The Princess of Wales is all over popular culture this fall. Here’s why her story still resonates, according to experts.
Deb Stratas always felt like Princess Diana was a kindred spirit. She saw parallels between their lives: youthful marriages, motherhood, the pain of divorce. Stratas read “dozens and dozens of books” about the Princess of Wales to better understand her private joys and anguish.
And yet, “I always felt that her voice was missing,” Stratas recalled. “You read all these biographers — the security guard, the butler, the newspaper reporter — and they write about things that happened. But what was she thinking and feeling?”
Stratas tried to answer that question for herself. She wrote three novels about Diana, a trilogy that traces her early years in the British royal family to her tragic death in 1997. She published a fourth book, a nonfiction chronicle, in February 2020.
The impulse to go inside Diana’s mind is all over popular culture these days. “Spencer,” a new biopic starring Kristen Stewart and directed by Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín that debuts in theaters on Friday, could become an Oscar contender.
The film premieres a month after CNN started airing a six-part documentary series (and accompanying podcast) about the princess. Netflix is home to both “Diana,” a filmed performance of a Broadway musical about her life, and the drama series “The Crown.”
The most recent season of that Emmy-winning saga explored Diana’s personal struggles with bracing intimacy, freely mixing fact and speculation — and earning breakout star Emma Corrin a Golden Globe.
