The 79th Annual Golden Globe’s nominations have been released and it’s a big year for lesbian and bisexual actors! Kristen Stewart, nominated for her depiction as Princess Diana in Spencer, and Lady Gaga, nominated for portraying Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci, are among those being acknowledged for their acting in 2022.
Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart, who recently became engaged to partner Dylan Meyer, was a somewhat surprising choice to play Princess Diana in Spencer. Then again, Kristen has shown versatility throughout her extensive acting career. From her breakout role as Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga film series, to depicting gay rockstar Joan Jett in The Runaways, Princess Diana is merely a new challenge that Kristen has shown she’s fully capable of.
The film’s synopsis reads: “The marriage between Princess Diana and Prince Charles has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the queen’s estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game, but this year, things will be profoundly different.”
Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is cleverly labelled “A fable from true tragedy.” How can you explore the unspeakable trauma of simply being Diana when her very existence brings up so many (often unanswerable) questions about power, corruption, secrecy, and the vulture-like celebrity culture we’ve come to see as “normal”? Her death is still a touchy subject today, decades after the fact.
Depicting the globally-beloved Diana is a tough gig but Kristen Stewart has done her (very) complicated memory justice. Linda Holmes wrote for NPR, “[Kristen’s] performance here is powerful, and it carries this version of Diana through such instability as a character (is she right to be afraid? is she losing her grip on reality?), but she always seems like the same person, the same good mother who doesn’t know how to begin to separate herself from the life she’s walked into. She is asked to do big things, grand things, genre horror things, but she never tips over into caricature.”
Lady Gaga
I am not sure why Lady Gaga, like Kesha, is constantly referred to as a “gay ally” when she’s made no secret of her bisexuality. She’s representing us, not just advocating for us. Anyway, with that little rant over, let’s get to Gaga’s depiction of Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott’s film House of Gucci.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Playing Patrizia Reggiani would be a challenge for many actors, let alone one known more for her music than on-screen appearances. Patrizia Reggiani wasn’t only married to the grandson of Gucci founder Guccio Gucci, she was convicted of having the fashion heir killed.
The role required a lot of research in order to understand the mind of such an unexpected murderer. Female killers are still incomprehensible; they fascinate because women are “supposed” to be controlled and subservient. Male rage is accepted as natural.
“I read and looked at everything I could possibly watch to understand her,” Lady Gaga told NPR. “What I found, you know, pretty quickly was that the Patrizia you see now is at the very end of this film.”
“I had to sort of reverse the car of her as a woman and go, OK, well, what made her this way? And I had to decide as an actress, did she have the murder gene? You know, was she born a killer? And I don’t believe she was. I think she was born an Italian woman in Vignola, Italy, December 2, 1948. And I think that it was these trigger points of trauma throughout her life that turned her into what she became, which was a monster.”
Good luck to all of our lesbian and bisexual reps at the 2022 Golden Globes!
