Diksha Sundriyal
Princess Diana finds herself terribly alone and shackled in Pablo Larraín’s ‘Spencer.’ The film takes place over the course of three days, which Diana has to spend with the rest of the royal family at Sandringham to celebrate Christmas. With so much going on in her life, the Princess struggles to keep herself together, and with each minute, she feels like slipping into the abyss. One of the few people who helps her stay sane during this time is Maggie, her dresser. She becomes Diana’s confidante, with whom she shares all her paranoias and fears. However, like a lot of things in the film, Maggie isn’t exactly real.
The Fictional Maggie is a Composite of Real People
From a screenplay penned by Steven Knight, ‘Spencer’ uses its fair share of creative liberties to tell Diana’s story. For dramatic purposes, several characters and events have either been fused into one or created out of thin air. Maggie is also one of them. Knight revealed that she is not based on any particular person who was close to Diana. Instead, she is a composite of several people who were around her during Christmas of 1991 and shared their experience with the writer, allowing him to form a picture of those three days in his mind.
While Diana never had a dresser named Maggie, she did have a dresser she was particularly close to. Fay Appleby was Princess Diana’s dresser for six years, during which time the women became really close. In one interview in 1997, Appleby talked about Diana confiding in her about the suffocation she felt in the cage of the royal family. To her credit, the dresser was deeply loyal to the Princess, and they stayed in touch even after Appleby left her service. Reportedly, Diana even attended her friend’s wedding and kept tabs on her when she was diagnosed with cancer. Appleby passed away in 2002.
Another person who can be considered an inspiration for Maggie is Anna Harvey. A former deputy editor for Vogue, Harvey was often the person that Diana would turn to while seeking advice for her outfits. She was the Princess’ stylist and, over the course of their long relationship, became a close confidante of hers. She passed away in October 2018 at 74 years of age. One could also consider Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, as a possible influence on Maggie’s character. He was with her during the turbulent years of her marriage and stayed on as her butler even after the divorce and till her death in 1997. The extent of their friendship can be imagined from the fact that Burrell revealed later that back then, Diana was one of the few people who knew he was gay. He publicly came out in 2017.
Maggie’s Love Confession to Diana is Fictional But Essential to the Film’s Plot
One of the key moments in ‘Spencer’ is when Maggie tells Diana that she is in love with her. This revelation shocks the Princess, but it also lifts her spirits, and she feels much better than she did before. In real life, there is no information to suggest that Diana had received a love confession from any of her dressers or any other staff member. However, she did have a more openness towards them as compared to other royals. She was known to mingle with the staff and tried to get to know them, which was part of her popularity and appeal to the masses. Thus, in writing a film about her, Steven Knight felt it was important to explore that side of her story.
Knight revealed that the intention behind adding the love confession to the script was to try and understand the love that Diana received from her subjects. When he looked at her life, he saw the amount of love and reverence that the people had for her, and the hold she had on them felt like a mystery to him. In the movie, Diana largely remains secluded, and we don’t get to see her out with the public. So, to touch upon the mystery of that love, the screenwriter added the part about the love confession from Maggie, which catches Diana off guard but also gives her comfort in what is a particularly difficult time for her.
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