Kristen Stewart plays it cool

Kristen Stewart plunks down on a bench, on the west side of the basin of the reservoir in Silver Lake. She gets comfortable, pushing her hair away from her face. A thicket of short crunchy blonde that matches her eyebrows, also blonde; both are growing out. They are the color of dead grass, still holding the memory of its green.A shorn blonde comes to mind, one whom Stewart will soon portray: Jean Seberg in director Benedict Andrews’s political thriller, Seberg. It chronicles the late actress’s fatal demise brought on by the FBI’s surveillance program COINTELPRO, which targeted and tried to discredit Seberg because of her relationship with Hakim Jamal and the Black Panther Party. “Even though she went through circumstantially, really horrific, tragic things, there was something about [Seberg] that was energetically undeniable,” says Stewart. “She was so misunderstood. It’s not like you need to hero-worship a celebrity, they are just people you want to look at. The fact that people stared at her and fixated on things that were not real, projections: That really ultimately destroyed her.”In November, Stewart opens the reboot of Charlie’s Angels very, very blonde, in a platinum Barbie wig that conceals her asymmetrical crop. Telling the story of a systems-engineer whistle-blower who goes underground and is protected by the Angels, the action comedy is directed by Elizabeth Banks (who also plays Bosley) and costars Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska. Stewart plays Sabina, a Park Avenue heiress turned international spy. She’s a lovable doofus, a show-off with a dopey heart. She has a weakness for chasing bad guys, is prone to close calls and staying chill under pressure. She’s always snacking. It’s a comedic turn for Stewart. “I’m not even like that in real life. [Banks] put punch lines on my jokes every day. I overthink stuff, I make everything way too long. She’s like, ‘Dude, just say it faster.’”“We wrote her a lot of jokes,” says Banks. “We also improv’d because I come from that background, going all the way back to Wet Hot American Summer—you find something in a moment.” Stewart, says Banks, “lands as many jokes in this movie as any comic actor.” Banks approached writing for Stewart as if it were fan fiction. “What do I want to see Kristen Stewart do in a movie? Like, the fan in me wants to see Kristen Stewart do this. And then I would just make her do it.”You won’t catch Stewart overacting. She’s like a circuit breaker. Onscreen, if she’s eating a sandwich, she’s eating a sandwich. If she’s trying on a dress, she isn’t posing. She is the image and then the cut. She’s understated and actually cool. The action-packed antics of Charlie’s Angels (horse-racing in Istanbul, gunplay, Krav Maga) intercept the comedy. The movie never slows, celebrating, as is the tradition with this franchise, PG diversion: a dance number turned showdown, spy toys, the color pink, Noah Centineo.This Charlie’s Angels feels harvested from the same era as the last one—the one from 20 years ago, starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu. That’s a good thing. It’s extra-lite and pleasantly out of place. The sort of atmosphere that suggests the cast—to put it plainly—enjoyed working together. I ask Stewart why she thinks the tone of Charlie’s Angels is effective despite the movie’s early-aughts pep. Her answer is simple. This is a movie about “women at ease.”- Excerpts from her September 2019 cover story on Vanity Fair

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