In a rare interview Natasha Gregson Wagner, just 11 when her mum died, insists she is “protectve” of Robert Wagner despite him being linked to the boat death in 1981.
It is almost 45 years since actress Natalie Wood died in mysterious circumstances, drowning during a weekend boat trip to Santa Catalina Island on board Splendour, a yacht owned by her husband Robert Wagner on November 29, 1981.
Wagner has long been suspected of being responsible for her death, but now Natasha Gregson Wagner, Natalie’s daughter who the Hart To Hart actor has raised since her mother’s death, has called for a stop to the whispering as she does not want “his legacy tarnished by these falsehoods”.
The official investigation at the time concluded it was an accident. In 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reopened the case; in 2012, the coroner changed the cause of death to “drowning and other undetermined factors,” and in 2018 investigators called Wagner a “person of interest.” But he has never been charged with any crime, and none of those reviews has led prosecutors to accuse him of anything.
Wagner is now 96, and his daughter Natasha – whose biological father was British producer Richard Gregson – does not want her father to be remembered for false claims. In an interview with Vanity Fair Spain, she said: “I think it’s reckless and dangerous when people make up lies or make assumptions that end up circulating as if they were the truth. My dad is 96 and a half, he probably doesn’t have much time left, and I don’t want his legacy to be tarnished by those falsehoods.
“Even so, all that speculation brought my family closer: my sisters, my dad, and me. We’re very protective of one another. And he is very proud of how I take care of my mother’s legacy; he wants me to do it.
“He was the one who kept that legacy alive during our childhood, after she died. He always talked to us about her and gave us jewellery he had given her, telling us where he’d bought it, and he had it engraved for us. It’s absurd that someone so kind, generous, and loving has been defamed this way. It makes me sad, and it makes me feel protective.”
In the past four decades books, TV specials, true-crime documentaries, podcasts and talk shows have continually speculated about Wagner and whether he is responsible for her death, re-opening the wounds of family’s grief.
But Natasha insists Wagner has been nothing but a “force of love and protection” for her since he became her guardian when she was just 11. She added: “Grief is a very intimate feeling, a very private experience. But because I come from a famous family, mine was completely public, and that made me very protective of my family, especially my stepfather, Robert Wagner.
“He has been a force of love and protection for me: he raised me as his own daughter and has loved me as if I were his flesh and blood. I know he would have done anything to protect my mother.”
In the past decade Natasha has been committed to telling her mother’s story and keeping her legacy alive. In 2020 she co-produced Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, directed by Laurent Bouzereau, an intimate portrait of her mother as an actress, wife, and mother.
She insists she still feels her mother around and said: “I feel her so much. In fact, the older I get, the more I feel her, because I’m more grounded, more at peace. I’ve been through a lot, and now I have my feet on the ground, and it’s in the stillness that we can connect with the other side. When I’m with my dogs or my birds, when I go for a walk or when I meditate, I feel her so much.”
In 2016, she launched Natalie, a fragrance inspired by Jungle Gardenia, the perfume her mother wore all her life.
Today that first creation is the heart of L’Amour Mère, a fragrance line dedicated to the love between grandmothers, mothers, and daughters.
Natasha insists the biggest misunderstanding about her mother Natalie – who starred in a host of critically acclaimed films, including Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) – is that she was a “tragic figure”.
When asked what the biggest misconception is about Natalie Wood, she said: “Maybe that she was a tragic figure, doomed or overly vulnerable. She had an open heart and was very humanitarian, and you feel that when you watch her on screen.
“But she was completely in control of her life and enormously powerful as a businesswoman, as a wife, as a mother, and as a friend. She was the one in charge. She was strong, very strong. So the misconception is thinking she was tragic or doomed. I never experienced that with her.”
Differing versions of what happened on the yacht have contributed to the mystery of how the actress died in November 1981. Family members have asked for authorities to re-examine the findings of the original investigation in the past.
On the night of her death, the coroner’s investigation ruled Natalie Wood had been drinking and may have slipped trying to board a dinghy. She had been partying with Wagner and actor Christopher Walken.
Her body was found floating in a Catalina Island cove. Police report at the time said she was found wearing a long nightgown, socks, and a jacket.
The post-mortem report said Wood had bruises on her body and arms as well as a facial abrasion on her left cheek.
Natalie starred in West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause. She married Wagner for a second time in 1972 until her death in 1981. In his memoir Wagner acknowledged he argued with her before she died.
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