Kristen Stewart slips off her white stilettos and sits cross-legged on the sofa in front of me.
The 31-year-old former Twilight star is in London’s Corinthia Hotel promoting Spencer, the film that will almost certainly earn her a first Oscar nomination for playing Princess Diana.
She’s not the first to take on the People’s Princess, following Naomi Watts (2013’s terrible Diana) and Emma Corrin (The Crown), but she might be the best. Truly, Stewart melts into the role with absolute, utter conviction.
‘I’m affected by the energy she had,’ she says, ‘as everyone is and was, and it’s daunting to step into something like that. It’s daunting to take on such a historically treacherous subject but at the same time I knew it was going to be something I could really learn from and the story doesn’t attempt to be an authority.’
Spencer, as the opening caption says, is ‘a fable from a true tragedy’ spanning just three days of Diana’s life in 1991 when she attends Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham. She’s paranoid, fragile, vulnerable, bulimic and isolated.
‘We get her to the point where she’s about to leave the family, and she’s going to embody her own self and life and find voice and agency, and she did that,’ says Stewart. ‘She was herself.’
Sadly, her freedom was short-lived given she died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
‘I’m obviously not saying anything that literally every single person in the world doesn’t already feel but the tragedy of it is so mind-boggling to me,’ says Stewart. ‘As a concept even now, I can’t even believe it happened.’
There are moments in Spencer that are strange, such as Diana’s belief that she sees Anne Boleyn’s ghost. It’s the second time Stewart has made a film touching on the spirit world, after 2016’s Personal Shopper, in which her character is haunted by the death of her twin brother. Is Stewart a believer?
‘I don’t know but not knowing leaves room for belief,’ she says. ‘I think that her soul, her person, her [own] self, her energy has lingered in a pervasive way. And even if it was only in my own imagination, I just held her the whole time. She was constantly with me.’
This is Stewart all over — honest, raw, open. Given what she faced growing up — a star aged 12, when she featured in 2002’s Panic Room opposite Jodie Foster, followed by Twilight mania, where she and her ex, Robert Pattinson, endured media hysteria — you’d think she’d have curled up into a little ball. But Stewart never shied away from her self.
‘I don’t understand how somebody could play the actor version of themselves in public and then be a different person,’ she says.
In 2017, guest-hosting US comedy show Saturday Night Live, she responded to Donald Trump, who had tweeted about her break-up with Pattinson: ‘Donald, I’m so gay, dude.’ Quite a way to come out.
Last week, she told Howard Stern on his radio show that she’s engaged to screenwriter Dylan Meyer. ‘I wanted to be proposed to and she nailed it,’ she said. ‘We’re marrying! It’s happening.’
It’s another stage in Stewart’s personal trajectory, one she admits has now been irrefutably influenced by playing Diana.
‘It kind of connected me to reach out,’ she says. ‘I love the idea of holding someone’s hand that you don’t know because you can tell that they are not well.
‘That’s something we keep ourselves from doing to protect ourselves, out of insecurity but if you can kind of get past that…’
She tails off for a second.
‘Playing her really did feel good,’ she finishes. ‘I felt closer to people.’
KRISTEN ON…
The Crown
Kristen Stewart only got into the Netflix show when she won the role of Diana in Spencer.
‘I really loved watching it,’ she says. ‘I think I watched it in three nights. Now I love it. I can’t wait for the next series to come out.’
The fifth series is due out next year and will feature Diana played by Australian Elizabeth Debicki.
‘I’m really curious and looking forward to the next series because it’s the time period that we tackle.’
Telling it like it is
Kristen grew up in a family steeped in the entertainment industry. Her mother Jules was a script supervisor and her father John (known as ‘Papastew’c) has been a stage manager and TV producer.
This might be why, while most actors put on a front to talk to the press, she can’t hide her true self.
She says: ‘No one’s the same all the time. But yes, this is me. I’ve never been able not to be honest.’
Her next movie
Next up Kristen will appear alongside Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux in sci-fi Crimes Of The Future.
‘It’s a return to form for director David Cronenberg,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t spare you and it’s so deeply thoughtful. Disturbing but also stunning.’
Kristen hopes it will continue the drive to get bums on seats.
‘I’m worried about the fate of cinema,’ she says. ‘I watched a movie every single weekend until I graduated high school.’
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