Shooting is underway on Diana the movie and, as the producers did with Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, a snap of the star in full fig and wig has been launched upon the world. Naomi Watts, whose previous love interests have included Laura Harring in Mulholland Drive and a sizeable ape in King Kong, plays the spurned wife of the heir to the throne and lover of the son of the owner of Harrod's in a film to be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
That name may ring a bell: he’s the genius who gave us Downfall. From Hitler’s bunker to Buckingham Palace may be thought to be possibly more than a step, but they are both buildings that have at least one thing in common: no one inside either has the faintest idea what’s going on in the outside world.
The script, which covers the last two years of the life of Di, is by Stephen Jeffreys, whose portrayal of the Earl of Rochester’s sexual incontinence in The Libertine may or may not be germane. The cast also include Naveen Andrews as heartthrob heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan and Charles Edwards as Patrick Jephson. Douglas Hodge and Juliet Stevenson are also somewhere in the mix.
From the set of the film, which is being shot in Mozambique (where the land mines come from) and Croatia (standing in, presumably, for the Côte d’Azur), Watts has this to say: “I’m excited and honoured to be playing the role of a truly remarkable woman, who had such a positive and profound impact in so many ways.”
It may of course be as big a success as The Queen, which came at the Diana legend from a less hagiographical angle. Anyway, here’s how Watts will look. The portrait is not by Testino. Anyone else think she looks more like Tina Brown, the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, New Yorker and, crucially, Diana's biographer?
