Once upon a time, Kristen Stewart felt the opposite of chameleonic. After Twilight, she was typecast as a quiet doe; an icy on-screen presence who was offered big budget roles in movies that didn’t let her exercise her real range. Then she pivoted to arthouse moviemaking, worked with Olivier Assayas on films like Clouds of Sils Maria and the masterful and magnetic Personal Shopper, and found her authentic voice.
Now, she can flit between that and being a badass in Charlie’s Angels without her authoritative status as one of Hollywood’s greatest actors being compromised, which perhaps explains why she’s signed the dotted line on what could be her most challenging performance yet: according to Deadline, she’s set to play Princess Diana in a new biopic, directed by Pablo Larraín.
The film, titled Spencer, is set at Sandringham over the course of three days in the early 1990s; the final Christmas that Diana spent there. During that time period, her marriage to then-husband Prince Charles wasn’t working, thus leading her to leave the Royal family. It’s based on a script by Steven Knight, known best for his work on the TV hit Peaky Blinders.
The role is risky mainly because few people have been able to accurately portray Diana in the past. The infamous 2013 biopic starring Naomi Watts was a critical and commercial dud, which has meant that most filmmakers have been too scared to touch the source material. We’re not quite sure how her fictionalised life will pan out in next year’s season of The Crown either. But Pablo Larraín, who has a history of capturing enigmatic women throughout history well with his Natalie Portman-starring Jackie, based on the life of Jackie Onassis, should be able to do a better job of it.
The film was being shopped to buyers at this year’s virtual Cannes Film Festival market, where, rumour has it, shooting was scheduled to start at the top end of 2021. WIth that in mind, expect Spencer to arrive in theatres around late 2022. If the word of mouth is good, this might lead us to K-Stew’s first official Oscar nomination.