A drama to Di for.
PABLO LARRAIN:I remember two moments.
And then of course the day of the tragedy.
Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in ‘Spencer.'.Shoebox Films
She behaved in a way that maybe many people would have behaved.
I think that became really attractive.
Whatever we would consider a fairy tale, she just didn’t fit in that story and never did.
Pablo Larraín and Kristen Stewart attend the ‘Spencer’ red carpet at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.Alessandra Benedetti - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
Obviously, you haveThe Crown, which is very much traditionally British.
That’s probably the biggest paradox.
But yes [their story], its shape and the basis, is a very classic structure.
And that simple element is what I think we are attracted to.
Yeah, I think that’s the solution for the biggest issue that you were mentioning.
This is how can you really get to know someone in just a few days and a few hours.
You have to work with that, and you know that.
There’s the TV show.
There’s documentaries, the movies.
There’s hundreds of books.
She’s already an icon in culture, so you oughta start from that base.
But about the script, yeah, the very first draft was pretty much exactly what the movie is.
So Steven Knight [Peaky Blinders,Eastern Promises] just sort of built a perfect machine for you?
Yes, his words are sharp and the emotional moments are very clear.
I just really honed into that, and I had great actors.
Kristen, of course, but Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, they are icons from my life.
I’ve been following them since I have memory.
It’s not that they’re that old!
But they’ve been around for a while.
And they are coming from theater as well which is also a very important part of my background.
I had such a joy working with them.
They carry a sense of humanity, but they carry the truth as well.
In these kinds of movies, that really matters.
Well, that’s probably a question for Steve.
Not in the case of Sally.
Actually what she said was “I’d be a pussy.”
But you had this unwavering faith in her.
And in the screen test, it clicked.
That’s very interesting because I never saw or felt that fear on her.
She was always very confident.
But it’s funny that she said that, because I had the same experience.
The operation is so complicated.
It’s such a sophisticated and complex structure to get there….
But [the screen test], yes.
At some point, I showed it to her from the monitor, and it was like,voila.
It was right there.
From the very beginning, he was very confident that Kristen was going to be successful in that.
Once we had those elements, we were ready to actually make the movie and go through it.
I was curious what you meant.
I feel that, yeah, the ’50s and ’60s.
It’s a combination of elegant and truthful and strange and enigmatic and magnetic, I don’t know.
And obviously the fashion.
We were feeling that we were making a movie that had a very specific period.
But if you take those elements out, it’s a little bit out of time.
The main element for that timeless feeling was Kristen.
Okay, we have to talk about the dance montage.
Did you know from the beginning exactly where you were going with that?
I kept thinking and feeling that it is a very stressful narrative.
It’s an uncontrolled chaos.
There’s paranoia and visions.
There are nightmares and dreams.
Sometimes I would play LCD Soundsystem, or Talking Heads.
Sometimes it would beElevator to the Gallowsby Miles Davis, which is a very hard thing to dance to.
But that would create a mood in her so she would move.
Diego would start dancing with her.
And then we just started doing it every day.
It’s like doing yoga, right?
So we had all the things we could use for the montage.
I would spin around, it was insane.
But at some point we start breathing some sort of beautiful peace, I don’t know.
She just felt peace.
Did these two films feel like really different moods to you though?
That doesn’t mean that they were entirely successful.
And that doesn’t mean that they weren’t affected by it.
I personally think that they believed they did, but it never really happened.
You do wonder too if William or Harry will make it to see this movie.
I don’t know!
We will for sure invite them.
I have a lot of respect for them.
As I said, don’t forget it’s a mom’s movie.
That’s the thing, that’s our main motivation.
Or at least, mine.
