Emma Stone’s latest role required a dramatic transformation and a little motherly preparation at home.
The 36-year-old actress revealed she spoke with her 4-year-old daughter, Louise Jean, before shaving her head for her new sci-fi comedy Bugonia. According to USA Today on Wednesday, October 23, Stone wanted to make sure her daughter wasn’t frightened when she came home completely bald.
In the film, Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a powerful pharmaceutical CEO abducted by conspiracy theorists who believe she’s an alien bent on destroying Earth. To stop her from contacting her mothership, they shave her head — leaving Stone with one of her boldest on-screen looks yet.
The actress said she wanted her daughter to be “very ready” to see her bald “so it’s not super-scary,” describing the experience as “such a major transformation.” (Stone and her husband, filmmaker Dave McCary, welcomed Louise Jean in March 2021 and have been married since September 2020.)
Recalling how she broke the news, Stone shared, “I just said, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I’m going to take my hair off and it’s going to grow back. Isn’t that so silly and fun? We can do whatever we want with our hair! It can change all the time.’ She’s like, ‘OK,’ and then was totally cool.”
The Oscar-winning star also had to prepare herself mentally for the change. Director Yorgos Lanthimos told her they’d have “one chance to do it properly,” using four cameras to ensure nothing went wrong.
“They kept saying, ‘We’ll be ready in 10 minutes. Nah, actually 30 minutes. No, actually an hour,’” Stone recalled, admitting she got “the slightest cold feet” as she waited. “I was sitting there, building the anticipation. So I had a little last-minute freak, and then Yorgos came over, we talked, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be fine. It’s going to be great.’ And I absolutely loved it.”
Stone described the moment of shaving her head as almost meditative. “I was telling myself to stay still because if I opened my eyes or flinched, it would really mess things up.”
Just two months earlier, in an August Vogue interview, Stone had called motherhood the “greatest gift of my life,” noting that becoming a parent has influenced her creative choices and deepened her emotions.
“I do think it unlocks different things,” she said. “I feel everything I could possibly feel, because everything has exploded.”
Stone, who won her second Academy Award for portraying Bella Baxter in Poor Things, even dedicated her Oscar to her daughter.
Bugonia opens in select theaters on Friday, October 24, and nationwide on Friday, October 31.
Source: US Weekly