Kristen Stewart ‘Loved’ Emma Corrin’s Princess Diana, Used Same Dialect Coach for ‘Spencer’

Playing Princess Diana in “The Crown” resulted in an Emmy nomination this year for Emma Corrin, and now Kristen Stewart is all but assured to be heading to her first Oscar nomination for playing the Princess of Wales in “Spencer.” The Pablo Larraín-directed drama earned Stewart instant raves out of Venice, Telluride, and TIFF. IndieWire’s Oscar expert Anne Thompson wrote the Best Actress Oscar is Stewart’s to lose at this stage of the race. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Stewart went on record as a big fan of Corrin’s portrayal.

“I watched it probably in one night,” Stewart said of the recent Emmy-winning “The Crown” season. “I think [actress Emma Corrin] did a really beautiful job. I mean, not to say that my opinion matters at all! But I loved her in it, truly.”

It turns out Stewart and Corrin’s portrayals of Princess Diana share a common starting point in dialect coach William Conacher. Stewart worked with Conacher just as Corrin did before here and just as Naomi Watts did to play Princess Diana in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2013 biographical drama “Diana.” Corrin said during Emmys season that Conacher is “a fantastic dialect coach on voice and working on movement and character.”

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Despite working with Conacher and conducting loads of research, Stewart told Entertainment Weekly that her Princess Diana prep remained a challenge because “there are contradictory materials from the horse’s mouth. She doesn’t always say the same thing in every interview, you know? There was a fickle nature, obviously, to a lot of the facts. She is, very sadly and very ironically, one of the most unknowable people in history, when all she wanted was to just be closer to people and bare herself.”

“There was something just in absorbing her completely over the last six months leading up to this,” Stewart added. “I knew that I had hit some kind of elemental energy. If people have a lot to say about it not being a perfect impression, that’s so okay with me.”

Stewart revealed at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month that she signed on for “Spencer” before ever reading the script, which was penned by “Locke” screenwriter Steven Knight. Neon is opening “Spencer” in theaters November 5.