Video: Kristen and Pablo Larrian talk to THR at the 'Spencer' LA premiere

“I have a lot of cameras in my life; I have to talk to people about things that I cherish,” says Stewart, but with one key difference: “I’m allowed to do that in a really unencumbered, free way.”Looking at the lives of Kristen Stewart and Princess Diana, it’s easy to make the comparisons: two young women growing up in the spotlight, with nonstop scrutiny of their public and private lives.

The star steps into the royal world in Spencer, taking on the daunting task of portraying one of the most famous women of the modern era. The Neon film, which follows three days in December 1991 as Diana and Prince Charles near the end of their marriage, premiered in Los Angeles on Tuesday after a successful international festival run and growing awards season buzz for Stewart.

Along with that has come conversations about the similarity between the two women, which Stewart says she’s been reticent to acknowledge “because [Diana] is running swiftly away from something that feels dishonest, and I am doing the polar opposite.

“I am fiercely running toward and bashing my face into lenses being like, ‘Wait, does this come through? Does this come through?'” she told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet. “I’m allowed to make mistakes and change and evolve and grow with time and with my audience and with the world in a way that she wasn’t initially, and got to the point where she started scheduling her own interviews and made a pretty groundbreaking decision that allowed her to have a voice.

“It’s difficult to compare because I think it’s really easy to be like ‘Oh, it’s so annoying that so many people take my picture’ — the reasons for why those lenses are there are so different,” Stewart added. “I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to be forced to perpetuate a lie.”

Stewart — whose career in recent years has ranged from emotional indies to more mainstream flicks like Charlie’s Angels and Happiest Season — said she was drawn to the film both for the subject (“Princess Diana was a pretty rad figure in our history, man”) and the filmmaker Pablo Larrain (“a fucking auteur”), along with the chance to tell the story from Diana’s perspective.

“We lost her too soon,” Stewart said. “If she was able to fill in those gaps, she would do it herself, but we’re doing it for her because we love her.”

Of the enthusiastic reaction the film has already garnered — from that Oscar buzz to the Spencer trailer’s internet-breaking moment — Stewart admitted, “it’s tight.”

“I would be so surprised if people weren’t kind of stoked on the movie because I loved making it and I could tell when we were doing it that we were doing something kind of transcendent and honest and powerful,” she said. “If people disagreed, or if people were very starkly like, ‘Oh, fuck that movie.’ I would be like, dude, I don’t even know who I am, how human am I?” noting how public reaction is often reflective of how she feels about a project.

“We were all very truthful in our experience, and if people didn’t see that, I’d be like, ‘Well, let’s stop making movies, I’ll go do something else,'” she added.

Director Larrain, who was also behind Jackie, said that he knew Stewart was his Diana because “besides the incredible amount of talent that she has, Kristen can play that mystery,” as he characterizes the princess as the most mysterious person of the 20th century. “It’s not just the voice and the mannerism and the way she walks and looks, it’s what she’s not saying, what she’s hiding.”

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