Emma Stone slaps Willem Dafoe 20 times off camera in new Yorgos Lanthimos film ‘And’
Emma Stone will appear in two films directed by The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos, making her first performance since 2021’s Cruella. The first is Poor Things, a story inspired by the classic Frankenstein tale, in which she plays a woman who has her brain replaced by the brain of her unborn child. The other Lanthimos film Stone is set to appear in is called And, although, at present, we know little about its plot.
What we do know is that Stone will perform alongside the inimitable Willem Dafoe, who is known to go to great lengths to give some of the best acting performances the big screen has ever seen. In a profile piece with The New York Times, Lanthimos revealed that Dafoe asked Stone to slap him repeatedly across the face, even in a scene when he does not actually appear on camera. Even though Dafoe was not actually needed for the scene, he still wanted to be on set, and highlight his dedication to his craft.
Lanthimos said of Defoe’s commitment: “That’s what you want from actors. To want to be part of it in any way.” Meanwhile, Stone also noted her praise for Dafoe. “There’s this instinct to perform that many actors have — the ‘look at me, look at me!’ kind of performer,” she said. “He’s the opposite of that. Maybe it’s changed through the years. A lot of actors I bond with have been doing this for a long time, and you know they’ve gone from ‘I’ to ‘We.’”
It looks as though Poor Things will likely arrive in cinemas before we see And, and both films are being fronted by Searchlight Pictures. Searchlight had, of course, previously released Lanthimos’ The Favourite back in 2018, for which Stone earned a ‘Best Supporting Actress’ nomination at the Academy Awards.
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