The genre Emma Stone swore she’d never revisit: “I don’t have any others I’m dying to do”
With the release of La La Land, any doubts from critics that Emma Stone wouldn’t become an enduring cinematic icon of her generation were swiftly alleviated. It was one of the biggest films of 2016, not only causing controversy with the infamous Oscar blunder that actually saw Moonlight take home ‘Best Picture’ rather than Damien Chazelle’s musical, but also capturing the hearts of many viewers who both sang and cried along to the movie.
La La Land is one of the most popular movies found in user’s top four according to Letterboxd, and it’s not hard to see why so many people love it. It’s both tender and exciting, with incredible performances from Stone and Ryan Gosling, who delivered memorable numbers like ‘Another Day of Sun’ and the Oscar-winning ‘City of Stars’.
Before La La Land, Stone had established herself as a new comedy star, with roles in movies like Superbad, Zombieland, and Easy A, allowing her to become one of her generation’s most notable faces. She soon proved herself with further roles in everything from The Help to The Amazing Spider-Man and Birdman, earning an Oscar nomination for the latter.
With La La Land, however, Stone ascended the ranks of stardom further, and since then, she hasn’t looked back, appearing in movies like The Favourite, Cruella, and Poor Things, winning yet another Oscar for her role as Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’ controversial odyssey into the world of female sexuality and science-fiction.
Despite Stone’s success, much of which she can credit to her show-stopping performance in Chazelle’s musical, she hasn’t been interested in singing in a movie for a long time. For now, musicals seem firmly off the menu for the actor, who has dedicated herself to the weird and wonderful, frequently collaborating with surreal genius Lanthimos in recent years instead.
Talking to the Evening Standard, Stone once revealed, “I definitely would love to do theatre again. I don’t know if I’d be able to do a musical any time soon just because maintaining the voice is pretty tricky for me, but, my God, I’d love to do theatre again very soon.”
The actor might be able to sing, but she’s an actor before anything, and singing in a musical is something that she really has to prepare for since it’s not something she is incredibly used to. She’s a big fan of musical theatre, though, and Stone was even lucky enough to land her ultimate role on Broadway in 2014 when she was cast as Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
“I’ve already done my dream musical, Cabaret. That was my dream. I really don’t have any others that I’m dying to do. Really, honestly, my voice can’t take it, but straight plays—there’s about a zillion of those,” she explained. If she can do Cabaret, she can surely do anything, but for now, she’s just not interested in flexing her vocal abilities. With La La Land and Cabaret under her belt, however, it appears that Stone is much more interested in quality over quantity.
