Why Emma Stone’s ‘Poor Things’ role required a physical and emotional transformation

Emma Stone is hungry but contrite, having grabbed a quick spot of lunch before meeting Screen International. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be chewing on your recording,” she apologises, putting down her plate and staring at the voice recorder in front of her to check it is working. “Oh, you’ve been talking to a lot of people, haven’t you,” she coos, scanning the list of recent recordings. “Leo… My god, Carey. I love my Carey.”

It is the day after a December 2023 London gala screening of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, in which Stone stars alongside Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo and Ramy Youssef, and the Oscar-winning actress is said to be under the weather. Not that you would know. Stone is a picture of charm and chattiness as she discusses a film that clearly holds a special place in her heart.

She first worked with Lanthimos on 2018’s The Favourite, which was nominated for 10 Oscars and 12 Baftas, including Stone as best supporting actress at both awards. A month after filming wrapped, Lanthimos took Stone to dinner and told her what he was hoping to do next — an adaptation of Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel Poor Things, which put a feminist spin on Frankenstein — and wanted her to play his creature, the extraordinary Bella Baxter. “I was immediately in love with the idea of the character,” Stone recalls. “I loved working with him, and Tony [McNamara] who wrote The Favourite [with Deborah Davis], was adapting, so I wanted it. But it took us over four years to make.”

In fact, Lanthimos first optioned Gray’s novel in 2010, the year after his third feature Dogtooth launched him outside his native Greece, but before he had made his English-language debut with 2015’s The Lobster. After the success of The Favourite, Lanthimos was finally able to make Poor Things, reteaming with UK producers Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures, with whom he had collaborated on The Lobster, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer and The Favourite, as well as Searchlight Pictures, Film4 and TSG Productions.

For Stone, Bella represented a breath of fresh air, a character who begins as a child in an adult’s body — all temper tantrums, playing with food, and uncoordinated movement — before growing into a smart, empowered young woman with agency.

“Bella goes from ‘I’ to ‘we’ in this, which I think we all do if we’re properly evolving,” says Stone. “When you’re young, you’re like, ‘It’s mine and I want it and this feels good.’ Then you start to learn about being a functioning member of society and what you can do to give back or participate, and how you can use your wisdom for good. I see it as a quick story because she grows so rapidly, from one way of thinking to another.”

Growing the character

The role mandated a physical as well as emotional transformation. “Originally I went through the script and found 10 stages of Bella’s development,” she explains, “but [Lanthimos] and I realised we needed to pare it down to five overarching stages, so if we were hopping around, we would know what each one meant in terms of physicality and where she’s at in her development.”

Bella’s journey had a refreshing lack of backstory when it came to building the part. “With adults it’s about creating a history, traumas and childhood memories, so you’re adding — at least internally,” says Stone. “Here, it was all about stripping away as much shame or self-judgment as possible. It’s not just about playing it for the first time, it’s experiencing it all for the first time, which was a joy. Because, positive or negative, Bella gives it equal weight, whether that’s sex, food, dance, travel or clothing. I found that [mindset] inspiring and beautiful to live in on a daily basis.”

The role also required Stone to be naked, frequently, as Bella discovers the joys of sex — or “furious jumping” she calls it. Stone had not done much onscreen nudity, although had appeared naked in Lanthimos’s short Bleat, which was shot on the Greek island of Tinos just prior to Poor Things. Did she have any reservations? “A little, because of my own societal stuff,” she admits. “But we had talked about the film and the way it would be done for so long, and I believed so deeply in Bella not having this shame, the camera didn’t need to have that shame either. She’s a very free being who doesn’t understand she’s supposed to feel the need to cover up. And it was a closed set, and we had this amazing intimacy co-ordinator who made it feel very safe.”

During the four years it took to develop Poor Things, Lanthimos asked Stone to be a producer. “Which I think was to give a title to all the questions I had already been asking. But it was great to feel that level of collaboration with a story this robust and vulnerable and special,” she explains.

“I was obsessed. I had a deep passion for Bella and this story. Also, Yorgos is a man, Tony’s a man, Ed and Andrew are men. I love them dearly. They’re all feminists and brilliant. But I was like, ‘I’m a woman. I am playing Bella. I would like to be part of this, weighing in on everything.’ And they were like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.’”

Poor Things premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. But Stone could not attend because of the Screen Actors Guild strike. “I was devastated. The strike was incredibly necessary, and I’m so glad we fought for what we needed, but the idea of this film coming out when it was going to originally was killing me.” And so, she “begged and pleaded” distributor Searchlight Pictures to delay the release from September 8 in the US, until the strike was over. And they did, moving the release date to December 8 in the US and January 12 in the UK. “I’m so grateful I’ve gotten to be out here in support of it,” Stone beams. “I don’t know if it’s helpful. Selfishly, I just want to be around for everything.”

Poor Things had grossed $34.5m worldwide at press time, also netting Stone a Golden Globe win plus best actress nominations at Oscar and Bafta. Concurrent with and subsequent to making the film, Stone has produced four more features via her production company Fruit Tree, which she co-founded with her husband, actor Dave McCary, in 2020 — When You Finish Saving The World, Problemista, and 2024 Sundance premieres I Saw The TV Glow and A Real Pain — as well as Showtime’s The Curse, in which she also stars.

And she has already shot Lanthimos’s latest, Kinds Of Kindness, an anthology feature co-written with Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer) and co-starring Poor Things’ Dafoe and Margaret Qualley.

“It’s a triptych. There’s an ensemble of seven and we play a different character in each one,” reveals Stone. “It was the first time I’ve done anything Yorgos has written. It’s darkly funny. As per usual.”

• Yorgos Lanthimos on working with Emma Stone and wanting bigger sets for ‘Poor Things’