Is Emma Stone Nude Again?
Emma Stone is bare-naked onscreen for the first time since she won an Oscar for her role in La La Land. This time it’s for Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, a trippy film that involves body-swapping, severed limbs, and plenty of nudity.
Stone stars alongside regular Lanthimos collaborators Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo as a member a seaside sect tasked to find a woman with the ability to raise the dead.
Poor Things
In Yorgos Lanthimos’ provocative new film Poor Things, La La Land Oscar winner Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a woman who kills herself by jumping off a bridge and is brought back to life with the brain of an infant. She has multiple sexual encounters on her erotic trip, which takes her to Mark Ruffalo’s decadent lawyer and a Parisian bordello.
Stone’s character is a combination of curiosity and audacity that will change the way women are perceived. When she was asked to take part in nude full-frontal scenes in the film, she didn’t blink. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, the 35-year-old actress spoke about how these intimate scenes were essential to her character’s narrational journey and that there was no point in making a “prude” film that would betray its main character.
The Favourite
The Favourite, starring Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz, is set during Queen Anne’s tumultuous reign in early 1700s England. It’s a story of power struggles between the queen’s close friend Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (up for an Oscar nomination), and her new servant Abigail Masham (Emma Stone). This isn’t your typical period drama. The movie is dark and funny, with plenty of intrigue and double-crossing.
Yorgos Lathimos, the director of Dogtooth and Poor Things, brings a modernist sensibility that is unique to this film. He refuses sanitize historical settings or tone down nudity in his stars.
The nude scenes in The Favourite could have scuttled a lesser actress’s career, but Stone slipped into the skin of her startled creature with invigorating energy. Costume designer Sandy Powell helped her play the character, too, dressing Stone in a mix of white and black fabrics that signaled Abigail’s upward trajectory from kitchen maid to royal court favorite. The result is an original film that also pays homage to female friendship and brotherhood.
Birdman
The Oscar winner is taking risks in Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film Birdman, which is a twitchy comedy that satirizes the vanities of theatre folk. It has a superhero background and plays with the conventions of mainstream films. It also has a lot of nakedness.
Stone’s character, Bella Baxter, has a lot of sexual encounters, and the director didn’t want to be a prude in the way that he depicted them. He had to trust her. He wanted her to be “confident and, like the character, have no shame about her body and nudity engaging in those scenes.”
The sex scenes were shot using natural light, with rigged microphones, so that only the actress, the other actors and the cameraperson could be in the room. They worked with a professional intimacy coordinator, Elle McAlpine, to make sure everything was safe. This made it feel more authentic and real than if they’d done it with a crew. It’s a gamble that is paying off. The film was released in only four theaters over the weekend and has already made half a million bucks, the second highest per-screen average for the year.
Battle of the Sexes
Yorgos Lathimos’ spirited adaption of Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs’ infamous 1973 tennis game is a crowd pleasing, well-acted dramedy which ably entertains as it cleverly serves up a volley modern-day parallels. Especially non-tennis fans will be caught up in the serves, rallies and rallying of this film that’s both entertaining and educational.
Emma Stone gives a career-best portrayal of the brash, feisty King who is not afraid to take on anyone in her fight for gender equality. She goes for broke in her nude scenes, displaying her famed fearlessness and naked beauty while delivering lines that speak to the desire of every woman–for men, for drama, for pastel de nata.
Steve Carell’s Riggs may be a controversial character, but with his hulking body and booming voice he delivers what could have been an over-the-top characterization of a racist heel. He’s the perfect foil to Billie Jean’s feminist truth-telling. The chemistry between Stone & Carell is palpable. They are one of the most popular on-screen couples in recent memory.
Cruella
The film follows the events that turn Estella, a budding fashion designer, into Cruella de Vil. Stone and Thompson recently sat down for a digital press conference to talk about the film’s new twists on an iconic Disney villain.
The film reimagines the story of the evil puppy snatcher as an origin tale, with Stone playing the young Estella before her descent into ruthless villainy and Thompson as her couturier mentor. The two actresses talked about the movie’s sexy and edgy take of the character. It will be released in theaters on Friday, as well as on Disney+ Premiere Access.
Nadia Stacey, a hair and makeup artist, helped bring Stone’s Cruella life with her wild black-and-white wig and stunning costume. The team had to work quickly because they only had two wigs and needed to retool them frequently. Costume designer Jenny Beavan used reference footage from live-action actors such as Tallulah bankhead and Bette Davies in All About Eve, to get an idea of the character’s look. These early sketches also showcase the character’s enormous mink coat and rail-thin frame.