His image with Dodi al-Fayed in the Mediterranean Sea has a central role in the sixth season.
Mario Brenna, the photographer who shot it, says the show's description is "completely made up."
It's the summer of 1997, and Princess Diana is flirting with Dodi Fayed, a globe-trotting donjuan, on the Jonikal, a yacht floating in the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean.
Diana, provocatively, says that she likes men who have lips "just the right temperature."
"Do mine have the right temperature?" replies Dodi.
"I don't know," Diana says.
"I have to check it out."
Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in the sixth season of "The Crown." Photo: Daniel Escale/Netflix
The pair then kiss, blissfully unaware that, a few feet away, Mario Brenna, a skilled Italian photographer, is on a boat, with a telephoto camera focusing on the couple.
Mario Brenna in Sardinia, Italy, in the early 2000s. Every summer he would come to the area to photograph famous people. Photo via Mario Brenna
A few days later, Brenna's photos of the princess and her new suitor appear on the front pages of newspapers around the world.
It's a central scene from the sixth and final season of The Crown, Netflix's royal drama — the first batch of episodes premiered in mid-November — and a moment that marked the start of a sensationalist frenzy surrounding the couple many blame for their death on Aug. 31, 1997, in a car crash in Paris while being chased by photographers.
However, the description is far from accurate, according to Brenna, in what she said was her first interview with an English-language newspaper.
For starters, The Crown features Mohamed al-Fayed — Dodi's father and a hospitality and retail tycoon who died earlier this year — hiring Brenna to handle the shots, in an effort to publicize Diana and Dodi's relationship and convince them to marry.
In an email, Annie Sulzberger, the program's head of research — she is also the sister of Times editor A.G. Sulzberger — said that "there are a few theories about how Brenna managed to find the Jonikal anchored somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea," but the one the team found most credible was that one of Al-Fayed's employees leaked Brenna's location to the ship.
But Brenna said the idea that Al-Fayed was the one who hired him was "absurd and completely fabricated," and that no one leaked information about the yacht's whereabouts to her.
Every summer at the time, he was in Sardinia so he could take paparazzi photos of famous people, he said, and meeting Diana and Dodi was just a "big stroke of luck."
On August 1, 1997, Brenna said she approached Diana's yacht in a fast-moving inflatable boat after mistaking a blonde woman making a phone call on the upper deck for an old acquaintance.
As he approached, he was stunned to realize that it was the princess.
Bruno Malka, Brenna's agent at the time who helped sell the images to Paris Match magazine, said in an email that he believed Brenna knew about the yacht, "not knowing it was Diana and Dodi" who were on board that day.
Brenna was successful, Malka added, because she had been working in the region for many years.
After spotting the couple, Brenna said she spent the next few days stalking the boat, even climbing a cliff to get a better view.
From that elevated position, about 400 meters from Diana, he took several photos of Diana and Dodi embracing.
The photos were almost blurry, Brenna said, because the heat haze prevented her from focusing well on the couple.
Still, he knew immediately that he had gotten "a historic photo."
He had also captured an image that "solved my personal and family issues," he said, at a time when he had recently divorced and therefore "wasn't swimming in wealth."
He unloaded the rolls of film from the camera and then buried them to make sure they wouldn't be exposed to the sun while he tried to take more images, and also because he feared that some competitor had seen him at work and tried to steal his camera and thus get the images that all the other photographers in the Mediterranean hoped to get first.
On August 10, the Sunday Mirror, a British tabloid, published Brenna's image on its front page.
"The kiss," read the headline.
According to Brenna, she soon started selling the photos all over the world.
Over the next six to eight months, he said, he earned about £1.7 million, or $2.1 million, from his photos of the couple.
Brenna's photos — and the prices the media paid for them — set off a frenzy.
In 2013, Jason Fraser, a British photographer who helped Brenna sell her images, told The Daily Mail that, following its publication, more than 2000,<> photographers came to the Mediterranean hoping to get their own photographs of Diana and Dodi.
"I felt like everything was getting out of control," Fraser said.
Weeks later, the couple died.
In The Crown, Brenna (played by Enzo Cilenti) explains her methods to the camera.
To catch celebrities misbehaving, says the fictional Brenna, you have to take risks.
The paparazzi also have to act as "hunters... murderers."
Brenna said in the email interview that she didn't share this opinion about her work
("I don't identify with the term 'killer'") and that he was never contacted by anyone at The Crown to learn about his experiences (Netflix did not respond to a request for comment).
Following Diana and Dodi's deaths, Al-Fayed sued Fraser, the British photographer, for taking photos of Diana and Dodi on a boat, claiming it was an invasion of privacy.
Brenna said she didn't face any such action, adding that her images were legal because "they were taken outdoors, in a public place."
And he lamented the privacy measures that have ensued since then, with governments and stars trying to stop paparazzi from taking photos:
"There is still a right to inform," he said.
Today, Brenna lives near Lake Como in Italy, where she said she had photographed celebrities such as George Clooney, Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé, even as the beginnings of social media had significantly affected her profession, including its financial rewards.
Brenna said he and his family enjoyed the success of the photos throughout August 1997.
But then, Diana died.
When he heard the news, Brenna said, he "couldn't believe it" and cried, among other things, because he himself had two children and therefore could understand what his death would mean for Diana's children.
He made the decision "not to speak or reveal anything about the incident until William and Harry reached adulthood."
The mere idea that their images "could have helped fuel the hunt for Diana and Dodi obviously saddens me," Brenna said.
But he doesn't think his work contributed significantly to the furor around the princess.
"If it hadn't been me," he added, "I'm sure someone else would have captured those images."
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