Emma Stone is one of the few actresses whose name deserves to always (or almost always) be in italics. Or in quotation marks. Or escorted by redundant exclamation marks. Or even question marks. But who is this strange actress with two Oscars at 35, a slightly cavernous (or just hoarse) voice, and flaming red hair determined to challenge herself with every role always on the edge of what time and beatific orthodoxy have come to call a Hollywood star? "Danger?! What danger!?" she says as she takes a seat next to her other favorite Martian, Jesse Plemons, with whom she shares her latest work. It is not very clear where exactly in her oversized eyes the actress Emma Stone places the question marks or exclamation marks when asked about her penchant for risk, for her fondness for, indeed, danger. "Let's see," she says as she organizes italics, quotation marks, and interjections. "I prefer to think that it's a matter of creativity and yes, creativity involves taking risks. But of course, now we should ask ourselves what risk really is. There are people in the real world who risk their lives for what they believe, and that can indeed be considered risky. In my case, it's more of a luxury. I only make movies. I simply do what I believe is right, and that's when you realize that the risk is on the other side. The risk is that people see what you have done and leave the cinema thinking, 'Wow, what nonsense I just watched.' In other words, maybe we misinterpret the words when we say that the work of an actress who earns a lot of money for what she does entails some danger or has some risk." It is clear, and from now on, 'Emma Stone' or ¡Emma Stone! Or, why not, ¿Emma Stone? However you like.
In any case, Bugonia, the fourth work of the actress with the director and cinema enthusiast of, indeed, risk Yorgos Lanthimos is there to demonstrate that there are different ways to dedicate oneself to acting in particular and to the world of cinema in general. Stone's approach is certainly not conventional. To begin with, and starting with the most striking aspect, the actress had no qualms about shaving her head to bring her character to life. No prosthetics to hide her mane or digital effects to avoid ruining the next shampoo advertising campaign. No, in this remake of the cult Korean film Save the Green Planet by Jang Joon-hwan, Emma Stone does not hesitate to showcase her completely bald head in the strictest sense. "I recommend it. It's an incredible feeling of liberation. The best part was the feeling of the first shower after being shaved. It was indescribable," she says and bursts into laughter. She then changes her expression, composes herself, and adds: "It's a consequence of confidence. Having previously worked with both the director and Jesse [Jesse, with whom she filmed Kinds of Kindness in 2024, nods] makes you feel comfortable and eager to explore new paths in your career. So even when I am literally chained to a stretcher covered in antihistamine cream, bald, and freezing [what happens in Bugonia], I am happier than anywhere else in the world." And she laughs again.
To set the scene, the actress (or actress!, since we're at it) who first showed her potential in Easy A back in 2010 (a film that followed her hormonal escapades in Superbad and Zombieland as a teenager capable of anything to achieve her desires is now, in her latest work, the CEO of a tech company who, who knows, maybe is also capable of anything to achieve her greatest ambition. But, in truth, Bugonia is, like the actress herself, something else and, in its own way, very dangerous. The film tells the story of a presumed madman (brilliant Jesse Plemons) convinced that the world is about to be colonized, after the corresponding extermination of the human race, by the inhabitants of the distant galaxy Andromeda. It wouldn't be the first time. In the paranoid delusion of the madman, the CEO would be the alien and first emissary of this new version of the great replacement. So, he kidnaps her, and what follows is a cruel and ruthless fight both physically and mentally behind closed doors. He wants her to confess. And she fights to survive. And so it goes until the most hallucinogenic of imaginable endings.
"I like to think that the movie is about humanity, about us. The world is definitely a very terrifying and incomprehensible place. Most of us manage to live with the contradiction of the disaster that everything around us results in and the day-to-day of the most common life. There are wars out there, but here I am talking about my movie. But I understand that there are people who struggle to continue with their daily lives and put on a brave face to all their fears and worries. I imagine that's the success of conspiracy theories." Pause. "Furthermore, the very expression 'conspiracy theory' is confusing. We all strive to make sense of what happens in the world. It is very human to cling to a semblance of hope in the face of the only evidence of humanity, which is death. And yes, what is madness for some is completely true for others. But the drive to understand is the same for everyone." Another pause. "The only certainty is that we are all lost, and there are reasons for it."
Emma Stone, an alien in the bathroom
The one who speaks, in her own way, makes her own the most brilliant monologue of Bugonia, which shamelessly condenses the history of humanity behind the meaning of life in just one minute. And one would say that the one who speaks has been repeating herself for years, if not this exact same monologue, then a similar one. "I have had anxiety all my life. And in a way, acting became my therapy. My work forces me to stop thinking about myself and to focus on another person who is not me. Acting, in a way, forces me to think about others," she likes to declare to the press just before or shortly after, depending on the moment, the two-time Oscar winner for La La Land, by Damien Chazelle, and Poor Things, by Lanthimos, confesses how she protects herself from all that comes with success for an international actress: "We all deal with how others perceive us. And with the explosion of social media. We can all identify with that feeling of someone thinking they know you. For me, it's like having an external avatar. There's me, the person known by my friends and family, and then there's that character that appears in the media, on social media, and all that. I don't know if this makes sense, but it's the way I protect myself. I mentally separate the two things, something I might need to do less. Something has to be done to maintain sanity." And she laughs.
Emma Stone is not only the protagonist of the movies in which she is indeed the protagonist, but she is also a producer of some of them, the most dangerous of all. If common practice occasionally places her name next to Katharine Hepburn for the race for the fourth Oscar, which only the star of The Philadelphia Story has to date, she is now, along with Frances McDormand, the only filmmaker with a Hollywood statuette as the responsible party (that is, producer) of the film she stars in. Poor Things entered the categories of best film and best actress just like Nomadland, by Chloé Zhao. In both cases, the protagonist (Stone and McDormand) is the producer. "Now I seek bewilderment. If I read a script and it scares me, if I'm not sure how to approach it, it's probably the next one. That feeling of 'I don't know if I can do this' is what guides me," she says to justify the fact that Fruit Tree, her company, is behind series as bewildering as The Curse, films as radiant and dark at the same time as The Glow of Television, and has become the patron of the always transversal and always in italics writing of the Greek Lanthimos.
Probably behind so much danger, so much risk, lies the same tension that Bugonia endures and that, in passing, shakes the world, our world: the limits, if any, of freedom of expression. How have you seen everything that has happened around the case of presenter Jimmy Kimmel, first fired and then rehired for not being to the liking of current President Donald Trump? Is cinema itself in danger as a free medium? "Freedom of expression is a central value whether in art or personal expression. And I do believe that it is a struggle worth taking on regardless of whether you agree with what the other person says. The response to criticism can never be censorship. It is a mistake, this current obsession with excommunicating those who do not share your point of view. However, the challenge today is how to respect freedom of expression without giving free rein to lies or fake news. That is what is terrifying and we have not resolved it. But I know that the answer is not to silence people. That is the challenge of modern times, which have become even more confusing with the arrival of Artificial Intelligence," she says, opening her eyes wide. A lot.
Susan Sontag said that camp (or the camp sensibility) sees everything in quotation marks. Or in italics. The reason is that it only understands the world as representation. Everything is theater or even cinema. Camp understands naturalness as a pose. Camp is wild, strident, playful, provocative, and above all, dangerous. Camp questions what we understand as normality, and perhaps no other star is more irresistible, out of the norm, and fiercely camp than the always italicized Emma Stone.