EMMA’S BEEF WITH A RIPE ROYAL ROLE
EMMA SToNE is insulted in the most delectable way in her latest film. ‘I’m called “scullery scraps” and “disloyal little b***h”. And they’re the politest ones,’ the oscarwinning star said.
Stone appears in The Favourite, a gorgeously outrageous film — ‘some fact and some fiction’ in the words of celebrated director Yorgos Lanthimos — about the relationships between Queen Anne and her courtiers: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough and Abigail Masham.
olivia Colman plays the goutridden monarch, Rachel Weisz (who as I revealed exclusively on Mail online gave birth to a baby girl last week) plays the Duchess, and Stone plays the maid who rises to the top. They are the most delicious performances and, being a bit of a glutton, I’ve seen the Film4 gem no fewer than three times.
Stone described Abigail as a survivor. ‘She’s been in some pretty horrible circumstances but she’s street smart; she speaks French and Latin — and writes with a quill pen,’ she said when I met up with her and Lanthimos at the Telluride Film Festival, high in the Rockies.
She and her cast mates had to be prepared for all manner of strange tasks during filming, but the worst for her, she said, was having to put steaks on Colman’s legs, as part of Abigail’s attempts to help soothe the queen’s swollen limbs.
‘I kept putting them on her legs, over and over again, with a fire raging in the fireplace. You can imagine the smell,’ Stone said. ‘It was pretty gross.’
Still, out of such horror has emerged one of the year’s best pictures. It’s in the first rank of movie making — a dangerous, delightful classic that will be out here on New Year’s Day.