COVER STORY
Hollywood star Emma Stone talks movies, new motherhood, her career and her role as Disney’s Cruella de Vil.
“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN OF THE OPINION THAT IF YOU’RE GOING TO DO SOMETHING, THEN GIVE IT BOTH BARRELS .”
Be it the joy of parenthood, the challenge of portraying canine foe Cruella de Vil in the upcoming eponymous Disney prequel, or a sense of transparency that feels ever more absent in Hollywood; Emma Stone’s pursuit of raw, meaningful connections has never felt greater, nor more welcome in these post-lockdown times.
If I were to go through life refusing to show my vulnerabilities, surely that would make me more vulnerable?” begins Emma Stone. The point raised is valid. In a world where we’re encouraged to open up, to reveal our flaws and admit to those physical and psychological imperfections that nag away at us, the threat we pose to ourselves by denying their existence is potentially very real. “Personally, I have always found the holding up of the veneer really tiring,” she continues. “I do more than enough acting on camera to want to carry that on in real life.” Perhaps Stone’s tendency to venture out into the world with brazen honesty has been made easier by the fact the 32-year-old Arizona native has a lot to fall back on. To say the past few years have been good to her is an understatement right up there with pet shop owners being advised to shut up shop early when Cruella is seen cruising around town.
On top of scooping up the plaudits for La La Land, levelling sexual inequality with a brilliant portrayal of tennis icon Billie Jean King, making an accomplished period drama return in The Favourite, and continuing the miniseries entertainment revolution in the brilliant Maniac, Forbes Magazine also revealed Stone’s gradual assent to becoming the world’s highest-paid movie actress (in 2017) was complete … not that she had much spare time with which to spend her then-US$26 million wage.
While the recent global pandemic left many actors questioning not just their already fragile existences but whether the movie industry would ever be able to raise itself up from the slumber of lockdown – and at a time when it was already under severe attack from subscription channels such as Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and others – Stone was tending to isolation of an altogether different kind.
That’s because in March this year, her and husband Dave McCary – whom she met when she hosted Saturday Night Live back in 2016 – gave birth to their first child. The baby girl’s name was kept secret initially, before being announced as Emma. Well, if it’s good enough for mum …
Junkets and promotional tours aside, Stone is notoriously tight-lipped about her private life, yet sources suggest the actress is thrilled with her new arrival. And while setting up home in Greenwich Village, New York may not represent for Stone and director McCary the level of privacy they might crave, the Big Apple does at least push levels of creativity few other places can rival. “I love New York,” she says. “It’s the diversity and honesty of the city that really engages – you don’t get too swayed by the bright lights because there is a much saner, more natural edge around every corner. We’re happy here.”
A STAR IN BORN
It’s certainly a long way from largely depressing beginnings in hot and arid Scottsdale, a desert city just east of Arizona’s state capital Phoenix. The actress clearly had to put in the hard yards at the start of her career – with the porcelain-complexioned youngster spending much of her time indoors, watching films.
“Of course there were things to do in Scottsdale, but you always felt you were on the very edge of this arid wilderness – it was quite an insular way of growing up and I think that’s why I looked for other worlds through entertainment,” she says.
“THE CELEBRITY PERSONA STRETCHES BEYOND THE INDIVIDUAL THEMSELVES, AND LIVING IN THE PUBLIC EYE IN A MEDIA BUBBLE CAN BE A STRANGE PLACE.”
Stone’s pursuit of escapism provoked a deep passion for cinema, so great in fact that at the age of just 15 she and her mother, Krista, moved to LA to fulfil a dream of becoming an actress. In what has become a much celebrated and regurgitated story – a dinner party anecdote the equivalent of the curious way you first met your partner – Stone used a PowerPoint presentation to convince her parents to uproot their lives to Los Angeles so she could follow her dream.
“It was just the fastest way of doing it,” says Stone, no doubt referencing this for the 100th time. “I wasn’t very good at cutting things out and pasting.”
Stone’s talent is undoubtedly powered by her ambition, the two working together to create that breed of Hollywood star that is at once personable, but also constantly striving to better herself. She doesn’t pander to a style guide – she is America’s goofy sweetheart in one sense, a seductive, uniquely beautiful model in another; playful yet serious; bold yet flawed.
A PASSION FOR REAL CHARACTERISATION
What’s becoming more apparent of late is that the neon signs and jingles are becoming further distanced from where the actress truly wants to be. Motherhood will only hasten that escape, but in 2018 miniseries Maniac, plus the recent Zombieland sequel Double Tap, we saw Stone restoring in herself the majesty of acting and a passion for real characterisation.
“I think Maniac was a really big thing for me. Not only was I stepping outside of my comfort zone by doing something on TV, but I played five different roles. So it was multiple, multiple characters – a really fascinating excursion into so many different fantasy worlds, and it made me feel like a big part of me wanted to stay there.”
Taking on the role of Sam in Birdman was also significant. A movie which also starred Michael Keaton, Ed Norton and Zach Galifianakis, it exposed the troubling values of celebrity and the constant strive to stay relevant, things Stone herself has fretted over. Does that mean the simple joyfulness of La La Land – for which she won an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe for Best Actress – is in the past? “I’ve definitely moved on in my choices,” she admits, “but you never know what’s around the corner.”
The actress has built solidity and strength as an individual, but there is evidence the vulnerabilities and uncertainties of old are beginning to creep back in where her daughter is concerned. She cites the perverse way the celebrity world fixates and fawns over the smallest of things, and most fragile of small people. “Today’s world of celebrity is increasingly bizarre – there are bidding wars over baby pictures of children that you don’t know of people that you don’t know. That makes me feel uncomfortable.
“Of course I am wary,” she admits. “You only have to look around and see there are photographers that follow around little kids that have done nothing but be born to those parents. Today, the celebrity persona stretches beyond the individual themselves, and living in the public eye in a media bubble can be a strange place indeed.”
At least the enforced lockdown of so much of the entertainment world has enabled Stone and so many others to consider what they want to represent, personally and professionally, going forward. “I think a lot of people are coming back revived, refreshed, changed,” she says. “Ultimately, for every single person, this is a world that demands so much of us, and I think there has been a big reset that we will all be grateful for in the long run.
“For me it’s about contentment – that’s what I want the focus to be,” she says, admitting that, over time, she has found it increasingly difficult in the spotlight as a famous person. It’s for that reason she doesn’t engage in any kind of social media. “I just can’t look at it,” she says, her face falling into her hands in visible discomfort. “To be told all these things about yourself and your family is difficult, and there’s so much fabrication.
She hesitates … “Although wasn’t it Ernest Hemingway who said, ‘If you believe the positive stuff then you’ve also got to believe the negative’?!”
Perhaps it’s this delicate dance between the sweary, thought-provoking Stone and goofy, spunky alter ego that has let her progress so far without the negative diatribes that so often shadow powerful women. An actress loathe to blow her own trumpet, and yet, through an assortment of intelligent, funny, thought-provoking films, blisteringly good artistic endeavour, and the ability to question even her own motives, it’s clear she’s keeping it together.
Stone is that strange combination often seen in these circles – sheer ambition mixed with mocking ambivalence to an industry raised on ego. What’s indisputable is that the actress isn’t afraid of hard work. When Stone moved to Los Angeles, she was to endure almost five years of false starts and failed auditions before the starlet made her feature film debut in Greg Mottola’s teen comedy, Superbad. With audiences instantly taking to her startling combination of youthful beauty (including that gorgeous red hair) and world-weary attitude, combined with her distinctive voice, it was evident that Hollywood’s next big star had arrived.
And that star now looks set to reprise one of the most iconic movie baddies of all time – Cruella de Vil. The film is intended as a prequel to the famous 101 Dalmatians, though its styling is very much in the current mould of decorating danger with sinister appeal. Think Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, played by Margot Robbie, or Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, or even Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent. The production is the latest in an ever-extending list of dark, macabre, morbid antiheroes whose renaissance as entities in their own right – rather than simple constituent parts of a bigger story – provokes a whole new level of engagement, from a whole new audience.
“Cruella is a fantastic character to get to play because she’s larger than life. It’s been a great experience to play around with her backstory and discover what makes her the woman she becomes in the story we’ve seen.”
The project works. As a movie, it is draped in detail, in colour, and in impossibly high production values. The magnificence of 1970s London provides a stunning platform for evil, devilishness and dismay: Stone clearly relished the opportunity of investing influence in hair, makeup, costumes and styling, with much more abandon that she has ever been permitted before.
“Fashion and design has always enchanted me and it’s great to find new projects where I can put forward ideas. It’s a long way from living in New York and getting the chance to meet a lot of brilliant designers – this is a different ball game, but it’s fun,” she says.
CRUELLA TWIST OF FATE
Perhaps where the movie truly succeeds is in the fact Disney aren’t attempting to explain away or modify Cruella de Vil’s ghastly wickedness. The same studio was panned for its reprisal of Jolie’s Maleficent character in 2019, with critics suggesting excessive pandering and sympathy for the backstory. The issue with ‘origin stories’ is that most audiences want to get on with revelling in the horror and evilness of a character; they don’t want to know why someone is the way they are.
All the indications are Disney won’t be making that mistake where Cruella is concerned – a lead-in to 101 Dalmatians it will be, but the contempt for Stone’s character is unwavering, and should satisfy a young audience perhaps growing tired of the powderpuff fantasy of Harry Potter and the perfect pleasantries of Peter Rabbit.
“I’ve always been of the opinion that if you’re going to do something, then give it both barrels,” says Stone. Cruella is exactly that. “There is no point signing up to a character if you’re going to hold back or attempt to take that person away from who they truly are. I feel you owe it to the history and legacy of these iconic storybook characters to paint them in their most awful natural selves,” she laughs.
It’s certainly fair to say Stone was the perfect candidate when it came to choosing someone who would preen, pose and punch her way through a plot that sees her take the supervillain made famous by Glenn Close – who does gain an executive producer credit on the movie – another step further. “From day one I was able to take so much extroverted confidence from Cruella, so I knew this would be special,” she says. “I’ve always loved actors who can power through a personality.
“Steve Martin was the first actor I saw do that – I could only wish to be Steve Martin! It was in his film The Jerk, which co-starred Bernadette Peters, that I saw a selfassurance and resilience that I wanted to mimic. That’s really where it all started, and from then on while other kids wanted to join the debate teams, all I wanted to do was attend the improv class.
“I wouldn’t say I was a tomboy, but I certainly wasn’t really a girly girl.”
How Stone defines herself today is, for now, unimportant. The world’s most in-demand actress? A woman driven by the satisfaction of motherhood? Certainly. Yet also someone who reminds us that being unsure and vulnerable is actually okay. And it’s for that we perhaps admire her most.
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The mansion that was purported to be the home that helped inspire Dodi Smith’s 1956 children’s novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians went up for sale in the exclusive Primrose Hill area of London. mindfood.com/dalmatians-home