“[The house] was going to be in Malibu…I saw the plans. We sat on the floor, spread out all the maps and the layout of the house. Why couldn’t [the boys] come and spend a portion of their time in America? That would be very stiff and staunchy if the queen would say, ‘No, they can’t go to America.'”
The move was also timed with the fact that her boyfriend at the time, businessman Dodi Fayed, had just bought his own property in the Malibu area. Burrell told ABC News of Diana:
“She said, ‘This is our new life, just won’t it be great, think of the lifestyle, the boys—nobody’s judgmental here in America, you don’t have the class system, you don’t have the establishment.”
According to an interview with US Weekly, Diana’s voice coach Stewart Pearce said that she was very serious about the move to Malibu. He said:
“She was talking about buying a property in Malibu [and saying] that would be ‘really great’ for the boys to have freedom so that they could surf. Because they’re both very sporty, you know, but they could surf, they could roller blade, they could Frisbee.”
