Emma Stone is beaming. It’s Friday, November 14th. Two days before the 2025 Governors Awards. The beginning of another busy weekend of awards season press for the “Bugonia” trio of Stone, Jesse Plemons, and director Yorgos Lanthimos. On this evening, in the CAA Screening Room, Stone is being highly entertained by this night’s celebrity moderator, Dakota Johnson. To be fair, so is everyone else in the theater.
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Lanthimos, Plemons, and Stone have been on the promotional and campaign trail for “Bugonia” since it debuted at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, but Johnson’s chaotic energy appeared to be a delightful jolt on a rainy Friday evening.
Fiddling with her notes, Johnson bluntly states, “I’m an idiot. No one vetted me before I came in here. O.K. So this movie is one of the first that you have signed on to direct that you weren’t fully involved in writing. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Lanthimos replies.
“It was originally called ‘Save the Green Planet,’ which I did read a long time ago,” Johnson reveals. “I did. I don’t remember it, so don’t worry. But I’m wondering what’s different about that for you as a director coming onto a project that’s pretty fully fleshed out as opposed to something that you’re developing?”
“Less work,” Lanthimos replies as the audience laughs. “It was the first time that I actually received something that I felt was almost there, ready to go, and I haven’t had that feeling before. Previous times, I had to spend years developing writing screenplays, so that just felt like a gift basically. And I knew that we had to do a little bit of work with Will [Tracy], just for certain things that I felt strongly about that could be different, basically for me to feel more comfortable with the material and to serve the vision that I had for the film. But it was a really quick process. We did a couple of passes with Will, and yeah, I mean I sent the script to Emma the same night that I read it the first time, and I was so excited. But after that, because it felt like something that I wanted to make, and might have made the rest of the process didn’t really change that much because it felt kind of in my world, and then I worked with Will to make it even more. It was one step at a time, finding the people who were going to be in it, putting it together. We worked with a lot of the same people in terms of crew as well, so it didn’t feel very different after.”
As for Stone, Johnson bluntly inquires, “Shaving your head. Do you want to talk about that?”
Stone deadpans, “No, thank you. It was fine and it was freeing.”
Johnson ponders, “What was I going to ask you?” She turns to the audience, “All these questions that I want to ask are my actual questions. I was given a list of questions that I should have asked, and I haven’t asked any of them. But one of them is you are basically covered in lard and/or blood…”
Stone interjects, “It wasn’t lard.”
“I don’t know antihistamine cream,” Johnson laughs.
“It’s a mixture of movie magic where it’s not really like a Benadryl antihistamine cream,” Stone says. “It was a variety of creams that we tested, actually, those extensively, because you do learn quickly that if you have to be covered in a cream for 13, 14 hours a day…”
“You want it to do nice stuff too,” Johnson says, seemingly hoping Stone got some aesthetic benefit from the muck on her face.
Stone retorts, “Well, your skin temperature changes, and it changes for the continuity where you’re like throughout the scene, it has to hold up and be at all different stages. So that was a shockingly big discussion and process.”
Johnson, “That’s what I imagine.”
“Yeah. And also the blood,” Stone says.
“And also the blood, which goes away and appears and then goes away in stages…,” Johnson notes. “Who on earth looks so beautiful with a shaved head covered in blood…”
“You’re flirting,” Stone zings as the audience laughs.
“…and lard,” Johnson zings back.
Stone, having a blast, says, “See! Now she’s really turned it on!” Then adds, “Thanks. That’s very nice to say.”
Lanthimos was also put on the spot by Johnson, who confronted him, disarmingly and not so jokingly, mind you, with: “This is your fourth collaboration with Emma. Are you aware that there are other actresses? Maybe even very close by?”
Stone tries to get Lanthimos off the hook. “That’s a really good point, Jesse. You’re great… Oh, you said actress“.
“Actress,” Johnson clarifies. “I’m just kidding.
“No go for it! Work on your pitch,” Stone says.
“It didn’t work,” Johnson says with resignation while Lanthimos seems relieved he’s off the hook. She continues, “No, I’m wondering about your collaboration with each other. How often do you fight? Do you hate each other? Do you actually love each other? What is it like on set, Jesse? Give us the fucking real, real. What’s it like? [And] the second half of that question is, do you feel left out?”
Plemons responds, “I mean, when I did ‘Kinds of Kindness,’ I definitely felt like the new kid at school a little bit. I think my first time meeting Emily was the first day of rehearsals, which was unlike anything I had experienced. And I think it was just me and maybe three other first timers, and then four or five actors that had all done it before. And so yeah, it is a little stepping into some new, strange school, but then…”
“You feel like you’re replacing Emma,” Johnson says.
“I mean, that’s what I’m getting at,” Plemons says playfully.
Trying to get things back on track, Johnson says, “It’s not about the movie at all. I’m so sorry. Go on, my real question…you are so immensely talented, and it is insane to watch you work. Your physicality in this movie is different than anything I’ve ever seen you do, and I want to know where that came from. And also, I want to understand from the two of you and Yorgos how you guys worked. How often did you rehearse?”
“Thank you for all of that,” Plemons says. “It’s just step by step and piece by piece, and you’re following what is interesting to you, and then you meet more of the collaborators, and that influences your choices and the direction you make. And then we had a very shortened rehearsal period for this because we were promoting ‘Kinds of Kindness’ right up until we were shooting pretty much. But it’s hard to say how it happens. It’s just sort of circling something over and over and over again and gaining little pieces of inspiration. I remember early on, though, especially once those are extensions and my hair. The losing of the hair and then the gaining of the hair. [Laughs.] There was a while there where when I first got the extensions, then I would come up to Yor,gos and it was maybe experimenting with some of the physicality. And every time he’d see me, he would just laugh. It was like, ‘I dunno if this is good.'”
Johnson turns to Stone and asks, How long did you guys rehearse for?”
“Not long at all,” A couple of days, but even then, it was more stunt rehearsal really than actual. But, I mean on Yorgos’ films, the rehearsal process is really more like…people have probably heard this before, but it’s more like games. It’s a little bit sillier. It’s not prescriptive rehearsal or blocking rehearsal. So, this was really honestly more just us running dialogue a lot of the time and doing some rehearsal for all of the fight sequences.”
Finally, Johnson admits, “I regret doing this. I’ll never do it again. You warned me.”
Stone, “I did.”
Johnson, “I said yes already. Is there anything you guys would like to say before this formal interview is over?”
Plemons, “It really hasn’t been that bad.”
Stone, “You did a great job!”
Lanthimos, “I think you’re the third best moderator that we’ve had.”
Stone, “That’s huge. That’s huge. That’s a lot of, that’s a bronze. I mean, you’ve medaled.”
Johnson, “I’ll come on the road…”
Don’t tease us.
“Bugonia” is now playing nationwide.
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