“Spencer” Director Pablo Larraín on the Horror & Humanity in His Princess Diana Movie

Director Pablo Larraín did not set out to make a horror movie with Spencer. But his unconventional portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales (Kristen Stewart), set over Christmas weekend in the early 1990s as her marriage to Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) is unraveling along with her psychological state, offers an eerie interpretation of the British royal’s turbulent inner world.

“It’s not that I wanted to make a horror movie. I wanted to make a movie from her perspective and the difficulties she was facing,” says Larraín in a Zoom interview the day before Neon released Spencer in theaters.

“Spencer” Screenwriter on Getting Inside Princess Diana’s Headspace

Spencer (opened on Friday, November 5) casts Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, rumored to be “cracking up” when she reluctantly joins the royal family in an enormous countryside manor for a tense Christmas holiday. The movie, directed by Pablo Larrain, describes itself as a “Fable from a true tragedy.” To that end, screenwriter Steven Knight used facts gleaned from the 1991 gathering to devise a fervid psychodrama that takes place largely inside Diana’s head.

See Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in First “Spencer” Trailer

The moment we heard director Pablo Larraín was helming a film about Princess Diana starring Kristen Stewart, we were intrigued. Adding to the intrigue was the fact the script was from Peaky Blinds creator Steven Knight, and that the film would focus not on the entire, tragic saga of Princess Di’s marriage, divorce, and death, but a snapshot in time when Diana’s world was starting to unravel. Spencer focuses on just a few days in Princess Di’s life,

Kristen Stewart is a Young Princess Diana in First “Spencer” Image

The first image of Kristen Stewart as a young Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a visual reminder that this is one of the more intriguing films slated for 2021. Stewart and Larraín have teamed up to tell a story about a very specific time period in Princess Diana’s life—the weekend when she decided she was going to leave Prince Charles.

First, check out the full image from Neon:

Kristen Stewart is Diana,