Quite the transformation! Kristen Stewart is the latest star to take on the role of the late Princess Diana, starring in the upcoming film Spencer. The first photo from the production was released on Wednesday, November 27, showing the actress, 30, channeling the Princess of Wales.
The movie, set to film in Germany and the U.K. this fall, focuses on Diana’s weekend over the Christmas holiday at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk in 1991 — the weekend she ultimately decided to end her marriage to Prince Charles.
“Spencer is a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life,” the Charlie’s Angels star said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name; Spencer. It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold onto what the name Spencer means to her.”
The official description of the film reveals that the marriage “has long since grown cold” during this time. “Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at Sandringham Estate,” it reads. “There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. This year, things will be a whole lot different.”
Spencer will be filmed in Germany and the U.K. and will be released in fall 2021. 2022 marks the 25th anniversary of Diana’s death.
Diana and Charles married in July 1981 and had two children, Prince William and Prince Harry. The couple separated in 1992 and announced their divorce in 1996 after they both admitted to extramarital affairs. Diana died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997. She was 36.
Diana’s life was recently chronicled in season 4 of The Crown, though her brother Earl Charles Spencer has spoken out against the Netflix series.
“The worry for me is that people see a program like that and they forget that it is fiction,” the White Ship author, 56, said during a November episode of Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh. “They assume, especially foreigners, I find Americans tell me they have watched The Crown as if they have taken a history lesson. Well, they haven’t. It is very hard, there is a lot of conjecture and a lot of invention, isn’t there? You can hang it on fact but the bits in between are not fact.”
He also noted that he will always try to “honor” his late sister.
“I feel it is my duty to stand up for her when I can,” the London native said. “She left me, for instance, as guardian of her sons, so I feel there was a trust passed on. And we grew up together. If you grow up with somebody they are still that person — it doesn’t matter what happens to them later.”
