1990s. During his interview on “The Howard Stern Show” on Tuesday, the Oscar winner, 69, confirmed that a sequel to his hit 1992 film “The Bodyguard” with Whitney Houston was in the works with Princess Diana as his planned co-star. However, Diana’s death in summer 1997 caused the project to be canceled — and Costner subsequently faced the wrath of the royals, who didn’t believe that the princess was willing to do a Hollywood movie.

“When Diana passed, about a year later it had leaked out that I was prepping ‘Bodyguard 2’ with her. And what happened was, the royal family kind of turned on me a little bit,” he recalled.

“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.”

The “Yellowstone” star said that he ended up reaching out to Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, who initially connected Costner with Diana, and asked for her help.

“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.’”

At the time that Costner was trying to make “The Bodyguard 2,” Diana was separated from her former husband Prince Charles (now King Charles) and was on the outs with the royal family ruled by the now-late Queen Elizabeth II. Costner explained how he got Diana to agree to do the film. “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?’ ” he 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.”

He added, “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.”

Diana died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997 at the age of 36, and Costner decided not to move forward with “The Bodyguard” sequel. “I could not replace Princess Di,” he said.

[From The NY Post]

It’s interesting that he’s confirming the decades of rumors about this and I love that he was able to speak to Diana directly too, and that she wanted to do it. But the most fascinating part – to me – is that the palace was, like, panic-briefing denials to the story. Even with Diana dead, they still wanted to control her life. They didn’t want people to understand that Diana actually had some real options once she was divorced. The Windsors were losing their minds at the idea that a divorced Princess of Wales might fly to California and make movies and be fully independent from them. Sound familiar? Because their nightmare came true 33 years later with Diana’s younger son.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.