With her new role as Princess Diana, Kristen Stewart is making her mark.
This month, the 31-year-old “Spencer” star is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and in the issue she opens up about agreeing to take on the part of the iconic royal.
“I knew even before I read the script. 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. Especially given that I’m such an outsider,” she says. “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, you know?”
Calling the film a “distillation” and “a long tone poem,” Stewart immersed herself in the fated character of Diana, working with famed dialect coach William Conacher and doing tons of research into the world of Diana lore.
Without trying to be perform a perfect imitation of Diana, Stewart says “there was something just in absorbing her completely over the last six months leading up to this. I knew that I had hit some kind of elemental energy. If people have a lot to say about it not being a perfect impression, that’s so okay with me.”
With acclaim for her performance coming out of the Venice Film Festival and TIFF, Stewart is now a buzzed-about awards contender, and she seems to not have a problem with that.
“You want to win, we’re all animals,” she says. “Artists want to engage with the world and have larger conversations. Even though it doesn’t seem like I’m somebody who wants to be extremely famous, I still want this conversation to be expansive.”
Stewart adds, “I used to be really intentionally the opposite of precious in terms of choosing projects. For a minute there I was like, ‘I’ll do f**king anything!’ And honestly, it was a good place to be for a minute. But I think now I’m going to be a little more careful. I think I have a better nose for what’s going to be fruitful for me personally, as an experience, if not necessarily what’s going to thrive out in the world.”
