Pablo Larraín is taking on the portray of another legend…
The 43-year-old Oscar-nominated Chilean filmmaker will direct Kristen Stewart in the drama Spencer about Princess Diana.
The Steven Knight-scripted film covers a critical weekend in the early ‘90s, when Diana decided her marriage to Prince Charles wasn’t working, and that she needed to veer from a path that put her in line to one day be queen. The drama takes place over three days, in one of her final Christmas holidays in the House of Windsor in their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England.
“I’ve always been intrigued and fascinated by the Royal Family and how things are in that culture, which we don’t have where I come from,” Larraín said. “Diana is such a powerful icon, where millions and millions of people, not just women, but many people around the world felt empathy toward her in her life. We decided to get into a story about identity, and around how a woman decides somehow, not to be the queen. She’s a woman who, in the journey of the movie, decides and realizes that she wants to be the woman she was before she met Charles.
The film won’t deal with Diana’s tragic death after she left that palace life, but will examine the fraying of the relationship with her husband, and her ferocious love for her sons Prince William and Prince Harry.
“It’s about finding herself, about understanding that possibly the most important thing for her is to be well, and to be with herself and by herself,” Larraín explained. “That’s why the movie is called Spencer, which is the family name she had before she met Charles. It’s very contained, set over a few days in Sandringham. They spent Christmas there for many years and that’s where we set the movie in the early ‘90s, around 1992, we’re not specific. It’s Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day, three days, very contained. We get to understand what it is she wants and what she will do.”
“How and why do you decide to do that? It’s a great universal story that can reach millions and millions of people, and that’s what we want to do. We want to make a movie that goes wide, connects with a worldwide audience that is interested in such a fascinating life,” he adds.
Production is expected to begin in early 2021 on the film, which Larraín will also produce.
Larraín previously directed Natalie Portman in Jackie. The film follows Jackie Kennedy in the days when she was First Lady in the White House and her life immediately following the assassination of her husband, U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The film earned Portman an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Larraín’s other credits include Neruda, about poet Pablo Neruda, as well as the Spanish-language film No, Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and The Club.