HOT STONE
Full frontal nudity, ‘apple’ sex toys and brothel romps… how Emma Stone shed ‘shame’ for X-rated new film Poor Things
Emma says she loved playing Bella in Poor Things — who defies the conventions of polite society
FOR most of her career, La La Land actress Emma Stone refused to go naked on the big screen because she did not want to upset her dad.
But now the 35-year-old Oscar winner is throwing off her sense of “shame” to star in what could be next year’s most explicit mainstream movie.
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In Poor Things she plays Bella Baxter, who experiences many sexual encounters after being brought back from the dead by a mad scientist.
They include using an apple as a sex toy, trying out numerous positions with Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn — a caddish lawyer — and an encounter with a female sex worker.
The film has been described by viewers as “ultra-horny” and by critics as “the raunchiest movie you’re likely to see all year.”
It is also being tipped for numerous awards, including a potential second Best Actress gong for Emma following her win for 2016’s La La Land.
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If it wins Best Picture it will truly be a sign that the movie industry is turning its back on the puritanical anti-nudity brigade that has taken hold over the past few years.
Mark, best known for playing The Hulk in the Marvel film franchise, thinks it is time for Hollywood to stop being so prudish.
And Emma says she loved playing Bella in Poor Things — who defies the conventions of polite society and doesn’t feel ashamed of her body.
That sense of freedom, she reveals, helped her break away from some of the religious morals she was brought up with.
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Knowing no boundaries
The actress, from Arizona, says: “Shame was a hell of a drug for me. I think maybe because of where I was raised, I was raised Lutheran and there was an aspect of right and wrong.
“I internalised, just societally, a lot of things that I felt guilty about or ashamed of.
“The past few years of my life — and Bella is no small part of that — has been questioning why I believe those things.”
Emma has always praised her parents, company chief executive Jeff and housewife Krista, for being so supportive of her Hollywood dreams.
But there were limits to how far she was willing to go to be a success.
Even in the adult-themed movies such as Superbad in 2007, Friends With Benefits in 2011 and 2014’s Birdman, she kept the barriers up.
She explained: “My dad would kill me if I posed naked. He wouldn’t speak to me again and I really love my dad, so that’s always something that makes me a little nervous.”
All that changed when the Spider-Man star worked with Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos for the first time.
She signed up for his 2018 movie The Favourite, alongside Olivia Colman, and there was no nudity for her in the script.
Then suddenly during the shoot Emma asked the director if she could appear naked in one of the bedroom scenes.
Olivia told her, “No, don’t do it,” but Emma felt it made sense for the story and went ahead.
Having taken that risk once, the star is taking on even more in Yorgos’s latest dark comedy.
The Greek director is known for making mind-bending movies — including 2015’s The Lobster, starring Colin Farrell.
In Poor Things, based on a novel of the same name by the late Scottish author Alasdair Gray, doctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) brings Bella back to life. She is betrothed to the scientist’s assistant but runs off with Ruffalo’s lothario.
Bella, who starts off with the mind of a child, must learn how to get along in what is a bizarre version of Victorian London.
Knowing no boundaries of a normal existence, she punches and kicks people with little reason.
In the bedroom she also chooses to explore what is possible.
Emma says: “Sex is one aspect of Bella’s experiencing of everything, because there’s travel, there’s dance, there’s food, there’s politics, there’s the concept of money.
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“But with sex, with the discovery of pleasure, I think it’s purely pleasure at the beginning and then it evolves.”
After sleeping with Duncan for the first time, Bella asks: “Why do people not do this all of the time?”
The characters then proceed to get it on so much he is left worn out.
Poor Things includes full frontal nudity, plenty of swearing and lots of what Bella calls “furious jumping”.
This likely won’t go down well with Gen Z film-goers after a survey this year revealed that nearly half of them don’t think sex is justified in most films or TV shows.
Asking actors to strip off has been described as exploitative, and intimacy co-ordinators are now hired to make sure all involved are comfortable with what is going on when filming.
Mark Ruffalo, though, is worried things have gone too far.
The 56-year-old star said in a recent interview: “I think it’s gotten a bit prudish and like a new Victorian age.”
Certainly the Victorians, who insisted on even ankles being covered up, would be shocked by the raunchy film.
Although the more debauched of them might recognise the activities viewers witness in the brothel scenes.
Yorgos, 50, defended the X-rated nature of some of the material.
‘Dynamics in sex’
He said: “It would feel very disingenuous to tell this story about this character who is so free and so open, and then to be a prude about the sexual aspect of it.”
Poor Things isn’t simply a comic romp — it makes strong points about the way women are treated.
Bella realises that men like Duncan can be self-centred and controlling.
Emma explains: “She’s learning about all these different dynamics in sex and power and what it means. I think it’s just a hugely important part of her growth and development, as I think it is for all of us in life.”
Mark and Emma spent three weeks rehearsing so they were unabashed once the cameras started rolling.
That level of ease is very different to what young Emma experienced.
She lived with such crippling anxiety that she asked to be home-schooled at the age of 12.
But acting helped her overcome those fears — and playing Bella went much, much further.
She explains of the character: “She lives without shame or self-judgment or even really judgment of others. It was very freeing.”
Most famous people are subject to media attention on their dating lives but Emma largely kept her romances out of the spotlight when she fell for co-stars Kieran Culkin, from 2013’s Movie 43, and Andrew Garfield, who she met filming Spider-Man and dated for four years before they split in 2015.
She is now married to American comedian Dave McCary, 38. They tied the knot in 2020 and their daughter Louise Jean was born in March 2021.
As she gets older Emma, who at the age of 14 put together a PowerPoint presentation for her parents detailing how she would make it in acting, is learning to worry less about doing things wrong.
She concludes: “Instead of shame, what about leaning into it and apologising and saying, ‘I’m human and there was an error’.
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“So yeah, it’s definitely made me think about the nature of shame quite a lot.”
- Poor Things arrives in cinemas on January 12.
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