Kristen Stewart has transformed into Princess Diana in the first photo out for the upcoming movie, Spencer, which will cover the months before she decided to separate from Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne.
Royal fans on social media have shared Stewart's photo side-by-side the real Princess of Wales. One fan said that she thought it was a "before and after" picture as many commented that Stewart's transformation was pretty good.
Spencer is from a screenplay written by the creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight, with Pablo Larraín as the director. The movie is set in Christmas 1991, when the Prince and Princess of Wales spent their last holiday as a family at Queen Elizabeth's Sandringham Estate.
Following the photo's release, the producers also confirmed that actors Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner), Sean Harris (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) and Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) are in Germany and filming with Stewart. According to Deadline, the production of Spencer will be moving to United Kingdom in the coming months but it has been one of the first British productions to film outside of the country after Brexit took effect.
There was a controversy regarding the eligibility of the young British actors playing Diana's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, prior to filming. However, a source confirmed to Deadline that they did not have to get a visa for the young stars despite the Brexit travel restrictions. It's assumed, however, that some of the actors on Spencer are German as the producers and financial backers of the production are German investors.
Meanwhile, Stewart said that the biopic is titled after Lady Di's family name because it will tackle her efforts to reclaim herself, after her 10-year marriage to Charles, and hold on to what her given name means for her. Before she married into the royal family, Princess Diana was Lady Diana Frances Spencer, the daughter of an aristocrat.
The movie is expected to be in theaters by the fall of 2021, nearly a year before the 25th anniversary of Diana's death in August 2022 or her 60th birthday in July of that same year. It will also come 29 years after Prime Minister John Major announced the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the House of Commons.
According to reports, Majors made some additional remarks to the announcement that surprised some Members of the Parliament. The prime minister said that despite the separation, Diana may still be crowned as the Queen of the United Kingdom, while Charles may still succeed his mother as the head of the Church of England despite his marital status.
Buckingham Palace also issued a statement to say that there was no third party involved in the marriage. However, two years later, in an interview on television, Charles admitted that he was in an adulterous relationship.
Diana also said in a separate interview that there were three people in their marriage. While the ex-couple did not originally have any plans to divorce, Diana's explosive interview prompted Queen Elizabeth to tell the Wales couple to start with their divorce proceeding.
Charles and Diana reached a settlement in August 1996, and she relinquished her title or any claims to the throne. A year later, the Princess of Wales died in a car accident in France at the age of 36.
