New details have emerged surrounding the private meeting between Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr. at New York’s Carlyle Hotel in 1995.
So the lawyer tried to persuade the royal family to appear on the cover of his new magazine George.
“She was quick-witted and fun to be around,” Princess Diana’s private secretary Patrick Jephson recalled in an interview with People magazine published Wednesday. “It was a little flirty, like she does with any man, but he was just who he was, so that gave it a little extra sparkle.”
He added that there was “expectation” from both the princess and Mr Kennedy (who was recently named Sexiest Man Alive a few years ago) when they had coffee in the suite.
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“It was a bit of a cloak and dagger,” Jephson continued.
Although she declined President Kennedy’s offer to be featured in the magazine, the princess said she would consider appearing in either issue 50 or 100 of George magazine.
“I sensed weakness in him,” Jephson said of the lawyer’s demeanor. “When I met him, he was looking for reassurance, which is normal. He had respect for her. She made him feel at ease. They had hilarious social talk.”
“They parted ways on warm terms,” he said.
Mr Jephson, meanwhile, gave two reasons to believe the princess agreed to meet with Mr Kennedy.
One theory is that Princess Diana admired the businessman and even wanted her son William to be in the same public eye as President Kennedy.
“I hope he grows up to be as smart as John Kennedy Jr.,” she told magazine editor Tina Brown about her eldest son, Jephson said. “I want William to be able to handle things as well as John.”
Princess Diana was also reportedly trying to make her sister-in-law Sarah Ferguson jealous.
“The princess’s desire to meet America’s most eligible bachelor owed in no small part to the fact that he was Fergie’s special pin-up at the time,” Jephson wrote.
Earlier this week, Caroline Haleman revealed about Princess Diana’s secret meetings with the Kennedys in her new book, The Kennedys and the Windsors, according to the Daily Mail.
“John came to me with some ideas for a cover shoot,” she wrote.
“In one photo, she was seen wearing a tricorn hat similar to that from the Revolutionary War, and in another photo, she was sitting in the back seat of a limousine with the windows half-closed, oddly enough to avoid photographers.”
Halleman also discussed why Princess Diana turned down the prospect.
The mother-of-two wrote: “I needed the magazine to be successful before I could be on the cover in public.”
“Even with Kennedy in the publishing reins, it was hardly a guaranteed prospect,” the author continues.
But there were no hard feelings on Kennedy’s part.
The author claims that when he returned to the office, he told staff, “Well, she said no. But she had great legs.”
George Magazine was launched in 1995 and the last issue was published in 2001.
Princess Diana was married to Prince Charles when they met, and they married in 1981. The couple welcomed Prince William and Prince Harry before divorcing in 1996.
Just one year later, in 1997, the princess died in a high-speed car accident in Paris.
The former president’s son dated Carolyn Bessette in 1995 before the two married in 1996.
The two had a notoriously rocky relationship until her tragic death in 1999, which was featured on FX’s “Love Story” earlier this year.
In July of that year, the plane Kennedy was piloting crashed into the ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, carrying Bessette and her sister Lauren.
