In Poor Things Dr. Godwin Baxter, an eccentric scientist, brought a young woman named Bella back to life. He raises her away from the prejudices and expectations of society. Although her sheltered upbringing gives her a vastly different perspective, she longs to explore the world she hasn’t had a chance to be a part of. This spurs her to run away with Duncan Wedderburn for a whirlwind adventure around the world.
The Poor Things powerhouse cast is led by Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael. Stone also produced the movie along with long-time collaborator director Yorgos Lanthimos. Tony McNamara wrote the screenplay for Poor Things based on Alasdair Gray’s book of the same name.
Poor Things Ending Explained
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things puts Emma Stone front and center. Her character, Bella, has quite the journey, and we break down the film’s ending.
Screen Rant interviewed Poor Things star Emma Stone. She discussed creating the physicality of Bella’s evolution, revealing that they had been thinking about this movie for four years. Stone also broke down her collaborative relationship with Lanthimos as well as working with Dafoe and Ruffalo.
Emma Stone Talks Poor Things
Screen Rant: Emma, this movie is amazing, and you’re phenomenal in it.
Emma Stone: Thank you so much. Thank you. It’s really nice.
One of the things I found most impressive about your performance was just how completely you embodied this character. So can you talk to me a little bit about portraying Bella’s evolution through her physicality?
Emma Stone: Yorgos and I, we did a pretty great rehearsal process for three weeks with all the actors. Had a lot of fun, and really crazy, playing theater games, and just getting to know each other. But Yorgos and I would also do independent [rehearsal]. We also had been talking about this movie for four years and so I think Bella was sort of sitting in there somewhere, developing somewhere in there. We ended up just kind of staging it out.
Making stage one through five so that if we needed to shoot out of sequence, we knew where we were with her, her physicality, her language, and all of that. So that was kind of it. It was like experimenting, like, Let’s try a walk like this for stage one. Okay, no, that’s not quite. Okay, let’s turn your feet out. Let’s try this again. It was truly just kind of messing around and inventing it as we went. But, yeah, there was some structure to it from the beginning, but it was also like, on the day, we would find things.
Can you talk to me a little bit about your collaborative process with Yorgos, and how he stands out from other directors you’ve worked with?
Emma Stone: We met about two years before we made The Favorite. And so we’ve now known each other for almost a decade, and we just have a really great friendship. We really understand each other. We have a shorthand when it comes to working together. It’s great to work together because we don’t have to be on eggshells around each other.
We can fight, we can disagree, and move on. And laugh and make fun of each other. I just trust him implicitly as a filmmaker. And that’s the greatest gift as an actor to be able to really just let go and not feel that you need to watch yourself or anything. I really trust, his vision in all of the things that we’ve made, and I have massive respect for him. So yeah, that’s kind of the gist of our dynamic.
Can you talk to me a little bit about working with Mark and Willem to really create those relationships that are so different but kind of play with what love can be?
Emma Stone: I love them so much, and Rami and Chris and Catherine. There’s so many incredible actors in this film that I was just so lucky to get to play around with, but they’re also, similarly to what I was saying about Yorgos, they’re also really great people. Willem is just wild and funny. Mark is a human lovebug, and it was just kind of joyous to find all of this because we did feel so comfortable with each other after that rehearsal process that it was like, Now we’re just gonna play. Our work is just play. Yeah, it was great.
About Poor Things
From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.
Check out our other Poor Things interviews:
- Mark Ruffalo & Willem Dafoe
- Ramy Youssef
- Tony McNamara
- Holly Waddington
- Robbie Ryan
- James Price & Shona Heath
Poor Things
- Release Date:
- 2023-09-08
- Director:
- Array
- Cast:
- Array
- Rating:
- R
- Runtime:
- 141 Minutes
- Genres:
- Array
- Writers:
- Array
- Story By:
- Alasdair Gray
- Studio(s):
- Array
- Distributor(s):
- Array
