Spencer star Kristen: I’m so sorry Charles became villain
KRISTEN Stewart is a front runner to take home the Best Actress gong at tonight’s Oscars for her intense portrayal of Princess Diana.
But the US star admits director Pablo Larraín’s dramatised story, Spencer, about the Princess of Wales’s three-day Christmas royal break at Sandringham in 1991, often “villianises” Prince Charles, played by Jack Farthing.
Stewart said she felt sympathy for the future king, believing he was institutionalised and unable to deal with emotions.
Once the world’s highest paid actress thanks to her role in the Twilight franchise, she says she also related to aspects of Diana’s life in the limelight.
Stewart, 31, said of the portrayal of Charles in Spencer: “I feel so bad for him within the context of our movie. It’s totally from her perspective. There are moments where he is completely villainised.
“The problem is the systemic, cyclical oppression, that he has tasted that viscerally, probably to the point where he has an ironic awareness of what she is going through.
“I feel bad for everyone involved, genuinely.”
Stewart believes Charles and Diana clashed over the royal perspective “having to have two versions of you. The one out in public to do duties and the one that stays home.” She added: “You have to make your body do things you hate. She is like ‘dude, I can’t perpetuate this lie any more’.”
She went on: “To be the first person in that institution who reached out and touched people in the face, and be someone who was very clearly broken and reaching out in this way.
“Everyone wanted to reciprocate.
“My job was to give voice to her feelings.” Stewart said: “There are some people who are born with this sparkly, protruding, infectious, incredible energy and she was one of those people. Because she was so stifled it just made people lean in profoundly.”
The Los Angeles-raised actress said she felt a connection to Diana, having herself become one of the world’s biggest female film stars aged just 21.
“It was worse for her because she looked more leashed and muzzled and braced, because she couldn’t speak. I can make stupid mistakes and fall on my face and nobody is going to kick me out of the family.
“All of her ways of communicating were so weird and sideways, diagonal and cryptic. She wore an outfit to feel strong – and she was like, ‘I am [angry] at my husband, I want him to see this.’
“Or, ‘I am going to put my head down and stare at you with my eyes like a crazy person, like this undulating swan, because I cannot say my husband is not in love with me and I’m in pain, and I have more to say than I am allowed to.’”
Stewart told online radio station Sirius XM of her first Academy Award nomination. She said: “There are certain things in life that you think will never happen and this is one of those times. I am floating.”
In the race for the coveted award she is up against Jessica Chastain for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye; Olivia Colman’s The Lost Daughter; Penélope Cruz in Parallel Mothers and Nicole Kidman’s performance in Being The Ricardos.