KEY POINTS

  • Stewart Pearce said "Spencer's" characterization, nature and storyline had "nothing to do with" Princess Diana
  • The royal expert also found Kristen Stewart's frenetic energy distracting 
  • The "Diana: The Voice of Change" author said Stewart's "very mannered" performance threw him off

Princess Diana's former voice coach Stewart Pearce took issue with Kristen Stewart's portrayal of the late royal in "Spencer."

The "Diana: The Voice of Change" author recently shared his thoughts about "Spencer" during an interview with Us Weekly. While the Pablo Larraín film received rave reviews from critics, Pearce didn't think it was accurate.

"I thought it was a very unusual take on the substance of Princess Diana," Pearce told the outlet. "I would say it’s much more to do with the director’s lens into what he believed to be the reality of a neurotic disposition within a woman — who just happened to be Princess Diana."

The film follows Princess Diana through a few days during the 1991 holiday season as her marriage to Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) hit rock bottom. Both "Spencer" and Stewart have been getting plenty of Oscar buzz since it was released on Nov. 5.

However, Pearce was not as impressed and found the movie to be very far off from the real royal story of Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in August 1997.

"The characterization, the storyline, the nature of the way that the screenplay worked, what Kristen did — that was nothing to do with Princess Diana," he explained. "It was a sort of surreal elegy that was created by Pablo, the director. I loved what he did with [the 2016 film] 'Jackie.' I thought it was extraordinary, you know, that sort of immensely myopic lens into the torture that Jackie [Onassis Kennedy] had experienced. And evidently, he was trying to use a similar psychological investigation into Diana."

Pearce also noted that Stewart's frenetic energy was very distracting when she portrayed the late Princess of Wales, who was seen as quite graceful and elegant.

While the royal expert acknowledged that it is "difficult" to play iconic figures like Princess Diana, who was known for her "sparkling authenticity and extraordinary immediacy," Pearce told the outlet that Stewart's "very mannered" performance threw him off.

"It took me a long time to move into the actual movie itself and try to bathe in what his perspective was," he added.

Pearce found it difficult to evaluate Stewart's performance since he didn’t agree with the writing or direction behind the movie.

He described Stewart as a "really interesting" actress and artist but thought she was "contorted into a mannered performance" in the film that came off as "unreal" to him.

"Diana was all flow. Diana was elegant and gracious and very into her body. And what Kristin had been asked to do was to move through a very staccato, a very boom-boom-boom-boom-boom quality of energy. So it was actually difficult to hear what she was saying most of the time," Pearce explained.

Stewart previously admitted that she was so nervous when she was about to film "Spencer" that she suffered TMJ, or temporomandibular joint disorder, and couldn't open her mouth for two weeks. She managed to overcome it after Larrain assured her that she could do it and urged her to "relax and trust the process."

The actress also previously made it clear that "Spencer" was not a biopic. "Our movie is dramatized as hell. It's condensed into three days," she told the Los Angeles Times in September.

Kristen Stewart
VENICE, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 03: Kristen Stewart attends the red carpet of the movie "Spencer" during the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 03, 2021 in Venice, Italy. Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images