EMMA’S SPECS APPEAL AS BILLIE JEAN’S DOUBLE
EMMA STONE indicates her biceps and thighs, and tells how she exercised to build up her body mass to portray tennis champion Billie Jean King.
‘She has this stance,’ says the-Oscar-winning actress of the way Ms King held herself on Centre Court. ‘ Like a gladiator going into battle, ready to enter the ring. It was wonderful understanding what it would feel like to be in a body like that.’ Stone looks down at her hands. ‘Billie Jean has these big, incredible hands. Mine are tiny by comparison,’ she laughs. ‘The physicality was huge,’ she adds, of playing the sixtime Wimbledon singles winner in the film Battle Of The Sexes, ostensibly about Billie Jean’s landmark match in 1973 against Bobby Riggs: an insufferable prig who believed women were not up to the masculine mark on the tennis court, and did not deserve equal pay. But the film also serves as a study of gender politics, empowerment and sexuality; examining King’s private turmoil as she comes to terms with her feelings towards other women. There are no rampant sex scenes, as in steamy French movie Blue Is The Warmest Color. The most sensual moment is a fully clothed one when Andrea Riseborough, playing Marilyn Barnett, a hairdresser who had an affair with King, toys with her hair, gently stroking it and resting her head next to King’s — in full view of others — as she suggests how she plans to cut it. It’s a beautiful vignette. Stone noted that King has this ‘vibrancy and electricity in her’. In fact, the sporting legend was at the Telluride Film Festival, high in the San Juan range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and at 73 she does indeed still have a charge about her. I spoke to her a couple of times and was captivated by her warmth and vitality. Stone captures that essence magnificently on the screen in an uncanny, effortless performance that belies the hard work that underpins it.
The 28-year-old — who hadn’t lifted a racquet since she was 12 — worked with former tennis pro Vincent Spadea to improve her game. ‘I was very much a novice,’ she says. ‘We played every day for three months, which was nothing compared to a lifetime for Billie Jean.’
Joint directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton shot Battle Of The Sexes after Stone had completed La La Land — the film that garnered her a best actress Oscar.
The film musical work came in handy. ‘Billie Jean said: “Your footwork is going to be great!” She’d throw the balls to me and I could move really quickly and she’d go: “You move like a dancer!” ’
Indeed, Stone’s moves on court, as King, were broken down into choreographic steps. ‘We would do little pieces at a time and so they’d shout out my numbers and I’d go to the positions and do my forehand, or backhand.’
Production designers created replicas of King’s glasses (Stone, who has poor eyesight herself, had prescription lenses put in them). But while playing to King’s strengths, Emma did not ignore the insecurities. ‘Billie Jean loves the idea that you can be afraid,’ she says. ‘You can be confused about elements of your life. You can not necessarily be — quote unquote — “fully formed”. I can definitely relate to this, because I have so much growing up to do.
‘I learned from Billie Jean that it’s OK to still be figuring it out. That’s difficult for a perfectionist,’ she says with a wry smile.
She recounted her first meeting with the tennis star, and how they went through their diaries to try to find a date when they could get together again. Both were frustrated — and amused — by how crazy their schedules, and lives, were.
‘Billie Jean looked at me and said: “Oh, we’re alike!” ’
Stone was visiting Telluride in between shooting episodes of a ten-part series for Netflix called Maniac, working with Jonah Hill and director Cary Fukunaga.
She told me she’s eager to work in the UK again after filming Film4 period drama The Favourite, with Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman, for the marvellously unconventional film-maker Yorgos Lanthimos.
Battle Of The Sexes has its European gala at the BFI London Film Festival on October 7. It will be released in the UK on November 24.