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I was reading a past interview you did around the release of season 5 of Poldark and they brought up you playing John Lennon in Cilla — you mentioned you wouldn’t mind playing someone a little less famous because the pressure was terrifying, which I thought was funny because now you’re playing someone like Prince Charles! Was that something you had to grapple with when choosing to step into the role?
Any worries or anxiety I had about portraying Charles—an incredibly famous, alive person—were just trumped by the idea and excitement of working with people like Kristen [Stewart], Pablo [Larraín], the cinematographer Claire Mathon, and the writer Steven Knight. When a gathering of those people exists… That’s particularly exciting. I knew they’d be creating something weirdly shaped and angular instead of just repeating the same stories that have been told in film before.
It’s a particular process when you’re playing someone real; you’re not just creating a person or finding something within you. Instead, it’s an external thing you’re looking at and comparing yourself to which can be difficult. It’s easy to feel like you’re getting it wrong a lot more than you might if the person is based in fiction. The film is liberated from the facts as well to an extent, too. It says at the beginning of the film that it’s “a fable from a true tragedy.”
I loved that line so much, I feel like it perfectly sets up the film.
Me too. I think it really helped people accept it as well. We’re not trying to tell them something that’s real that they missed and should know about. Instead, the film is inspired by an imagination that stems from reality. No one knows what happens behind those closed doors. It’s more like a poem or painting that’s inspired by something else rather than it being seen as a true documentary. Once you understand that, everyone—from us to the audience—begins to feel free. It brings a different spirit to the film when you free yourself of restrictions.
When I saw Spencer at TIFF, as soon as the Anne Boleyn stuff started happening there was a feeling amongst the audience of excitement; none of us knew where you guys were taking us. It speaks so much to Pablo as the director and Steven as the writer to open up Diana’s world as we know it and not just give it a retelling but instead give it a reimagining of the story we think we know.
I totally agree. In my view, it’s only worth making those things if they are coming from a different place. Obviously, we’ve all read and seen and heard a lot about this family, this woman, and this relationship. If you’re going to approach this subject, there needs to be a good reason to do it. You need to have an original perspective on it. This film definitely has that and it’s been clear to me from the start.
Spencer is centred around Diana and the experience she has over that weekend and, for the most part, there is not a scene in the movie without Diana’s perspective. The scenes with Charles are particularly powerful; they are gut-punching. It feels like there’s no air in the room at times.
Yeah, you’re there on her shoulder, you’re there in her head. It’s almost as if you’re her ally and everyone else is being viewed differently. The use of the rest of the family is used sparingly to show the distance Diana feels from them. Charles, obviously, is one of those people she feels incredibly distanced from.
When you received the script, did you feel that energy there?
Yeah, I did. For the audition, we did the scene over the snooker table and it is such a meaty piece of dialogue. We saw it as having a conversation about one thing but really they are talking about something else entirely, there is so much subtext there. If there was even half of what that scene conveys I would have been interested because there’s so much to work with as an actor. It’s intense, it’s condensed.
I’ve loved Kristen’s work for so long and I have so much respect for what she does as an actress. I knew she would be coming with a level of intensity and creativity, she is so imaginative. She wanted to play with it, try different things, and that’s what we did. With a scene like that, you have to trust the words you’re working with and for us, as the two actors who are up for messing around, and with a director who wants to push you as much as possible, you know it’s going to be interesting. I love the work I did as Charles because you get to see a range of who he is even with how little you see him. I don’t think he’s a villain; you see some heart, you see some regret, and you see sadness flickering through him. There’s a real person in there.
There’s that scene over dinner with the family just silently showing their disdain towards Diana with Charles quietly begging her to get herself together through gritted teeth. When you compare the Charles in that scene—reserved, pull together—and the Charles in the scene with the snooker table, it’s like night and day. It must’ve been fun for you to dive into these different facets of Charles as his emotional pendulum swings.
It was! It was easy to see his perspective and the sense that he just wants to play along for the sake of saving face with his family. He desperately wants her to do that, which is essentially what he’s been doing for so long. She’s in a place where she doesn’t want to act and be silent, she wants to be herself. He’s under such a huge amount of pressure and you can feel the weight of that in those scenes as he tries to control the uncontrollable—both Diana and his future which was set up for him since he was born.
I know there’s a lot of material about the Royals and Charles, but was there anything in particular that you read to flesh out your version of Charles? Or did you prefer to avoid engaging with stuff so it didn’t taint the script?
I did, actually! I went very out of my way to do it because I knew little about him and the rest of them. They’ve somewhat existed outside of my vision for my whole life and I never bothered to really look at them. I read three different biographies that had varying degrees of support and sympathy for him. I listened to a huge amount of his interviews and I watched a lot of footage and after watching so much, I learned I wanted to find his own perspective on himself as opposed to other people’s perspective on him because the range is too broad. I wanted to know how he felt about himself so I could strengthen my own feelings going into filming.
[Laughs] In a way, I ended up having quite a biased perspective on him now because I’m kind of his biggest ally. I have to believe and support everything he does in the film so it was interesting and enlightening to learn to understand him better. I deepened my empathy for someone having not known much about them prior. Although I’ve never met him; I say all of this based on what I’ve read and seen.
I appreciate that because despite not being cast in the best light, I do think there’s a degree of humanity in all of us. As an actor, it’s almost as if it’s your job to find that even if they are the “bad” guy. It’s nice to hear you approached the character of Charles with a blank slate.
I wouldn’t have been doing my craft right if I based him on biased things. I feel like that would’ve been me getting in the way of not only the film but myself.
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