It’s a daunting task to portray a real-life princess beloved by millions and mourned the world over at the tragic news of her death in 1997.
The movie is Diana, currently in production, and the actor is Naomi Watts who reluctantly took on the role of the iconic royal.
“It’s a little scary playing possibly one of the most famous women of our time,” Watts tells Celebuzz. “There’s so much information out there that people are inevitably going to make comparisons.”
But Watts looks nothing like Diana!
Born in Britain but raised in Australia, Watts had to undergo a heavy transformation for the role including six weeks of dialogue training, four wigs and a prosthetic nose.
But if the nose is fake, the clothes are real, some of them, anyway. According to USA Today, in some scenes Watts will be wearing dresses actually owned by Diana.
Will this be another one of those grand Hollywood biopics?
Actually, Diana is an intimate love story chronicling the final two years of her life, (following her divorce), and her affair with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, played by Lost’s Naveen Andrews.
The two met when Diana was visiting someone in the Royal Brompton Hospital. According to her personal butler, Khan was “The true love of her life.”
There were rumors they planned to marry but Khan got cold feet due to media attention. At the inquest following her death in August 1997, he testified that their relationship had ended months before.
“It was really very difficult for her,” Watts saya. “She’s definitely someone who had to fight for happiness, but impressive that she did and that she kept fighting for it given the circumstances.”
And how did Watts get over her reluctance to play the ‘People’s Princess’?
“I think, at the end of the day, if the script is good and the story is good,” she shrugs, leaving the blank to fill itself in. “The story had to be told at some point.” So why not Watts?
Watch the trailer for Watts’ latest film, The Impossible, below.
