Image Source: The Guardian
The English and Hollywood cinema has collectively shifted its focus to portray Lady Diana in a myriad of ways. From Kristen Stewarts' film Spencer to Emma Corris and now Elizabeth DeBicki getting to pay the Lady of Wales homage in a TV series, there are a lot many works of cinema trying to portray the essence of what the legendary Princess of People was like.
While these works of merged fiction and reality garnered a lot of praise from a global fanbase, a musical attempt to portray Lady Diana backfired spectacularly as fans accused the work to be "tacky" and "disrespectful." The new Diana portrayal in Diana, The Musical is featured on Broadway and shows a light-hearted portrayal of the princess, which is usually missing from the mainstream description of the lady.
Jeanna de Waal, the actress who got to portray Princess Diana, told Variety, "I'm intrigued why people think it's great to make a really serious film about her, but really bad to make a light-hearted musical." In the Friday, November 19 interview, Variety shared that the Broadway presentation has been reduced to a "sensational flop which abuses a tabloid telling of Diana's life for a few laughs and a cheap song."
However, Jeanna compared the Broadway musical to the serious representation of the lady's toughest patch of life in Spencer and asked, "They're both produced privately for profit, and they're both entertainment. So, why is one fine and the other isn't?" Continuing, the actress shared, "The audiences who come to see our show, who wear tiaras and boo at Charles, are just as deserving of their entertainment as someone who wants to go to the movies and weep."
Taking into account that the Princess herself liked a good laugh, Jeanna said, "It's literally the point to be exaggerative. It's a musical, and by all accounts, Diana was the most fun, most silly, most rebellious, most spontaneous person. And I genuinely think she'd enjoy it." However, in the end, the Kinky Boots actress left the work of judgment to the audience itself as she said, "I love that our show doesn't take itself seriously. And so you can judge it for being that if you like."
Frank Marshall, the producer of the show also shared what he thinks about the tone of the music as he said, "This was never meant to be a serious study. This is one way of telling her story, and we have to face the reality that it was a tabloid story."
On the other hand, The New York Times did not excuse the production for the way they chose to represent the story and went on to say that the Broadway show "may well win the prize as the tawdriest and least excusable wholesaling of a supposedly true story ever to belt its way to Broadway."
Apart from Jeanna, many other actresses have got the honor to share the life of the loved Princess of Wales. Caroline Bliss played the role first in 1982 on ABC. She starred along with David Robb, who got to play Prince Charles. Bliss was still in drama school and talking about her experience playing the lady, she said, "So I walked in and sat down, never for a minute thinking that I was anything like Diana." "It just hadn't occurred to me. I don't think I look very much like her...and I could see them also thinking, 'Well, I'm not sure.' And halfway through the meeting, they said something, and for some bizarre reason my reaction was, I went, 'Oh!'" the actress said while she recalled her role in a 2019 interview.
Diana: The Musical shows a light-hearted representation of Princess Diana; Credits: Variety
Naomi Watts played the royal Lady of Wales in the 2013 film Diana. The film's timeline saw Diana's relationship with Hasnat Khan, a heart surgeon, and then her relationship with Dodi Fayed. Apparently, it is said that Fayed was about to propose to Lady Diana and the engagement ring that suggested it is still on display at Harrods.
Talking about why she took on the role, the actress said, "Ultimately, the reason I wanted to say 'no' so much became the reason I wanted to do it as well. I was intrigued by the challenge. I mean, in the beginning, I thought, how do you possibly take on the most famous woman of all time when everybody feels they know her so well? How do you take possession of that character? So that was daunting, to use a word of hers…"
Watts was also concerned about how the public would take the film and the "the sensitivity of it—how will people feel about this?"
The actress said, "But I realized this story was bound to be told at some point, and how often do we stumble across such fascinating characters? They're quite hard to find as a woman and one who embodies so many different things—the fragility, but also the great strength, unbelievable charisma, great beauty, wisdom, compassion, and empathy. I thought about it, and I thought, well I can't say no to this, why not seize the opportunity?"
But just like Diana, The Musical, critics were very harsh at the film barring it from an American release.
But the one Diana Portrayal that managed to take the cake was done by Emma Corrin in the Emmy winning show The Crown. The Pennyworth actress portrayed a 19-year-old Diana just beginning to fall in love with Charles. The actress opened about the role as she said, "Initially I was very daunted, very much listened to the noise, heard all the voices and got quickly frustrated and quite scared about it."
Corrin continued, "I thought, this isn't actually giving me anything to work with, so then I very much had to kind of put blinkers on and just do my own thing. And then it massively helped, getting the script, because as soon as I had the script in front of me, I realized, 'Oh, okay, this is a character I'm playing. This is The Crown's version of Diana. I can bring a lot of what I want to to this part.' It made it more manageable to do the role."
Josh O'Connor, who played Prince Charles in the TV series, said in a 2019 interview, "Emma's doing a brilliant job, and it's breathtakingly accurate; she looked the spitting image, and it's kind of extraordinary. So that's kind of spooky."
Kristen Stewart looked very similar to Lady Diana; Credits: NPR
Other's to portray the Lady are Kristen Stewart and Nicole Kidman.
