Tom Selleck has long been one of the more recognizable figures in Hollywood.
But even the Golden Globe-winning actor can find himself in awkward situations.
And Tom Selleck revealed he had this terrifying experience with the British Royal Family.
Selleck recounts awkward White House State Dinner episode
In Selleck’s memoir, You Never Know, the Blue Bloods and Magnum P.I. star recounted a bizarre experience at a White House state dinner in 1985.
Former President and First Lady Ronald and Nancy Reagan invited Selleck, as well as Clint Eastwood, John Travolta, and Princess Di, to attend the event.
At one point in the evening, the group made their way to the East Room for music and dancing.
Selleck wrote how a woman rushed up to him in panic.
What had her all flustered was the fact that Princess Di and Travolta – the star of Saturday Night Fever – were dancing together multiple times.
“Mr. Travolta and the Princess are dancing for a second time together. We can’t have that,” Selleck recounted the woman telling him.
“We don’t want to start rumors, do we?” she added. “Mr. Selleck, you must step in and replace him.”
Selleck was dumbfounded at the request as Travolta is known for dancing in films like Grease and Saturday Night Fever, and he worried he simply had two left feet.
“I’M NOT CUTTING IN ON JOHN TRAVOLTA!” Selleck recalled thinking.
“She was not happy,” he added, before revealing that he ultimately caved to the request.
Selleck dances with Princess Di
Selleck readily admits he’s not a great dancer and was thankful the song that began to play as he asked Princess Di for a dance was one of a slower variety.
But Selleck wasn’t about to get adventurous anyway as he said, “I was not going to dip the Princess of Wales.”
In his telling of the dance, Selleck described the common touch and personal grace that was a standard recollection of anyone who dealt with the Princess of Wales.
“Princess Diana was lovely, and there was a very shy quality about her in spite of her being well-schooled in the art of conversation,” Selleck added.
“I gotta say she seemed to be having the time of her life. I was relieved she talked most of the time. Let’s just say it was not my finest hour as a conversationalist,” he also wrote.
The irony of the situation
Selleck cut in on his dance with Princess Di because staffers were afraid the tabloids would catch wind of her multiple dances with Travolta and use the rumors to sell magazines at the supermarket checkout line.
The reality was the tabloids were right to suspect an affair.
But the culprit was Diana’s husband.
One year later, Prince Charles, who married Diana in 1981, picked up his affair with Camilla Bowles, who he ultimately married nearly 10 years after their affair ruined his marriage with Diana.
Princess Di died tragically one year after the couple’s 1996 divorce when she allegedly crashed in a French tunnel following a high-speed chase with the paparazzi.