As Emma Stone adds one more glittering award to her already impressive collection – an Oscar, a Bafta and another Golden Globe, among others – the star can reflect happily on the film that reunited her with one of her favourite directors, as well as giving her one of her most rewarding roles.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things tells the story of Bella Baxter, a dead Victorian woman who is brought back to life by a brilliant scientist, only to run away with a lawyer, played by Mark Ruffalo, on a voyage of s e l fdiscovery and sexual awakening.
Based on Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, the quirky, fantastical film with Frankensteinesque overtones is Emma’s second collaboration with the Greek director, with whom she worked on the Oscar-winning The Favourite.
ONE-OFF ROLE
“She’s hands-down my favourite character ever. I know that I will probably never get to play a character like her ever again, which is heartbreaking to me,” says Emma, 35, who was “shocked” to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.
Her escapade with Ruffalo’s character, the debauched Duncan Wedderburn, is central to the film and includes some erotic scenes, which the stars took in their stride.
“They were fine – those scenes made perfect sense to me,” says Emma, who first came on board with the project in 2017 and is also credited as a producer.
“Bella is someone without shame, so why would I [have shame] as an actor? There is something really wonderful about the way Yorgos captures those scenes,” she says.
“Whether it’s a sex scene or someone nude, it’s made to feel clinical and almost funny. It’s never gratuitous, so it serves the story in an interesting and funny way.”
Luckily, she also got on with her co-star. “I don’t know how Mark did it, but he took a really quite toxic character in Duncan and made him almost lovable,” she says. “He is so much fun to work with and we had some amazing scenes together. It was pretty crazy, but a lot of fun.”
At the start of the film, Bella’s brains and body are not quite synchronised, so Emma worked with the director for a month on her movement before filming began.
“So much of the fun of it was the fact that Bella wasn’t comparable to anything else, so we experimented a lot in terms of her physicality, her language and her evolution. We created stages of where she is at each point in her evolution.
“With any other project, I would be looking into a person’s history, whether it’s a real cha
