ACT OF CREATION

While teaming up on The Favourite, star Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos forged an electric creative partnership that shows no signs of slowing down. With eccentric feminist Frankenstein fable Poor Things up next, the duo talk to Total Film about their ‘once-in-a-lifetime connection’.

Yorgos Lanthimos might be a world-renowned director but his blocking and cinematography could use a little work. Well, when it comes to video conference calls, that is. It’s June 2023 (before the actors’ strike has been called), and Total Film is logged into a three-way chat with Lanthimos and Emma Stone. Stone’s barely begun her first answer when her attention is pulled elsewhere. ‘Oh no, is it doing the tracking? Did you not turn that off?’ she asks, as Lanthimos shifts in his seat and the webcam automatically pans and zooms to follow him. ‘I haven’t figured out how to turn that off,’ he smirks, much to Stone’s amusement.

The out-of-control webcam seems all the more incongruous trained on a director known for having such a distinct vision (Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer). We’ve all dialled in today – Lanthimos from Greece, Stone from New York City, TF from London – to discuss their increasingly fruitful creative partnership, which began with 2018’s The Favourite and has snowballed since.

Though before we can dig too deeply into their partnership, that camera’s causing more chaos. ‘God, almighty,’ cackles Stone, distracted again. ‘Stand up. See what happens.’ Lanthimos obliges and the camera follows him up. ‘We should do an entire film with that,’ suggests Stone, dressed in a casual black shirt, blonde hair tucked behind her ears. ‘No one has to operate and you are always followed.’

After The Favourite – for which Lanthimos, Stone and the film were all Oscar-nominated – they reteamed for a short film, Bleat, and then upcoming period sci-fi-drama-comedyoddity Poor Things. Another movie – AND – has already been shot by the time they’re promoting Poor Things, which will play at the Venice Film Festival despite having the release postponed as a result of the actors’ strike.

Adapted from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, Poor Things is a sorta Frankenstein story in which Bella (Emma Stone) is brought back to life by a most unusual method by scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) – ‘God’ for short. Initially very childlike in her outlook, Bella develops at an accelerated rate, heading off on hedonistic travels with a rakish lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) and gorging on all the world has to offer, with zero regard for societal conventions. It promises to be an otherworldly visual treat with potent philosophical ramifications, presented via Lanthimos’ skewed perspective on the world and his gift for twisted language.

‘THIS FEELS LIKE ANOTHER LEVEL OF VULNERABILITY AND LOVE AND CARE’

EMMA STONE

Stone is also a producer on Poor Things, and has been discussing the film with Lanthimos since before the pandemic struck. ‘It’s definitely more of a raw nerve than anything I have ever been a part of,’ says Stone. ‘I’ve cared about films deeply, but this feels like another level of vulnerability and love and care. It feels very precious to me.’

As their creation prepares to go out into the world, it certainly won’t be the last time that Stone and Lanthimos collaborate. ‘It wasn’t necessarily obvious, the guy from Greece meeting this American actress,’ laughs Lanthimos. ‘It’s one of these things where it’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. You meet someone you just want to make things with.’

Were you particularly familiar with each other’s work before collaborating on The Favourite?

Yorgos Lanthimos: I think that’s a more interesting question for you. I had watched Easy A, for sure. [laughs] Emma Stone: You had watched Easy A? You had not.

YL: Of course! What do you mean?

ES: It was a huge hit in Athens?

YL: It was. Everywhere. Around the world.

ES: I hadn’t actually seen any of Yorgos’s films – it’s not surprising, with my limited cinematic scope – before I had heard about The Favourite. He had just been in Cannes with The Lobster, I think, and I met you the month after. They set up a screening of The Lobster for me – Idon’t think he was really thinking of me that much for The Favourite, right? I kind of had to fight. YL: No, that’s not true. ES: OK [laughs]. And then I watched Dogtooth…. Now I’ve seen all his films multiple times. I had a quick introduction to the world of Yorgos. And he had seen Easy A at least five or six times by that point [laughs].

Did the two of you kind of hit it off right away when you met for The Favourite?

ES: I think so.

YL: Yeah, I think since we met. It took a while until we ended up filming The Favourite. It was a couple of years later. In the meantime, we kept in touch and got to know each other a little bit. And we got to know each other very well during The Favourite, of course. We started becoming close, and started discussing other things we wanted to do together. It’s been progressing ever since.

What was it about each other that you connected with, and liked working with?

ES: I loved the worlds that he had created. In seeing his films, I found his perspective really interesting, and nothing I had ever seen before. I mean, now that I’ve seen more films – because, you know, I’m really catching up – Iunderstand that there are other filmmakers that also have interesting worlds that they’ve created [laughs].

YL: I just caught her off-guard. She hadn’t seen anything…

ES: You just caught me off-guard, because I had only watched Legally Blonde 15 times [laughs]. I think, originally, I was nervous to meet him after seeing Dogtooth, because I was like, ‘This man is going to be a sick fuck.’ And then I met him, and he was so warm and personable and funny, and so easy to get along with. That is exactly my dream dichotomy, because I like to have fun, and I like to screw around, and not take things too seriously.

I think he’s more serious than I am. Or I’m more anxious than you [laughs]. He doesn’t over-explain. He doesn’t want to talk too much about all of it. And I love that. I guess that was the draw for me.

And every project that we’ve talked about or worked on has felt completely different to the last. And yet I have such an immense amount of respect and trust in him, that I know it will work. And that’s a huge relief for an actor. So that’s it for me. What’s your answer?

YL: [laughs] So, yeah, I had seen a lot of her work. For me, a lot of the time, a lot of it is instinct, and just being interested in someone, and then getting to know them. It’s very important for me to get along, and be in it for the same reasons. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re kind of creating a little group of actors, now that we’ve started working together more and more.

Emma was one of these people where we met, we got along and then when we made The Favourite. It was great. The conversation hasn’t stopped since then. Every time we finish something, it’s like, ‘So what do we want to do next?’ It’s that kind of very close collaboration.

Emma, what was it about Poor Things that sparked your imagination when Yorgos first shared his interest with you?

ES: I mean, everything about it. The fact that it was him telling me about it was the first cognitive thing. The way he explained the story to me, the character, and what she’s going through… Her open-mindedness, and her lack of judgement, and her lack of shame about herself and about others – it was really inspiring, just from the beginning. And that’s only grown.

What was your collaboration like when settling on the look of Bella?

YL: As we were researching the film early on – even from production design, we had ideas and images for her. In order to imagine the world, and build it, and design it, you had to have an idea for what she was like and what the other characters were like. So it started very early on, but it evolved, because then there’s the input of everyone, from Emma to hair and make-up, costume, the script, our ideas. I think it’s a complex journey into getting her where she was. What’s your memory?

ES: Well, I remember I dyed my hair too dark and we had to kind of go with that [laughs].

YL: That was an idea, that she’d be almost ahead of her time – areactionary of sorts. But childlike and natural, and all these things. So we felt like, ‘It’d be a great idea to dye her hair dark.’ But then Emma went ahead and became jet black. And I was like, ‘Alright.’ [laughs]

ES: It just kept going and going and it was like, ‘Goddamn it. Alright.’ [laughs] Black

. YL: It looked stunning with her very white skin. There’s all these accidents, to the very detailed design of certain costumes, and then, I don’t know, they break apart, and then we build something else. So it’s a very complex process, I think.

It’s a very feminist film. Was that at the forefront of your discussions?

YL: I don’t think we discussed it. It was kind of obvious it was there. It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s go and make a feminist film.’ Also, I’m reluctant to say that I made a feminist film. It’s what it is. It’s my viewpoint, so it’s male, and [Tony McNamara, screenwriter] is male, and the original [author] is male. And then we have Emma’s input, and then it becomes a more complex view on this subject, and this world. For us, it’s more instinctive, and it’s the ideas and the situation and the story that are of interest to us… We want to keep that open, and not narrow it down to one specific idea.

ES: Also, the fact that it was written by a man, it almost felt like a sort of dissection of different types of men – asort of selfexamination. There’s all these different versions of archetypal men in the film. But instead of writing a sort of – for lack of a better word – manic pixie dream character in Bella, her world does not revolve around these men. These men, in some ways, sort of revolve around her, because they can’t believe that she’d exist in this way, and her thirst is for experience, and for knowledge, and to grow.

‘SEX OR ANY OTHER HUMAN ACTIVITY IS NOT PARTICULARLY HARD TO GRASP IN FILM’

YORGOS LANTHIMOS

In terms of a character being written by a man – or a feminist story – Ithink Bella could have been a male character, probably. I’m glad that she was a female character, but she’s so specific and unique in all ways. I don’t even know that her gender really does come into it for me, because she doesn’t ascribe herself to what it is to be a woman in the 1800s in England, or travelling. She lives completely by her own terms. Which I guess is feminism, right? That’s how it should be. To be able to be completely as we are, without societal boxes.

Sex is integral to the character and story. The film asks a lot in terms of sex scenes and nudity. How did you both approach that side of the production?

YL: For me, personally, sex or any other human activity is not particularly hard to grasp in film or storytelling or in any way. For me, it wasn’t such a standout issue. But having worked with people, I understand that there is a kind of intimidation and it’s because we are real people. We are exposed in a certain way. So I understand that aspect of it.

But my idea was, it needs to be presented the same way as anything else is presented. We just need to be, you know, truthful about it, and not shy away from it, especially in this story, where a lot of it is about that: her freedom to express herself through every kind of way. ES: And my relationship to it was what he’s describing. Bella is not ashamed. She doesn’t know to be ashamed of a naked body or sex, in the same way she shoves a ton of tarts into her mouth, or gets drunk and falls asleep, and has all of these experiences. She wants the most out of life. And sex, for her, is a part of that.

YL: Or dancing.

ES: Or dancing. There’s so many different facets of her that she wants to experience the most of, and then she starts to understand that if it’s too much of a good thing, it’s not necessarily as enticing any more. So she learns that as she goes on.

But when it came to the nudity, Bella doesn’t shy away from that, and if the camera were to, then the viewpoint, I think, is then… well, she’s free, but we aren’t, when we’re watching her, because of our society.

Also, I think, Yorgos does nudity relatively well, in the sense that, to me, as someone who has lived a very prudish life for most of my life, I don’t find the nudity in his films gratuitous. I find it slightly clinical, sometimes off-putting and usually very funny. So it doesn’t feel like these leering shots that are like, ‘Ooh, look at this body.’ It’s usually within the context of something that is a bit more dry or clinical or funny. So that felt right to me.

I also have to bring up Elle McAlpine, because she was amazing. Our intimacy coordinator. I felt comfortable with Yorgos. I felt comfortable with Robbie [Ryan], our DP, and Hayley [Williams], our first AD, is a woman, and is the sweetest person you’ll ever meet, and Olga [Abramson], our focus puller. These are the only people that were in the room with me for these nude scenes. Or I was with Mark [Ruffalo], who’s like a love bug. So I felt really comfortable, and I was like, ‘I think I’ll be fine. I think I’ll be alright. I won’t need to talk to the intimacy coordinator that much.’

I couldn’t have been more wrong. She was so integral to feeling comfortable. She was so gentle and passionate. She was just amazing and so helpful in that whole process. It really made me understand intimacy coordinators when they’re really good at what they do. It changed the entire energy of the set, and the feeling of safety. She was an incredible part, also, of those scenes.

What can you tease about AND, this other film you’ve completed?

YL: Well, what can we tease? It’s three different stories and you see one after the other. There’s a troupe of actors that basically play different roles in the different stories. So each actor plays three different roles in this film. It’s a contemporary story – or contemporary stories, because it’s three. That’s about it. We’ve started editing. We’re still putting the finishing touches onto Poor Things, so the editing of AND has been delayed, but now we’re really getting into it and discovering what it really is. Because you never really know with a film, until you’re done, what it wants to be.

How did making AND compare for you, Emma, to the previous films with Yorgos?

ES: It felt the same, in many ways. I mean, it was difficult in its own way to do three different characters – for all of us, to do three different characters for three different stories.

YL: In a short period, as well.

ES: Yeah, it was about three weeks. So it felt like making three kind of short films, back to back. But no, it was great.

YL: It basically felt like doing three feature films back to back.

ES: It did. They’re long. They’re going to work on that. But just getting to work together again and again, it really does change a lot when you’ve worked with this person, or these people, multiple times, because the shorthand and the ease of it is so there, that you feel like you can enter all these different worlds and it actually doesn’t feel that different. It feels like a safe space to fuck up, and to play around and to explore things, and then to also be able to have a drink together at the end of the day and feel close with them. Like you said, it’s once-in-a-lifetime. It’s incredibly rare. I hope they’ll let us keep doing things.