Royals Kristen Stewart Explains Wearing a Wig in 'Spencer' and Says She Binged 'The Crown' 'Probably in One Night' Kristen Stewart shares she didn't have her own hair styled to play Princess Diana because "if it wasn't a wig, we would have had so much less time to shoot" By Lanford Beard Lanford Beard Lanford Beard has been with PEOPLE since 2015. In addition to serving as the Senior Digital TV Editor, she has edited for Lifestyle and News verticals across the site. Lanford previously worked at Entertainment Weekly, NBC News and Ralph Lauren, to name a few. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College and a Master's of Science degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism. People Editorial Guidelines Published on October 5, 2021 12:39PM EDT Photo: Neon Kristen Stewart embodied Princess Diana from head to toe in the upcoming biopic Spencer — but the head part involved a little help from the film's hair department. "If it wasn't a wig, we would have had so much less time to shoot," she told Entertainment Weekly for this week's cover story. "And we were f---ing sprinting," continues the actress, 31. "This was not padded or luxe in any way. We were balls to the wall, gunning through it. Which you can feel in the movie 10 or 15 minutes in — once it gets up and starts going, it doesn't stop, it barrels. It felt that way to make it, too." Pablo Larraín's fantastical biopic follows an anguished Diana as she joins the royal family for the Christmas holiday in 1991, a decisive weekend when she chooses once and for all to leave her fractured marriage to Prince Charles (Jack Farthing). Every Photo of Kristen Stewart in Costume as Princess Diana Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer (2021). Shoebox Films The year-long lead-up to royal couple's separation (announced in December 1992) was dramatized in season 4 of The Crown, which Stewart said she watched before reporting to set. "I watched it probably in one night," she told EW. "I think [actress Emma Corrin] did a really beautiful job. I mean, not to say that my opinion matters at all!" she adds, laughing. "But I loved her in it, truly." (Stewart wasn't alone — Corrin, 25, won the Golden Globe for her heartbreaking, one-season turn as the Princess of Wales.) Princess Diana, from the Big Screen to Broadway Neon Among the many whimsical elements of the upcoming film — including what EW describes as a "soup-related hallucination and the ghost of Anne Boleyn" — will be a montage of the onscreen Diana expressing her complex frustration through her physicality. Stewart explains, "At the end of every single day, there was 30 minutes of extra time to pick an outfit and for Pablo to pick a song in a room and just go. He said, 'Because we're not doing everything chronologically, we're not doing a biopic, this is your chance to tell the whole story. All you need to do is inhabit the space and listen to the music and carry her with you, and everything you know about being in this place, and just see what happens. See if it comes out.'" She admits, "The first time, I didn't want to do it. I'm such a control freak I was like, 'I need to know what I'm doing. I want to be prepared for what I'm doing!' But I came down these stairs, and I know it sounds so silly and esoteric, but it felt so f---ing spiritual and so spooky, and I was so overwhelmed by the feeling of her. And I don't mean like ghosty stuff. I just mean everything she's made me think and feel, and it all just kind of happened in a moment. I was like, 'You were so right. You're so right about this.'" Spencer opens on November 5.