Poor Things Interview: Tony McNamara On Emma Stone & The Art Of Physicality

In Poor Things, the eccentric Dr. Godwin Baxter brings a young woman, Bella, back to life and raises her outside of the expectations of society. As Bella grows, she lacks inhibitions and preconceived notions of the world but longs to explore it and have her own experiences. This inspires her to run away with the lecherous Duncan Wedderburn on a fantastic journey around the world.

Poor Things is based on the book of the same name, written by Alasdair Gray. The movie is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos from a screenplay penned by Tony McNamara. Poor Things features a star-studded cast led by Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael.

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Poor Things Rotten Tomatoes Score Ties A Major Emma Stone Record

Poor Things’ Rotten Tomatoes score ties a five-year-old Emma Stone record set by her last film from the same director, Yorgos Lanthimos.

Screen Rant interviewed Tony McNamara about his new movie, Poor Things. He discussed his collaboration with Lanthimos and praised Stone’s ability to bring Bella to life. McNamara also explained the importance of making the sex scenes in the movie character-driven and pitched a potential storyline for a Cruella sequel.

Tony McNamara Talks Poor Things

Screen Rant: This movie is insanely good. I walked out of the theater and just couldn’t stop thinking about it for three days.

Tony McNamara: Oh, well, that’s good. That’s a good sign, I think.

Definitely. Can you talk to me a little bit about collaborating with Yorgos and what makes him stand out as a director?

Tony McNamara: Working with him as a writer and director, I think we have a very easy relationship and a very, we kind of know each other quite well and have a good feel of each other’s sensibilities. And I kind of know what he’s going for, usually without much kind of talk about it because I kind of know him quite well. And then he’s a great director to write for because he’s just so good at what he does and he’s also a guy who, there’s no limit.

He doesn’t really believe in limits. He’s not really scared of… I mean, of course we’re scared of failing with something like this, but to him, I think that’s the point of being an artist. So, I think as a writer, it’s very freeing. I don’t ever feel I have to show him something. I’ll show him a bad scene, a good scene. It’s all the same. It’s all process. It’s always a process where we’re sort of meticulously working our way towards something.

So I think for me, it’s very freeing to work with him because there’s no limits. He’s making it on his own terms. And so there’s that. He is creating something that is going to be whatever. It is going to be unique. Whatever anyone thinks about, you’re going to be part of something unique, and I think that’s a good feeling.

And then you’ve worked with Emma Stone a few times too, with The Favorite and Cruella. How does it affect your process when the actor that you’re writing for? And how does she elevate the character of Bella?

Tony McNamara: Well, I think it’s, I just feel, I mean I feel excited and confident that I’ve got one of the great actors and that I know her intuitive understanding of emotion in scenes is so extraordinary, and I know her comic timing is so extraordinary, and I know she’s as a person, fearless artistically. So, all of that makes me just feel excited about writing something for her. She is Bella.

I don’t think I could have imagined it would be as extraordinary as it is. I think she just was so brave and threw some choices down that were incredible and just mapped the journey, which is quite difficult. So precisely at the same time, it feels very wild and free and organic, but I know how precise it is, so the story gets told incredibly well because of that.

And then, can you talk a little bit about threading that needle tonally between the humor and tragedy that we see in this movie? I wouldn’t say necessarily bounce between them, but it really touches on both.

Tony McNamara: Yeah, I think for me it was always like, I knew it was a comedy, but it was a coming of age movie and a movie about someone trying to create their life and all these people trying to stop them and decide who she was and what her experience should be and what her body was for. And she wouldn’t have any of it. I think for me it’s about always being true to the character, and then I know the tragedy will be there. And then within that, it’s usually funny if people are desperate and like a Duncan or something is funny because he’s desperate, and his whole world has been turned upside down and he’s desperately clinging to it.

And so for me it’s like, it is not judging the characters harshly, but knowing they’re acting like idiots. And then it is just a shaping, it’s a constant going, there’s enough drama and enough comedy coexisting all the time, and I just try to be truthful about the characters and I assume the dramatic part, the tragic part, will be there. And then it’s also, I’m more naturally probably a comic writer, so it’s fun for me to write comedy.

Can you talk to me a little bit about how Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo elevated their characters?

Tony McNamara: Yeah. Well, yeah, I think extraordinarily so. I think Willem and Emma’s relationship in the film is so beautiful, and I think Willem, with Emma, but Willem brought a couple of layers to Baxter that are there in the script. I mean, she’s an experiment, but she’s also a daughter. But there’s all these layers to their relationship, but I don’t think the heart Willem brings to it and the truth he brings to everything and the way he lets go of all those things, of the holding onto her at the end, so that they, and they do, are just two human beings who love each other at the final beat, is all the beautiful way he kind of tracked that performance.

And then, I mean, Mark’s just wildly funny. I mean, it’s just off the charts funny. And I don’t think any of us, I think we all knew it was a funny character, but I don’t think we knew that him and Emma would hit this note together that was so insanely funny.

Yeah, that was one of my favorite dynamics in the entire movie.

Tony McNamara: Yeah, totally. It’s insane.

And then there’s, one of the things I really thought was very cool about this movie is there are quite a few sex scenes in it, but they’re all very character-driven. So can you talk to me a little bit about how those are an important part of showing Bella’s evolution?

Tony McNamara: Yeah. Well, as you say, actually, I mean, I think as a screenwriter, my thing is I am never writing a sex scene. I’m writing a character scene and a story evolution scene. And if they’re having sex in it, there’s a reason they’re having sex. That is the kind of situation. And I think with her, it’s basically on the really basic level, it’s a coming of age movie about a human being, and part of coming of ages is, acknowledging your sexuality and finding your way with that, in the same way she finds her way with her intellectual life and her emotional life and her political life.

So, it was always a big part of the movie that, to be honest, we had to deal with all those aspects of her. And she’s also a person because she’s not a product of society, so she doesn’t have shame, and she doesn’t have rules, and she doesn’t understand society. So all of those things gave us this sort of adventurous spirit of a character that allowed us to look at all those aspects of a human.

Definitely. And then you worked on the original Cruella and there’ve been reports that we’re going to potentially get a sequel. What is something you want to explore further with that character that you didn’t necessarily have the chance to in the first movie?

Tony McNamara: I’m not sure. I mean, it’s kind of interesting that she ends the first movie and she’s got power and she’s got agency, and it’s sort of like, what does she do with that? And how in your life, if you suddenly get agency and power, do you exercise it and what are you looking for now? She had this sort of family versus past thing going on, her maid family. And I guess the second movie, I think that’s an aspect that could be explored if there was a second.

I love that. And then one of the things I was really, really impressed by in Poor Things is the physicality that Emma brought to the role and how we see the development of Bella was that in the script,

Tony McNamara: There were bits of physicality in the script, but not on the… No. I think the way Yorgos and her spent a lot of time on the physicality and a lot of thought thinking and experimenting with what her physicality should be. And so that’s really, that’s kind of all them in a way. I mean, the script has moments, but it’s mostly all of them. The two of them are this great creative partnership and they spend a lot of time, and Em was a producer on the movie, so there’s a constant dialogue between all that.

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:

• Emma Stone
• Mark Ruffalo & Willem Dafoe
• Ramy Youssef
• Holly Waddington
• Robbie Ryan
• James Price & Shona Heath