Kristen Stewart Says She Feels "Protective" of Princess Diana Now That's She's Playing the Late Royal

Kristen Stewart opened up about feeling "protective" of Princess Diana now that she's playing the late royal in a biopic.

princess diana kristen stewart
(Image credit: Getty Images)
  • In the upcoming royal biopic Spencer, Kristen Stewart will take on the incredible challenge of playing Princess Diana. 
  • In a new interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Stewart opened up about the role and how "protective" she feels of the late royal.
  • The movie will take place over three days of Diana's life and will reportedly focus on her realization that she needed to divorce Prince Charles.

Princess Diana always had a natural ability to touch and connect with people and that's still the case, even now, more than 20 years after her death.

During a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Kristen Stewart opened up about how she feels about the late royal, who she's playing in the upcoming biopic, Spencer.

"I didn’t grow up with her maybe in the same way, I was really young when she passed away," Stewart, who was only seven when Diana died, explained. "I was really young, [I] didn’t know what was going on. It’s hard not to feel protective of her. She was so young."

Rather than simply rehashing biographical details of Diana's life Stewart's film will turn inward.

"My movie takes place over three days, and it’s this really poetic internal imagining of what that might have felt like rather than giving new information," Stewart said. "We kind of don’t have a mark to hit, we just also love her."

Those three days are expected to be the days leading up to Diana's realization that she has to end her marriage to Prince Charles, so focusing on what must have been going on in Diana's head and heart makes sense.

Spencer doesn't yet have a release date, but filming is expected to begin in early 2021. Watch Stewart's full interview with Kimmel (in which she also discusses recreating Diana's iconic hair) below:

RELATED STORIES
Kayleigh Roberts
Weekend Editor

Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.