Princess Diana, or Lady Diana Spencer as she was known before her marriage to English royal heir
Prince Charles, is a towering figure of modern history. A new movie about Diana, Pablo Larrain's
"Spencer," is already among the year's most talked about films. Here's everything you need to know.
"Spencer" comes off as an extremely British film. It's about a very famous Englishwoman
and her role within the British royal family, written by Steven Knight,
a chronicler of British culture past and present, and stars a primarily British cast.
But many of the prime movers responsible for the film aren't British at all,
such as Chilean director Pablo Larrain and American lead actor Kristen Stewart. According
to Deadline, a major portion of the movie was shot in Germany, where its financiers are based.
Producer Paul Webster told Deadline that no British funders came through to support the film,
explaining that he and his fellow producers put their own money into
the project in its early days, just to get it off the ground.
Because of economic and political restrictions in the wake of Brexit, "Spencer" was one of the
first British productions to attempt filming on mainland Europe. Before filming began,
filmmakers even faced the possibility that they wouldn't be able to cast English actors
to play Princess Diana's sons, William and Harry, because of work visa limitations.
While Kristen Stewart has headlined some major movies, "Spencer" marks a new benchmark for the
actor. Before the film's wide release, the rumor mill predicted she'd receive her first
Academy Award nomination for the role. The weight of the task was not lost on Stewart,
and she prepared to play Princess Diana using a variety of methods.
First, she surrendered herself to the job. Stewart told Entertainment Weekly,
"I was like 'You're not going to say no to this, because who would you be in that case?'
I absolutely would have felt like such a coward. I'm not from the U.K.,
I don't have any particular investment in the royal family. So I was kind of this
really clean slate, and then could absorb her in a way that actually felt very instinctive."
Some elements Stewart felt she absolutely had to nail. She told InStyle,
"The accent is intimidating as all hell because people know that voice, and it's so, so distinct."
"I'd like to be a Queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts."
As far as the late royal's demeanor, Stewart studied the Diana-centric season of "The Crown,"
telling the BBC that she binged it in one night. She also told the BBC that she
watched Diana's interviews, read multiple biographies, and even studied photographs
of the late royal. Stewart's transformation was completed with some superficial changes,
including replicas of the princess's jewelry and a wig.
If an actor's work is to be transformative, beyond reading lines and playing pretend,
then the preparation Kristen Stewart underwent to play Princess Diana in
"Spencer" was worth the effort. In fact, she was so overtaken with the
gravity of the job that it had physical ramifications. Stewart told the BBC,
"I couldn't open my mouth for two weeks before we started shooting.
I had TMJ [temporomandibular joint disorder] to the point where I was like, completely locked up.
I was like, 'Huh, I guess I'm really nervous – I was really tripping out until we started."
Ultimately, the role burrowed itself deep into Stewart's psyche. Regarding a scene in which
she descended a stairwell fully in character as Diana, Stewart told Entertainment Weekly,
"It felt so [...] spiritual and so spooky, and I was so overwhelmed by the feeling of her.
And I don't mean like ghosty stuff. I just mean everything she's made me think and feel,
and it all just kind of happened in a moment."
Stewart further told the Los Angeles Times that remembering Diana's death
repeatedly upset her, telling the outlet,
"She felt so alive to me when I was making this movie. But there
were moments where my body and mind would forget she was dead."
Two or three times each week, during the filming of "Spencer," Stewart said,
"[I] would just fully break down about the fact that she
had died. I just could not come to terms with it."
"Spencer" director Pablo Larrain is from Chile, and as such, wasn't as exposed to
the endless media coverage of Princess Diana, meaning he wasn't necessarily inundated with
imagery or a sense of the importance of "The People's Princess." But a greater,
more universal through-line inspired Larrain's work on "Spencer." Larrain told Deadline that
"Spencer" is "a fairy tale upside down," because Diana is a princess who rejected
her prince and the chance to become queen, calling that idea "the heart of the movie."
And according to Kristen Stewart, Larrain has a familiarity with crowd-pleasing American
teen movies from the '80s, and he sought to re-create the emotional response they engendered.
The synth-pop soft-rock hit "All I Need is a Miracle" by Mike and the Mechanics
figures prominently, which Stewart likened to "a John Hughes moment."
Two decades have passed since Princess Diana's death in a car accident in 1997. Enough time has
gone by that filmmakers have begun to grapple with Diana's legacy. "Spencer," debuted on the
film festival scene in the fall of 2021, and it's the latest in a number of projects of various
approaches and levels of intensity that seek to appreciate, celebrate, or understand Diana.
The fourth season of Netflix's "The Crown," a series covering the chronology of the reign of
Queen Elizabeth II, focused on the royal family's icy attitude toward a troubled
and complicated Diana, portrayed by Emma Corrin, who received an Emmy nomination for her efforts.
Around that same time, Netflix premiered "Diana the Musical," a filmed take on a
campy Broadway musical covering the life of the royal. Both TV projects followed "Diana
and I," a BBC2 movie about the effect of Diana's death on the people of the U.K.,
set between her death and her subsequent historic funeral a week later.
And before Kristen Stewart played Diana in "Spencer," Naomi Watts did in "Diana,"
a more traditional biopic that earned its star a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress in 2014.
"God. How do you keep going?"
"Spencer" is rooted in truth, and it's based on real events that happened to
a real and very famous individual. But "Spencer" is not really a biopic,
or a film that tells the entire life story of its subject.
"Spencer" speculates on how the events of a weekend in late 1991 played out just before
Diana announced her intention to separate from Prince Charles and officially leave royal life.
The entire movie takes place over those few dozen hours,
centering on events that are largely the invention of screenwriter Steven Knight.
It's also not new territory for director Pablo Larrain, who happens to specialize
in such nontraditional, conjecture-based, not-quite-biopics of major public figures.
The long sequences in "Spencer" of a deeply emotionally troubled Diana roaming around
Sandringham House, lost in thought and anguish, is reminiscent of "Jackie,"
Larrain's 2016 film in which Natalie Portman portrayed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy,
numb and deeply grieving days after the assassination of her husband.
Also in 2016, Larrain directed "Neruda",
a biographical film about Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, but only and specifically
the part of his life when he became a pariah on the lam in Chile for his Communist views.
While Kristen Stewart has earned a lot of praise for her portrayal of Princess Diana in "Spencer,"
she had some reservations because she couldn't completely relate to the real person she played,
except for on a very basic level of being a public figure who faced a lot
of negative scrutiny in the media. Stewart told Entertainment Weekly,
"I have experienced people kind of wanting to come in, but there is no comparison to
this particular woman, in terms of that fervent desire to have her and know her."
Nevertheless, Stewart took the gig very seriously and rigorously prepared, but still wound up
worrying about a lack of legitimacy in her performance. Stewart told the Los Angeles Times,
"I've never been somebody who is very good at stepping outside of myself.
I'm not a character actor. I'm not making any rules for myself,
but the most honest work I've done contains my own memories."
That said, she felt that Diana being a mother, and a fiercely protective one
at that, deeply informed Diana's character and motivations. Stewart explained to The Daily Mail,
"I'm not a mum yet. I need that to feel authentic.
It's the one part of playing her that I felt disloyal about."
The plot of "Spencer" concerns Princess Diana coming to the tough decision to separate from
Prince Charles, her husband and father of her two children, William and Harry.
As Diana figures out how she can leave the royal life she's come to loathe,
"Spencer" stages several dark sequences. Spoilers ahead.
These disturbing sequences include the princess hallucinating her own death, contemplating choking
to death on a pearl necklace, throwing herself down a flight of stairs, and making herself vomit.
From a filmmaking perspective, those scenes speculatively demonstrate Diana's inner agony,
but according to some royal experts and critics, those parts of "Spencer" were uncalled for.
Majesty Magazine editor Ingrid Seward said to The Sun,
"It is really cruel to portray her like this. It is totally unnecessary.
William and Harry will be very angry and hurt about this."
Royal watcher Penny Juror concurred, calling the scenes in question "unnecessarily gratuitous" and
even questioning if the film is "factually incorrect" as it pertains to such events.
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