It’s 16 years since Lady Diana Spencer was killed in a car crash, but her life has already been the subject of movies. In 2006, for example, Helen Mirren won an Oscar for The Queen, which looked at the Royal Family’s reaction to Diana’s dramatic death. Reviews of the film Diana, which is about her secret love affair with a Pakistani heart surgeon, Hasnat Khan, have been less positive. British critics hated it and the website Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 3 per cent rating. It stars Naomi Watts in the title role. She talked enthusiastically about the project:
Naomi Watts (Australian accent): It really sort of gives us a look into how lonely her life became and, with all the media attention and fascination, how isolating that was, and perhaps created a level of paranoia in her, as it would – I mean, how could it not? – but then this love story sort of breathing life back into her, and showing us that side of her that was real.
And she says that it was a challenging role:
Naomi Watts: As an actor, you’re always looking for women who are complicated and full of contradictions and I’m interested in watching those films and following those stories, and I’m also, in life, interested and drawn to those kind of women in my friendships; you know, playing a character that’s just one colour is boring, and watching that story is deathly boring. I love that she was all things: she was strong and rebellious at times, she was happy and giggly and flirty and incredibly wise and obviously warm, you know, brought great warmth to the monarchy, that sort of changed its wiring to this day.
The love of her life?
She also talked about the character of Hasnat Khan, who is played by Naveen Andrews:
Naomi Watts: What we know is that, of all of the men she was involved with, post-marriage, this was the one that was kept most secret, andI think he obviously behaved incredibly honourably, unlike some of them! So this affair, this relationship, took place over the course of a couple of years and they had a lot of fun together, dodging the paparazzi, and media attention, and disguises involved sometimes, secret meetings late at night in parks, and so I think they had fun with that and, of course, the writer really tapped into that.
an alpha male
And she thinks that it was a powerful love story:
Naomi Watts: I think she just probably fell in love with his mind and, you know, he’s a... a powerful man, not in the obvious sense, meaning successfully, powerful financially, all those ways that we tend to define power, but in that he was an alpha male, he had a great sense of himself and strong and very intelligent and, yeah, I think he just had a lot of integrity, and I think she was just immediately drawn to him, and he brought out a confidence and an intelligence in her that seemed like she wasn’t always so free with, but with him she was able to.
