Why Emma Stone was “concerned” about her role in ‘Easy A’
Emma Stone has portrayed a variety of memorable characters throughout her relatively brief but immensely successful career. In her role in Easy A, released in 2010, she portrayed a character that pushed boundaries, prompting some concern from Stone herself about the risks involved. However, her performance proved to be a standout moment in her career, showcasing her versatility and willingness to take on challenging roles.
By the 2010s, Stone was beginning to make her name. She usually played ditzy teen characters or comedy roles in movies like House Bunny, Zombie Land and Superbad. When Easy A came around, and she stepped into the role of Olive Penderghast, it was her first proper chance to be a leading actor.
The film is a play on the classic novel The Scarlet Letter but follows the teen protagonist as she lies about losing her virginity to gain popularity or street cred. To Stone, it was a perfect project presenting her with a role that was witty, fun and relatable.
“You feel like you struck gold or something when you read a well-written comedy part for a female. It’s just such a rare thing, which is horribly sad,” she said of the role. Allowing her to follow in the footsteps of other comedic female actors she admired. This felt like her moment.
She added: “Although, it is nice nowadays, it seems like more female comedians are developing movies or coming up with characters and working with writers and kind of making your own thing, and that’s what Anna did for The House Bunny. But, I couldn’t have been more grateful even to read it much less be involved with it. It was fantastic.”
However, as much as she was thrilled to get the part, Stone did have some concerns. The film is all based around sex, with her character harnessing her new reputation as a “dirty skank” and spreading rumours about herself. Stone worried that maybe the humour might be taken the wrong way and instead be seen as her glorifying promiscuity.
“I was actually concerned with that for quite a while and still have a lot of thoughts about that,” Stone told North Texas Daily. “But what I’ve been able to kind of whittle it down to, in my mind at ast, is what Olive learned from this entire experience.”
By the end of the film, her character comes clean, calling in favours from friends she’s helped out in the past. It ends with a message of good karma and that being a good person will always prevail in the end. The moral of the story is a classic one: lying is bad.
“I think what [Olive] learns by this whole pact of lying to everyone and watching her life kind of crumble around her and realizing that if she had just told the truth from the beginning, she could have been saved from all that,” Stone concluded of the character. It was this character arc and deeper meaning that allowed her to fully connect with the role and cast her concerns aside.
Since then, she’s played plenty more roles that involve sex or consider love and intimacy in films like Crazy, Stupid, Love and The Favourite. In her role as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, sex plays a major part in the movie, leading to some critique of the film’s intense sexual content.
Her approach to the role was similar to her process for Easy A, considering the wider picture around the explicit content. “I just see – for Bella specifically – sex as one element of her experience,” she told Sky News. “I think she’s soaking in everything for the first time: food and politics and philosophy, dancing and travel and sex. She’s exploring everything and seeing what works for her and understanding society and her relationship to power and I don’t know… To me it’s just part of it, and it furthers what she’s learning.”
