Press conference - Emma Stone : press conference for Poor Things

By Sabine, Paris, Hôtel Le Bristol, 11 december 2023

On December 11, 2023, the elegant setting of Hotel Le Bristol in Paris hosted the press conference of the movie Poor Things. Emma Stone, whose portrayal of Bella Baxter is a key element in the film's international success, was as usual charming. Due to the illness of the director Yorgos Lanthimos, she was alone to answer our questions.

We invite you to discover our transcript of this press conference with the talented Emma Stone

Q: This was the second time that you worked together with Yorgos Lanthimos. How did you compare it to the first time? What were the main differences for you ?

Emma Stone: This is actually our third time. We made a short film in between, but I think the difference was that we knew each other so much better, obviously. He told me about this story and this idea right after we finished "The Favourite," which was in 2017, and we made this at the end of 2021. So, we had many years to kind of talk about all the aspects of the production of this, and we had by then been friends for many years, and it was great.

Q: What do you like most about working with Yorgos Lanthimos? What's he like as a director ?

Emma Stone: I think we just get along. We understand each other. We don't need to talk too much about things. He doesn't like to intellectualize, which is wonderful because I don't really either. It's very practical. Whether it's the physicality or just certain beats and trying different things, he's open to experimentation. Also, the material that he's drawn to, I really respond to. That's just great. We really just kind of get along.

Q:. Tell us a bit about the rehearsal process because that seems like that was a really fascinating part of this ?

Emma Stone: We had a rehearsal process that was similar on "The Favourite," and did it again here, and it's just three weeks to kind of play with the other actors. It's a lot of games. Yorgos Lanthimos is kind of like a conductor. We do these. You get the language and the dialogue in your body without it being prescriptive. So you're not blocking out the scenes as they're going to be done on the day. You're just sort of doing fun things and embarrassing yourself in front of each other. And by the time you get on set, you feel truly like a theater company. This was this way on "The Favourite" as well, but it was really, really important here with all the kind of vulnerability of the story. Like everybody sort of knows each other. They all know how Yorgos is. We all feel really comfortable and intimate with each other. So,I love that part of the process and it's fun, really fun.

Q: I would like to know how did you work with the intimacy coordinator? and with the director to prepare the sex scenes, as in France, it's really a new job for us.

Emma Stone: I feel so stupid because, like I said, I knew Yorgos so well. I felt so comfortable with the actors. I felt fine, and I was like : I don't think I'll need this, you know? It's fine. We're going to choreograph these scenes. It's very clinical when it comes to sex scenes. It's very planned out. Then Yorgos said to me : of course, we're having an intimacy coordinator. Elle McAlpine is incredible. I met her, and I was like: how did I ever think that we didn't need her ? I have such a deep appreciation for intimacy coordinators now. I didn't know enough about it. First of all, she keeps the set extremely comfortable and very intimate, obviously intimacy. But she also helps to choreograph these things and make it look more realistic when it's not actually happening. She just makes the environment so much better for her being there. And, it was wonderful. She was amazing. I completely understand now why it is such an imperative, such an important job.

Q: What do you envy the most from Bella? That total freedom to live wherever she wants, her intellectual curiosity or sexual freedom ?

Emma Stone:. I would say what I envy the most, which is also what I'm most inspired by in Bella, is her extreme hunger for life. And I think she lives in a space that finds everything fascinating. She finds every aspect of life fascinating because she is in love with being alive. I find it very inspiring. And I wish I could live like that more often. Whether it's an amazing experience or a really difficult one, they hold the same weight because that's life, and that's interesting. And it all leads to more evolution in you, to more growth. Nothing really has judgment on it for her, like this is really a bad thing to be experiencing. She just finds it all so interesting.

Q: How did you do that in your head, like keeping all the different stages in place? Tell us about the background ?

Emma Stone: Tony's script was brilliant. So, really, the dialogue and the way that her language develops were very much there. That was something to sort of, like, work with and try as we went on. But Yorgos and I did quite a bit of working on the physicality. And we ended up staging it out, stages one through five, just so we had a sort of touchstone of different parts of her growth in case of shooting out of order. We only really shot out of order in the very beginning of shooting. Then it was more chronological. But it was a lot of experimentation because even with the sort of conceit that she is a woman with a baby's brain, that she is a baby, she also isn't because she's fully grown in a healthy body. She's not forming her bones and her muscles, so her coordination is very different than I think it would be. So we felt like a more kind of robotic or staccato movement was more interesting. The same with facial expressions, like instead of being like a baby, all the time, it was more interesting to sort of have her be in a different space of her own kind of creation and invention. And so a lot of that was truly day to day and take to take just trying things and then trusting that Blackfish, our editor, would help to put it together.

Q: Do you consider the movie as feminist as I mean it is a leading female character that emancipates herself from the men surrounding her and who tries to imprison her and the end for me seems like a powerful Vengeance against Puki embodied by her husband.

Emma Stone : so do you find it feminist?

Q : I find it feminist. 

Emma Stone : Me too. You just gave a great answer. I mean, that was awesome. 

Q : So why do you consider it ? 

Emma Stone : everything you just said, that was beautifully said. 

Q : Was that part of the appeal for you why you wanted to make the movie ? That feminist bent ? 

Emma Stone : I think it's baked in. It's baked in that, because of her level of agency and questioning the world and curiosity. I think that's inherently feminist. I also just fell so in love with her as a person, like as a being, that I just wanted to live in her shoes, or try to live up to her shoes for a while. That was a perfect description.

Q: How did you embody Bella and how does she move, walk, and change the way she stands ? 

Emma Stone: Again, it was just experimentation. It was a lot of play and invention. We were just sort of making it up because it's not based on a true story, so I didn't have to do an impression of anybody. It was just trying things.

Q : talking about play, the dance scene with Mark Ruffalo is so incredible. What about that in particular? Like, how did you guys feel about coming up with that ?

Emma Stone : That was one of the only things we properly rehearsed. Because we needed to. Constanza was our choreographer on "The Favourite" in the scene between Rachel Vice and Joe Allwin. She runs a company in Berlin. She came in and brought dancers with her. And we started this sort of great exploratory : how would Bella dance ? How would she hold herself at this time period ? Where is Duncan's jealousy ? It was very much a scene even though it's a dance, it says a lot about their current dynamic, her kind of freedom, his trying to sort of grab her and pull her into him, her power over him in those moments and the struggle of it. So we did rehearse that quite a lot because then it goes into a stunt where I kick a man in the balls and throw a champagne at Duncan's face. So we worked on that one a lot. That was really fun to shoot because it had been a long buildup to that. We shot that near the end of the film. So it had been months of waiting to dance.

Q: Would you say that Bella is your most difficult part until now ?

Emma Stone: I would say that Bella is my most joyous part. The things that were difficult about Bella were just my own self-criticism or my own trying to strip away, my own sort of life experiences, because she is so open. But I would say she was the most joyous.

Q: Emma, you also produced the film. How does it work on the set like how much are you able to step out of the actor role to kind of observe things from a producer role or did you feel like all of that was before the shoot, and once you started shooting, you could put that producer side aside and just focus on the acting ?

Emma Stone : I mean, the producing part of it, once we were on set, was really just conversations with Yorgos and I, like talking about what things were going on and how things were unfolding. If there were any issues going on, we would just talk kind of privately about it. It wasn't really, like I felt I needed to come in and don't watch any monitors. He just has that handheld so it's not like I'm watching that back or what this needs to change. He has a lot of creative control that is his and his alone. And so it was more supporting that sort of vision and talking a lot about Bella in the moment. So I definitely didn't feel like I had to be at two lines.

Q: The relationship she has with Dr. Baxter played by Willem Dafoe is very interesting, I wanted to know what do you think of their relationships ? 

Emma Stone: It's a very complicated one, obviously. I think when I originally read it, I saw Baxter as sort of a clinical part, strange kind of cold. What Willem brought to it, was this sort of warmth that actually made it a more complicated relationship. I think that's a good thing because a lot of the commentary throughout the film I think is men and their expectations of her, their relationship to her and the way that is balanced out. So I do think that his sort of growing paternal love for her is surprising to him. She doesn't know any differently, but he tries so hard to remain cold and removed and makes her some “that just a creature and not a human being” and realizes very quickly that he can't keep her. He can't expect her to be that way. She has something in her. That's why it's so interesting in the end when she returns and he says : my surgery is yours, and she wanders the halls with a hammer and a song. And the words “I've watched you create Bella Baxter with wonder”. That's not his doing. That's her. His recognition of that provides him with a love that he never experienced in his life and that he didn't expect to. So, I think this relationship is really beautiful even though it's also fuck up.

Q: The movie has a lot of huge production design and VFX. What was the interactions as a cast member on those set ?

Emma Stone: Shona Heath and James Price, the production designers, come from two very different worlds of design. Yorgos asked them to work together, two people who didn't know each other. They didn't know if that would work. And I think what they made is a masterpiece. It was incredible because being in an entirely built world that was sort of Bella's version of the world, through her eyes. Getting to play Bella walking through Lisbon, or the ship, or all of these things that she's taking in, made my job very easy because there was so much detail everywhere. And it had all been thought through in this extremely creative unique way. It was amazing to interact with. I think all the actors felt that way. When you first walked into Lisbon, it took you 45 minutes to walk through it. There were a hotel, multiple restaurants, alleyways. And that was all real. It was practical. It was the biggest set in Europe at the time. What were they able to execute, from the conception to the design, the actual execution of it was just mind-blowing. 

Q : Coming off the back of that, Bella also really comes alive through her costumes. Were you involved in that process at all ?

Emma Stone: Holly Waddington, our costume designer, was totally brilliant and super detail-oriented. It's no coincidence that Yorgos, the Mr. details, loves detail-oriented people in these departments. We spoke at great length from the first trying-on session. I flew to Athens a few months before we went to Budapest for the shooting, and Holly came to Athens too. Yorgos, Holly, and I just tried on shapes and colors to see what worked. As they started building the costumes, we talked about the whole arc. At the beginning, Bella is padded up, wrapped in bubble wrap and Mrs. Prim is dressing her. Then when she travels, she dresses herself, and it's like, these are shorts, so I know I'm supposed to wear something on the bottom, and then I wear a hat because I'm traveling. It becomes more structured, less color, and more mature as she evolves. So, the costumes, as beautiful as they were, also were so informative for Bella because they really tell a huge story about where she is and her development.

Q: Because of the very special way Yorgos is filming, does it mean for you that you should play differently than usual ?

Emma Stone: I hope there's no usual. That's my fault if it feels like there's a usual. I think everything that you make is different, hopefully, if you're doing your job correctly. It just felt like this was the world, these were the visuals, and the aspects of her story and this story we were telling. I don't know that it feels different than it usually does.

Q: If you have one word to describe the film, what could it be ?

Emma Stone: One word? Oh my God, throw out suggestions, anybody? 

One journalist answered “Masterpiece”, and that was the end of this charming meeting with the talented Emma Stone.

Synopsis: 
Bella is a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox Dr. Godwin Baxter. Under his protection, she is eager to learn. Eager to discover the world she knows nothing about, she elopes with Duncan Wedderburn, a shrewd and debauched lawyer, and embarks on a dizzying odyssey across the continents. Impervious to the prejudices of her time, Bella is determined to give in to the principles of equality and liberation.

Poor Things
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by Tony McNamara
Based on Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
Produced by Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone
Starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael
Cinematography : Robbie Ryan
Edited by Yorgos Mavropsaridis
Music by Jerskin Fendrix
Production companies: Film4, Element Pictures, TSG Entertainment
Distributed by Searchlight Pictures
Release dates : September 1, 2023 (Venice), December 8, 2023 (United States), January 17, 2024 (France)
Running time : 141 minutes

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