In January of this year, Kristen Stewart was fully dressed in Princess Diana's hair and makeup when paparazzi stormed the German castle where Spencer was filming with the film crew.
Stewart, who has been acting for 22 years and a movie star for 13, is used to having a clique of photographers following her every move and knew that playing such a beloved icon would only pique her interest. .
"If you take into account the fact that I'm a famous actress and mix it with the huge symbol that is Diana, you think 'man, they're going to blow this,'" Stewart tells me in a conversation via Zoom. "And that's what happened".
But that moment she had something disturbingly meta, beyond being an actress besieged by the press playing a princess besieged by the press. The photographers in question used long-range lenses to capture grainy images of Stewart dressed as Diana through a window at Friedrichshof Castle. The film Spencer itself—a sumptuous psychological drama seen from Diana's perspective and set at Christmas time in Sandringham—includes a scene in which the photographers (who also take pictures through the windows using their long lenses) scope) become a problem to the point that Elizabeth II's staff had to sew the curtains in Diana's room.
@propublica How do you prove age discrimination? How do you pursue it? How to prevent it? Systematically.
— Yoni Weiss Sun Sep 27 23:34:01 +0000 2020
In Spencer, the film directed by Pablo Larraín (Jackie) with a screenplay by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Steven Knight (Hidden Business), the sewn curtains are perceived in horror, as yet another extreme measure by the royal family and their staff with the goal of isolating Diana. But once on Spencer's set, the idea of sewing the curtains might not have seemed so terrible.
Stewart comes from a family closely connected to the world of cinema (her mother supervises scripts, her father is a stage director and her brother a machine operator) and for her the sets are something intimate and sacred. “I don't mind leaving the house if they follow me to a Starbucks and see me having a coffee. Everything's fine. Take a picture of me. I've made a movie and I want you to see it,” explains Stewart. "But in our art, when making a movie and behind closed doors... it wasn't even about me."
That day, while she was dressed (and presumably without materials with which to sew the curtains), the actress was able to channel the energy of her character.
“I completely depersonalized him and I really wanted to protect [Diana] at the time. I was like, 'Fuck you,'” Stewart recalls. "I developed a genuinely protective role towards a person that I obviously never got to meet."
