Was Fighting to Keep Her Alive: Kristen Stewart on Playing Diana in ‘Spencer'

Kristen Stewart plays the role of Lady Diana Spencer in Pablo Larraín's film 'Spencer'.

Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín's film Spencer.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Kristen Stewart plays Princess Diana in the Pablo Larraín directorial Spencer which follows a Christmas holiday in 1991 with the royal family at Sandringham House. Talking about the experience of playing the iconic role, Stewart said that she was ‘fighting to keep her alive everyday’.

When asked if she felt Diana there with her during the film’s shoot, Stewart told Los Angeles Times, “She felt so alive to me when I was making this movie, even if it’s all between the ears and it was just a fantasy of mine. But there were moments where my body and mind would forget she was dead.”

“And suddenly, I would just have an image of what happened. And remember who she left behind. And I was amazed by the renewed emotion. Every single time. Maybe two or three times a week, I would just fully break down about the fact that she had died. I just could not come to terms with it, because I was fighting to keep her alive every single day.”

Kristen Stewart, Actor

Princess Diana (or Lady Diana Spencer) was one of the most photographed people in the world, and had said in an interview, “But then here was a situation which hadn’t ever happened before in history, in the sense that the media were everywhere, and here was a fairy story that everybody wanted to work.”

Kristen Stewart’s image of Diana is of a ‘live wire’. She believes that there is a ‘ground-shaking quality’ to any picture of Diana. “Diana’s such a live wire. Any picture or interview I’ve ever seen of her, there’s an explosive, ground-shaking quality to her that I always feel like you never really know what’s going to happen. Even when she’s walking the red carpet, it just feels a little bit scary.”

Stewart did have a dialect coach and studied to perfect her posture but she still wanted to be free to imagine. The actor added that she felt like Diana ‘harboured an immense range’.

“It’s easy to start getting into entitlement and ask, “What does she have to be angry about? She knew what she was signing up for.” This is a poetic imagining of what it might have felt like for a woman on a precipice and in a certain state of helplessness. We have no idea what happened.”

Kristen Stewart, Actor

Spencer is a biographical psychological drama written by Steven Knight. The film also stars Timothy Spall, Sean Harris, and Sally Hawkins. Spencer had its world premiere on 3 September, at the 78th Venice Film Festival. It is slated to release on 5 November.