Kristen Stewart Would Just Want to "Hang Out" With Princess Diana If She Could

Kristen Stewart feels like she developed an intimate bond with Princess Diana while researching and filming Spencer, even though the two women never met.

At the end of the day, the late royal didn't spark curiosity in the actress playing her, but compassion. "If I could go back in time or have her back for a moment and ask her anything, I wouldn’t," Stewart told Vanity Fair in a new interview. "I’d just be like, 'Dude, can I hang out with you? Do you want to just be together for a moment?' She needed that so badly."

Stewart also explained that she anticipated intense media scrutiny and photographers following her when she took on the role of Diana—and she felt strongly that she had to protect both herself and the woman she was portraying. "I depersonalized it completely and did feel utterly protective of [Diana] in that moment. I was like, 'F**k off,'" she said. "I developed a very genuinely protective relationship with this person that I obviously never met."

The actress also talked about the frankly disturbing way the late princess was treated during her time in the royal family. "Things like people analyzing the hairs on her pillow—looking at the color of them and being like, 'Oh, was she alone last night?' Then talking about those details with other staff members as if it had anything to do with them at all," she said.

But Stewart also recognized the paradox of her having leaned into facts like these to create an authentic on-screen Diana. "Also it’s a weird thing to talk about because I’m sitting here sort of eating up these details and very thankful that they exist," she said. "Actually, in kind of attacking her character, these stories are only revealing the sh*tty situation that she was living in. In retrospect, I’m like, 'Good, everyone tell your [Diana] story. You’re only corroborating her goodness.'"

It's clear that filming Spencer was an intense emotional experience for the actress, who has previously described it as "spooky," and who admitted to Vanity Fair that she was embarrassed to have cried at the movie's recent screening in Venice. "It’s very rare to be moved by your own film…but I was shattered at the end of it," she said. "If I was in that theater, I would be judging me…[but] it wasn’t my performance that I was moved by." It was more so the whole experience of creating the film that got to her. "I’ve never had that experience. Never," she concluded.