The first trailer for Kristen Stewart’s much-awaited Spencer, a story of Diana, Princess of Wales, has been unveiled mere days before the film’s premiere at the Venice film festival.
Spencer takes a look at a weekend in the life of Diana at Sandgringham, where she decides to call off her marriage to Charles. The trailer sees Stewart embodying Diana’s pain and it’s gut-wrenching. It sees her dancing and falling, trying to run away only to be struck by reality, it sees her gasping, anxious and wretched. Diana’s known feelings seemed to have been mimicked to the T but we don’t know whether her accent and body-language will be too.
The trailer is also reminiscent of the glimpses of Emma Corrin’s Diana from The Crown, with a little more darkness and focus on the Princess of Wales. It is ringing with a happy but haunting church choir, since it’s Christmas, after all, for everyone except a lonely young girl.
The film is directed by Pablo Larraín, the Chilean director who’s to be credited for previously ushering Natalie Portman to a best actress nomination for her role in his critically acclaimed drama Jackie. The film captured the life of Jackie Kennedy after the assassination of her husband.
“It’s hard not to feel protective over her,” Stewart said about Diana back in 2020, according to the Guardian. “She was so young ... everyone’s perspective is different, and there’s no way to get everything right ... what is fact in relation to personal experience.”
Larraín, whose also the mastermind behind Neruda and the more recent episodes of Apple TV+’s horror series Lisey’s Story, spoke to Vulture about Spencer recently. He raised concerns about the possibility of the film catching the audience off guard.
“I think some people could misunderstand it,” he shared. “Before they go to see a movie like Spencer, they might say, ‘We’re going to really understand who this person was.’ No! Wrong number! Wrong movie! We don’t do that! We’re just trying to work with whatever that person was and create a fable out of it. That’s what I’m looking for. We’ll see if it works.”
Spencer comes at a time when there are a series of projects about Diana in the pipeline. These projects include a Broadway musical that opens in November and the new season of The Crown which will feature Elizabeth Debicki reprising the role after Corrin, who was recently nominated for an Emmy after winning a Golden Globe for her performance.
Stewart’s performance is still an early contender for awards but it could place her alongside the likes of Lady Gaga for her role in House of Gucci and Nicole Kidman for her performance in Being the Ricardos.
Spencer will premiere in competition next month at the Venice film festival alongside Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter. It will open in cinemas in November.
Watch the trailer here:
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