For some actresses, taking on the role of Princess Diana could come with a lot of pressure. After all, she was dubbed the People's Princess. But for Kristen Stewart, portraying the late Princess of Wales in Spencer makes her "stand at attention in the best way."
Just as the world loved Diana, "I feel sort of the same way about her, and it happened really quickly," Stewart said during the Nov. 24th episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. "I didn't grow up with her maybe in the same way. I was really young when she passed away."
Looking back at Princess Diana's death in 1997, the 30-year-old remembered seeing the sea of floral tributes. "I've never seen so many in one place," she said. "I was really young [and] didn't really know what was going on. But now, it's hard not to feel protective over her. I mean, she was, like, so young and obviously she comes out to here."
According to Deadline, which broke the news of the casting in July, the upcoming film covers a weekend in the early '90s when the royal knew her marriage to Prince Charles wasn't working and that she needed to carve her own path. The outlet reported the movie also won't cover Princess Diana's death but rather the fraying of her relationship with the Prince of Wales and her love for her children, Prince William and Prince Harry.
"I mean, everyone's perspective is different and there's no way to get anything right because what is fact in relation to personal experience?" Stewart told Jimmy Kimmel. "My movie takes place over, like, three days, and it's this, like, really poetic internal imagining of what that might have felt like rather than, giving, like, new information. So, we kind of don't have a mark to hit. We just also love her."
Until the film's 2021 release date, fans can get their royal fix by watching The Crown. In this season of the Netflix series, Emma Corrin takes on the role of Princess Diana. And just like Stewart, the 24-year-old actress knew portraying her would be no easy feat.
"Initially I was very daunted, very much listened to the noise, heard all the voices, and got quickly frustrated and quite scared about it and thought, 'This isn't actually giving me anything to work with,'" Corrin told E! News earlier this month. "So, then I very much had to put blinkers on and just do my own thing."
However, she managed to calm her nerves after reading the script. "I realized this is a character that I'm playing," Corrin added. "This is The Crown's version of Diana. I can bring a lot of what I want to do with this part. Everything that resonates with me. That really changed it for me. It doesn't remove the pressure and the responsibility that I feel, but it made it more manageable to do the role."
To see Stewart's interview, watch the video above.