Despite once sharing a deep bond, the friendship between Sarah Ferguson and the late Princess Diana faced a serious breakdown in the years before Diana’s death. The two women had known each other long before they married into the royal family and were considered close friends for many years.

However, by the time Diana died in 1997, the pair had not spoken to each other for about a year.

In her autobiography Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself, Ferguson reflected on the painful distance that had grown between them. She admitted she never fully understood what caused the rift.

“Sadly, 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, it stuck there for a while,” she wrote.

Ferguson said she tried to reconnect by reaching out with letters, hoping they could resolve whatever disagreement had come between them.

“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 she rang a friend of mine and said, ‘Where’s that Red? I want to talk to her.'”

She also described the friendship as one that had always endured ups and downs, but remained strong overall.

“In any sibling relationship, there are ups and downs and peaks and troughs, but we were always steadfast in our friendship. We never let the sun go down on too many heated discussions. Our bond was never broken.”

The comment that reportedly caused the rift

Although Ferguson said she never knew exactly why Diana stopped speaking to her, journalist and royal commentator Tina Brown later suggested the disagreement stemmed from a remark Ferguson made about Diana’s shoes.

The comment appeared in Ferguson’s earlier biography My Story: Sarah, the Duchess of York, published in 1996. In the book, she mentioned borrowing shoes from the Princess of Wales while they were younger.

The line read: “When I lived in Clapham, Diana helped me by giving me all her shoes (and, less happily, her plantar warts) – we wore the same size.”

According to Brown, Diana did not react well to the remark. In her book The Diana Chronicles, Brown described the sentence as particularly damaging.

“The divorced Duchess had cashed in with an anodyne memoir, which was full of nice comments about her sister-in-law – except for one fatal line,” Brown wrote.

“She wrote that when she borrowed a pair of Diana’s shoes she had caught a verruca from them. Goddesses don’t get warts.”

Brown added that even though Ferguson reportedly apologized repeatedly, Diana never resumed communication with her.

“Despite Fergie’s pleading apologies, Diana never spoke to her again.”

Remembering Diana

In more recent years, Ferguson has continued to speak warmly about Diana and the memories they shared during their time together.

In a 2021 interview with HELLO!, she reflected on their friendship and the unique period they experienced together in the royal family.

“I think about her most days because she’s the only other person who knew and was around at that time in the 80s, when we all wore those very strange clothes,” she said.

“She was in the family before me and we had such fun.”

Despite the final disagreement between them, Ferguson has suggested that the memories of their friendship remain meaningful to her.