RIGHT ROYAL
Kristen Stewart pulls off a great Di job in the hauntingly brilliant ‘Spencer’
TORONTO — Director Pablo Larraín took a big gamble when he cast Kristen Stewart in a role as weighty and revered as Princess Diana. The Chilean’s game of royal roulette has paid off. Because Stewart, who we’ve always known is scores better than the average-to-wretched scripts she’s so frequently handed — “Twilight,” “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “Charlie’s Angels” — is haunting, playful and blisteringly human as Di at the end of her rope.
Her princess is a broken woman so alive with promise and love and humor, but held back by mummified royals who only scold and sneer, and an unfeeling, slimeball husband. All she has in the world are her two boys, who worship their mum. The tragedy is that every millisecond of the movie, we’re fully aware of the fate that will befall this young mother.
Stewart is the star of “Spencer,” a dream-like movie that had its North American premiere Wednesday night at the Toronto International Film Festival. The evening was easily the most electric of the entire week, and brought the audience back to the good old days: Most seats were full, there was rousing applause at the end and film buffs loudly analyzed every moment on the way out. As it should be.
The unconventional drama, which takes place over an imagined Christmas at royal residence Sandringham shortly before her and Charles’ divorce, is one of several films and TV shows resurrecting Diana lately, including “The Crown” and “Diana: The Musical,” which is coming to Broadway in November and Netflix in October.
“Spencer,” by a long shot, is the most fictional of them all. Through its fibs, however, the movie manages to be the most honest and probing take, and gets to the meat of what was tormenting the People’s Princess better than any simple historical retelling ever could.
Larraín’s 2016 film “Jackie,” which stars Natalie Portman as a mourning Jackie Kennedy in the aftermath of husband’s assassination, took a similar tack. The director likes to use enormously famous women to explore grief and survival in the spotlight. His movies, while sly and clever, are almost like operas in their emotional heft. In his vision, Diana obsesses over Anne “Off with her head!” Boleyn — seeing herself in Henry VIII’s wronged wife. I kept thinking about Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena.” And the director has other theatrical tendencies. In one fantasy sequence — one of many — Diana rips off her pearl necklace at dinner, the pearls fall into her bowl of soup and she eats them. The jewelry crunches against her molars. It’s freakin’ weird, yes, but you get it.
What you’ll also get from Larraín’s moody film is a glimpse at how Diana was feeling shortly before her marriage fell apart for all the world to see. You will not be treated to a historical rundown of actual recorded events. And, unlike Peter Morgan’s “The Crown” and “The Queen,” you will not get a sympathetic, isn’t-she-wonderful Queen Elizabeth II. We view the world from Diana’s perspective, so goodness emanates only from her children, William and Harry, and the servants she’s closest to (Sally Hawkins beautifully plays one named Maggie).
In one scene, late for yet another palace meal, Diana turns to her adoring kids and says, “Will they kill me, you think?” Steven Knight’s script ain’t trying to be nice.
Stewart won’t win the Best British Accent trophy at the Kids’ Choice Awards, and the film is not what we’ve come to expect from palace intrigue dramas, or any historical Oscar bait, really.
But of all the Diana projects out there, this is the one the late Diana Spencer would want you to see.
JEREMY Swift had a surreal experience learning about his Emmy nomination for playing good-natured p. r. director Leslie Higgins on the Apple TV+ comedy “Ted Lasso.” “I’d looked on some prediction sites and saw a story that four of us might be nominated [for Best Supporting Actor], which would be the first time since ‘Modern Family,’ ” Swift, 61, told The Post, alluding to his co-stars Brett Goldstein (who plays the snarky Roy Kent), Brendan Hunt (Lasso’s assistant, Coach Beard) and Nick Mohammed (waterboy-on-the-rise Nathan).
“I was a little bit like ‘oooh!’ and then I looked at all the other predictions and I wasn’t in the Top 8,” he said.
But all four did indeed score noms in the comedy category.
“I was still a bit jet-lagged when the nominations came out . . . and my manager rang and said I’d been nominated,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘The show?’ and she said, ‘No, you!’ Then I was a little bit tearful, which is pathetic, then I was doubtful and confused and then I was tired.
“In the space of three minutes I went from emotional to bafflement to doubtful.”
All three of those emotions can also describe Swift’s on-screen alter ego Higgins, who handles publicity and social media for AFC Richmond, the English soccer team coached by gung-ho American Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), the hyperoptimistic, awshucks ex-coach of a small college football team who’s given to life-affirming aphorisms and homespun homilies. When we met Higgins in Season 1, he was an obsequious, nervous yes-man who trembled in the presence of bitter team owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham, who is also up for an Emmy). In Season 2, Higgins is much more assertive — in a nice kind of way, of course — and he’s even surrendered his office to no-nonsense team shrink Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), moving around from spot to spot and trying to be impossibly accommodating.
“Higgins, this season, is more of the man he’s meant to be and is more comfortable in his own skin,” Swift said.
“Before the [narrative] in the show even started, he had a back story with [Rebecca’s ex-husband and former team owner] Rupert Mannion and . . . he had to do bad stuff for Rupert and then Rebecca came along and he had to do bad stuff for her. And all the while he had to keep his job going because he’s got a village-worth of children. But now that he’s not having to carry out any more dirty deeds and he’s been acknowledged and given his proper position in the club, he can move forward and use his skill set.”
Swift’s Emmy nomination is a first for the veteran actor, who’s been working steadily since the 1980s in theater, movies (including “Gosford Park”) and in British television. Fans of “Downton Abbey” will recognize him as Septimus Spratt, the butler of the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith). He also had starring roles in other British series, including “Foyle’s War,” “The Durrells,” “The Moonstone,” “Doctors” and “Wanderlust.”
“I really didn’t do any telly until I was about 31, then I started to do more of that and got a few leads in comedies and things. Then around the age of 40 I did a couple of films,” Swift said. “I like pivoting to different, diverse media — I find it wakes up your sensibilities and fires your neurons.”
Swift said he had a feeling that “Ted Lasso” was onto something special in Season 1 — but nothing prepared him and his cast mates for the rush of international acclaim it’s engendered since premiering last year. “I remember hearing from a producer/ writer friend of mine who’s got a big hit comedy show that he heard from some crew members who worked with us that they thought the show was amazing. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting because the crew can be quite a cynical bunch,’ ” he recalled. “But no way could I ever have conceived of this,” he continued. “The show hitting at the time of the pandemic — how could you ever predict that? A lot of people on the show have said the world was a cynical, s - - t place before the pandemic and that’s what ‘Ted Lasso’ was addressing: this folksy, positive guy who says whip-smart things that hit home.”