Amid a major moment of grief for the Royal Family, an advertising campaign Sarah Ferguson had filmed was rapidly pulled from the airwaves by a panicking company
Finding herself in the midst of a major scandal has become something of familiar territory for Sarah Ferguson over the years.
Fergie, who married Prince Andrew in 1986, was initially seen as a welcome addition to the House of Windsor. Down to earth and cheerful, she was dubbed by some as a breath of fresh air amid the normal formality of the Royal Family.
But over the years, her relationship with the public has been turbulent. As her marriage broke down, she was eventually caught by photographers in a steamy embrace with an American businessman in the early 1990s, which began her official separation from Andrew.
Though the former couple have remained close over the years – still living together at Royal Lodge despite their divorce – the recent controversy surrounding the former couple has seen them give up the use of their royal titles, with their relationships with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein under a microscope once again.
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Since her divorce from Andrew, Sarah has undertaken a myriad of money-making ventures, from writing books, to collaborating with Weightwatchers – after facing years of harsh scrutiny over her weight.
But in 1997, when the Royal Family went through a major tragedy, one of her campaigns for the weightloss company was rapidly pulled from the airwaves – amid concerns it would be bad taste.
Princess Diana, with whom Sarah also had an up and down relationship over the years – died in August 1997 in a tragic car crash in Paris, which plunged the nation into collective grief, and the royals into crisis.
The driver of Diana’s car was under the influence of alcohol and the vehicle crashed while trying to get away from paparazzi. The accident crash proved fatal, with only the Princess’s bodyguard surviving.
Just as the tragedy unfolded, Sarah’s new advertising campaign with Weight Watchers was going live. In the campaign, an unfortunate tagline was used that suddenly felt cruelly ironic after Diana’s death. In the pre-recorded campaign, Sarah declared that losing weight was “harder than outrunning the paparazzi.”
In the week before Diana’s car accident, brochures featuring the line had been posted out to the company’s customers, and some adverts had been published in magazines that included the suddenly bad taste tagline.
Springing into action, the company knew it would be impossible to remove the brochures and magazines adverts, but they did have the power to pull one major branch of the campaign – the TV adverts.
“It has a touch of irony that nobody could have predicted,” said Howard Rubenstein, the publicist who was in charge of the campaign at the time. “The duchess certainly is sensitive to the situation, and it’s just unfortunate that the mailing went out when it did.”
As well as pulling the TV adverts, Sarah also cancelled various appearances that had been booked around that time to promote the campaign. Rubenstein explained at the time: “I spoke to the duchess, and she is grieving greatly and out of respect will not be doing anything for the moment.”
“We were able to catch 95% of what was being done,” the publicist added.
“Out of respect for the Princess of Wales and the Royal Family we’ve done our best to pull our new commercial set for Labor Day,” Weight Watchers International President Kent Kreh said amid the turbulence.
Diana had been the one who is said to have initially set up Sarah and Andrew in the 1980s, and the pair were fast friends for a long time, first becoming close pals when they were teenagers. But towards the end of Diana’s life, they were not actually talking, something that Fergie has said causes her much regret.
Fergie had written about Diana and her sons in the bombshell memoir she released in the mid-1990s, and while the Princess had been supportive of her former sister-in-law telling her own story, she reportedly thought that Fergie detailing aspects of her life and that of William and Harry was crossing the line.
The pair stopped speaking, and Fergie addressed their falling out in a 2007 interview with Harpers Bazaar.
“The saddest thing, at the end, we hadn’t spoken for a year, though I never knew the reason, except that once Diana got something in her head…I tried, I wrote letters, thinking whatever happened didn’t matter, let’s sort it out. And I knew she’d come back.
“In fact, the day before she died,” Sarah claimed, “She rang a friend of mine and said, ‘Where’s that Red? I want to talk to her.'”