film profile], with the story being set in the days around Christmas at the Sandringham estate, Queen Elizabeth’s private home. Here, Diana will come to terms with her failing marriage and her overall unhappiness, ultimately setting her on a path that would change perceptions of the royal family forever.
Larraín, not being British and thus not overly familiar with the royals, found an offbeat angle for the story. Ensconced in a sprawling 20,000 acre estate, he saw Diana’s arc as an inverted kind of fairy tale: “Usually, the prince comes and finds the princess, invites her to become his wife, and eventually, she becomes the queen. That is the fairy tale. When someone decides not to be the queen and says, ‘I’d rather go and be myself,’ it’s a big, big decision, an upside-down fairy tale.”