Princess Diana "Felt She Would Be Freer" Living in America, But Didn't Make the Move for One Reason

Richard Kay was one of Princess Diana's closest friends at the end of her young life, and the journalist recently appeared on the Daily Mail's "Royal Confidential" show to answer questions about the late royal. Addressing everything from what she would've thought about Meghan Markle to what Diana was like in private, Kay opened up about his friendship with the princess—and he shared why she didn't move to America, despite having dreams of relocating.

Kay, who has worked for the Daily Mail since 1980, said Diana "loved" America and hoped to live there eventually. "She talked about it right at the very end of her life to me, about settling for a time in the U.S," he said during the episode.

"She loved the U.S. I think that if she could, she would have moved there and lived there," he added. However, there was one thing that prevented the late royal from making the big move. Prince Harry was just 12 years old when Diana died and Prince William was 15, and they wouldn't have been able to leave the U.K. and the Royal Family.

"She couldn't just abandon them, they were young boys," Kay said of the princess, who was famously close to her two sons.

The journalist continued, "I don't think she had quite worked out how she could live in New York or California, for example, and maintain that close contact that she needed to have with William and Harry. As they got older, that might have changed and I could see her living there."

Kay, who said Princess Diana "would have admired Harry's decision to settle in America," explained that the late royal thought she'd have more freedom in the United States.

"I often asked her what it was about America that attracted her to the country," he said. "It was this idea that she felt she would be freer somehow, that they took a more nuanced attitude towards celebrity."

However, Kay challenged that assumption, pointing out Diana "would be the number-one among many" stars, but "she didn't agree."

At the end of the day, he shared that his friend would have faced the same media attention as Prince Harry now does in America. "I think that's what Prince Harry has found, that there was huge interest in him when he moved to California quite above all those home-based American celebrities and Hollywood stars, and I think that would have plagued Diana just as much as it plagued her living in the United Kingdom," Kay said.