As a public figure who has had numerous experiences with interview quotes being twisted into clickbait articles, Kristen Stewart admits she did not think a stray comment she made about her career would blow up like it did this past week. In a conversation with the Sunday Times of London that posted over the weekend, Stewart noted that out of all the films in her career that she’s “probably only made five good movies.” Two days later she’s in the middle of a press day for her performance as Princess Diana in Pablo Larrain’s “Spencer.” And, of course, this writer is asking about it. She’s visibly annoyed at having to address it once again on this specific day, but understanding…to a degree.
“I’ve reverence for films. I think when something’s good, it’s a fucking miracle and that’s why we tirelessly…I will never stop trying to slip into being that lucky because it takes a lot of people and a lot of disparate desires to come together under the sort of umbrella of one perspective – which is the director – and it’s just super rare,” Stewart explains. “I wasn’t saying like, ‘I think I’ve only done like five good movies, even though I’ve made 50.’ [Laughs.] You know what I mean? I know it’s totally not what I was saying. We were having a larger conversation about movies and what I’m aiming to do and just ambition and all of that. And it was not something that I thought was going to be like such a click-baity thing. But most people aren’t film nerds. I think the only people that would really get that, like what I was saying, were people that were like, “It’s true,” of a great film, like a fucking untouchable, singular, great film.”
She adds, “How many of those are there? I would say in a year there aren’t many that are made. So, the fact that I’m in five is pretty fucking cool.”
For the record, we’d suggest Stewart has seven of those films on her resume, but that’s not the point of our discourse. The subject of the day is “Spencer,” a critically acclaimed drama that imagines what might have occurred over one Christmas weekend in Diana Spencer’s life. After listening to Larrain’s pitch and reading Steven Knight’s screenplay, Stewart agreed to take on what was arguably the most challenging role of her career.
“I did a real, a deep dive [over a] couple of months of consuming all the materials. And at first, Pablo kind of encouraged me to not put so much pressure on myself in terms of learning all the details because they didn’t really matter,” Stewart reveals. “But I needed to learn them in order to believe that. I needed to know everything before we could forget about it and just make sure that we weren’t being kind of egregiously wrong about anything. I kind of fast-forwarded and thought, ‘What if I’m sitting in an interview and someone says, ‘Did you not know this incredibly important thing?’ You’re going to go, Oh, gosh. No, I didn’t.’ I need to be on lock with this. I need to be prepared.”
No actor should fear being quizzed over the life story of a public figure they are portraying, but, knowing those details were important to Stewart. Especially in the context of the film Larrain has made.
“I thought about it because this conversation does matter because also the movie is about trying to convey truthfully to the world through the lens of media. It is kind of what the movie’s about,” Stewart says. “Anyway, so it wasn’t something that I toiled over, but I also wanted to just follow the saga as a curious human person. I knew that if I watched ‘The Crown‘ and watched every documentary, and read her housekeeper’s memoir, and her personal protection officer’s memoir who loved and adored her, I just knew that I would embed little emotional buttons and triggers into my experience that once we were on set, I didn’t have to go for the first time, like, “Oh, what would it be like if someone was analyzing the hairs on your bed pillow?” Do you know what I mean?”
Over the course of the rest of our interview, Stewart discusses working with the two young actors who play Diana’s sons Willam (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry), the problem with biopics attempting to cover too large a canvas, and much more.
Note: The end of the interview features a quick discussion about the last scene in the film.
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The Playlist: Congrats on the movie. How are you feeling about all the love for your performance? Or are you trying to put it out of your head?
Kristen Stewart: No, it’s pretty tight. No, I’m not like, “I’m just ignoring everyone’s beautiful reactions to something I tried really hard to make beautiful.” I mean, no, I’m so excited. That’s why we make movies is I want a big, huge banging conversation about it, so…
So before we talk about this one, though, you did an interview recently that is sort of been blowing up because you said that you’ve only made five…
[Stewart gives a look akin to roller her eyes, but not that exactly]
Someone else already asked you this today?
Well, I mean, it’s blowing up on Twitter. What do you think? [Laughs.]
Sure, but I feel like you’ve actually made like seven or nine very good movies? Do you feel like you’re being hard on yourself…
This isn’t like a self-critical thing.
O.K.
I’ve reverence for films. I think when something’s good, it’s a fucking miracle and that’s why we tirelessly…I will never stop trying to slip into being that lucky because it takes a lot of people and a lot of disparate desires to come together under the sort of umbrella of one perspective – which is the director – and it’s just super rare. I wasn’t saying like, “I think I’ve only done like five good movies, even though I’ve made 50.” [Laughs.] You know what I mean? I know it’s totally not what I was saying. We were having a larger conversation about movies and what I’m aiming to do and just ambition and all of that. And it was not something that I thought was going to be like such a click-baity thing. But most people aren’t film nerds. I think the only people that would really get that, like what I was saying, were people that were like, “It’s true,” of a great film, like a fucking untouchable, singular, great film.
I buy that.
How many of those are there? I would say in a year there aren’t many that are made. So, the fact that I’m in five is pretty fucking cool.
And you’re in one of them this year, which is also cool.
Yeah. Thank you.
So, Pablo calls you, or emails you, or whatever. What was your initial reaction when he asked you about this project?
I mean, it’s a doozy of a subject to present. I spoke to him before I read the script. Sometimes it depends on how people want to approach you. Sometimes they’re like, “Read this and then we can talk about it.” He was like, “I want to talk to you first before you even… ” My agents hadn’t even told me what the idea was. They were just like, “Pablo Larraín wants to speak to you.” And I was like, “For sure.” So, he presented this abstract landscape, takes place over three days, is kind of precise in a way, but also lives in a serious gray area in terms of what we know about her factually. And, “I think you should do it,” and I was like, “O.K.” So, I was super attracted to the idea of not doing a biopic. Biopics have gotten a bad rap lately probably because most of the successful attempts at conveying a life on film is they’re usually not…what’s the word? You know.
Factual or historically accurate?
Not accurate, full. Like you don’t usually try and do 15 years of someone’s [life] or like a whole life. You end up doing a movie where you take a stone and you skip it across the body of water, and the stone comes out dry. You never fall into anything. You never actually end up knowing someone or feeling like you fell into any true emotion. It’s just sort of like skipping along the life going, “Look, we showed you everything they ever did.” It’s like, “Yeah, but we already know all that shit.” So, when he said this, I was like, “But the thing about her is that we don’t know her. How do we know what those conversations were like behind closed doors?” I think it’s kind of easy to forget in doing all these interviews though, is that she did electively in the last few years of her life engage publicly and really try very hard to bear herself in a really articulate way. So, any question of like, “How could you trace some material that you can’t confirm? Why would you subject a character, a historical figure, a real person who already felt so stolen from to kind of more unasked-for attention?” I think once you call into question the stories that you’re entitled or allowed to tell, it’s like, “Am I only allowed?” It’s like the person directing this movie, did they need to be an English white woman from the aristocracy? It’s like, “No, he’s a Chilean man from fucking… ” You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Some of the most interesting parts of making anything is always the perspective of a different perspective and sort of going, “Gosh, this person brought me to a thought process that I would’ve never had without her and I couldn’t be more different from this person.” So, please. I think if you look at Diana as a figure, as the way she functioned in the world, the way she reached out, the way she wore this palpable craving, physically, you can see her just kind of begging to be touched and to touch other people. For me, it felt a bit like a call to arms. It almost felt like, “Yeah, we should keep this conversation going.” So, I definitely was really, really moved by the whole idea of getting close to the idea of this woman.
Pablo has said that the last thing that he’d want is for an actor to mimic a public figure and, obviously, you don’t with your performance. But was there any particular interview or anything you read that sort of stuck with you while you were making the film about her?
I mean, yeah. Lots of things, like I did a real, a deep dive [over a] couple of months of consuming all the materials. And at first, Pablo kind of encouraged me to not put so much pressure on myself in terms of learning all the details because they didn’t really matter. But I needed to learn them in order to believe that. I needed to know everything before we could forget about it and just make sure that we weren’t being kind of egregiously wrong about anything.
I kind of fast-forwarded and thought, “What if I’m sitting in an interview and someone says, ‘Did you not know this incredibly important thing?'” You’re going to go, “Oh, gosh. No, I didn’t.” I need to be on lock with this. I need to be prepared.
That’s unfair though. No one should have to have a master’s degree in someone they’re playing to do press. That’s ridiculous.
Yeah. But I thought about it because this conversation does matter because also the movie is about trying to convey truthfully to the world through the lens of media. It is kind of what the movie’s about. Anyway, so it wasn’t something that I toiled over, but I also wanted to just follow the saga as a curious human person. I knew that if I watched “The Crown” and watched every documentary, and read her housekeeper’s memoir, and her personal protection officer’s memoir who loved and adored her, I just knew that I would embed little emotional buttons and triggers into my experience that once we were on set, I didn’t have to go for the first time, like, “Oh, what would it be like if someone was analyzing the hairs on your bed pillow?” Do you know what I mean?
For sure.
I’m like, “I’m already pissed about that.”
It’s different.
Know what I mean? The housekeeper comes in without knocking and I’m like, “Get the fuck out!” I’m so angry for her. So, the research was not necessarily because we were trying to be correct, but just because I was trying to know her, get as close to her as I could emotionally.
One that I love about the movie is how it focuses on her as a mother and how important her sons were to her. Pablo says he feels like the film is a often a movie about motherhood. When you read the script, was that something that popped to you? Or is that just Pablo’s perspective?
I think in going through any of the stuff with her, it’s the most embodied, unconditional, absolutely pure, true, confident version of her and everything else feels tenuous, and shaky, and kind of like desperate and not in a bad way. That can be a really strong thing to see in someone as being kind of honest in a vulnerable position and going like, “I need, and it’s very clear, and I’m reaching out.” And so that was always very present. But then the other thing that was in stark contrast to that was anytime her kids were around, it was like that wasn’t there at all. I mean, she was fairly untouchable energetically and in the scenes that were in the script with the boys, it suddenly felt like we weren’t telling a story about Princess Diana. It was suddenly a movie about a woman who could be anyone. That’s a very noble aspect of her. Because she is this ironically kind of singular figure who’s always yearning for more human connection than is possible for her to have, the most poignant part of the movie is not hard to relate to at all. I mean the most poignant part of the movie is that she’s normal and that she had this kind of disarming, really relatable thing that Steven Knight did really beautifully. Those scenes are very, very touching in the script and I will say because of the boys and the way that they were shot, possibly more touching in reality.
Oh.
They were the only scenes that were improvised.
Oh, really?
Yeah. Pablo was so smart. He just wanted the kids to feel happy and comfortable like they’re having fun actually playing a game. And those kids are so steeped in British culture, they know more about the Royal family than I do. So, they start ad-libbing things like, “Do you really want to be the king?” And like, “Are you…how? You guys are really spot on.” [Laughs.] They killed it and it was something that Pablo wanted to cultivate and preserve, and did so beautifully. I mean, he has kids. I’m the youngest in my family. Obviously, I am a kid. I am a child of my mother, so it’s not like I’m outside of the idea of what this feels like. But he kind of helped alleviate any stress and made it fun. He was great because he hired kids that were fun to play with and who were really game and honest, and we all really wanted to love each other, and it was kind of easy once we got there. It was like, “Oh, we got this.” They carried me through. They were incredible. I was so lucky that the one kind of wild card element that I could not control ended up supporting me.
At the end of the film, there is an unexpectedly euphoric scene centered around a familiar ’80s pop song. Pablo says it took him a long time to figure out what that song was going to be. When you got the script, it clearly didn’t say, “It’s this song,” but did you have a sense that it would have this sort of uplifting sort of ending?
Yeah, it was in the script. The song, not specifically, but I think it says like, “Harry turns up the radio.” Do you know what I mean? His hands explode over his head and it looks like he’s going to ride… Do you know what I mean? By the end of the script, there was elation, like, absolutely. Although the first time I heard that song, though, I was shattered.
Why?
I mean, I love that the movie has the ending that it does because it finishes the story without having to actually articulate what happened. As soon as you hear Mike & the Mechanics go, “All I need is a miracle,” you’re like, “Oh, get out of the car.” You’re just like, “It’s true,” and you’re not going to get it. And it for me, when after having seen the movie I think three times now, I can’t breathe at the end of it.
Oh.
I just can’t believe that what happened [to Diana, happened], but it is uplifting momentarily.
“Spencer” opens in limited release on Nov. 5.