Why has Emma Stone never worked with a female director?
After the controversial release of Poor Things in 2023, the cast was subjected to many lines of questioning at the following press junkets, ranging from strange and invasive to warranted and justified inquiries that were discreetly avoided. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter in the modern retelling of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with the actor playing a woman with the brain of a baby who finds herself in the real world for the first time, discovering the joys and downfalls of womanhood.
While the film was met with a varying level of takes on the subject matter, with some praising it for its esoteric portrayal of a patriarchal society and some finding the allusions to paedophilia inherently uncomfortable, Emma Stone maintained the same stance when asked about the film – asserting that she is a feminist, and it is, in fact, a metaphor. However, there have been many people in Hollywood who insist on being one thing while their actions contradict this, and given the fact that Emma Stone has never worked with a female director, it slightly dilutes the power of her previous statements.
There is no doubt that Stone is a risk-taker. She uses her star power to encourage mainstream audiences to engage with independent cinema, with a wave of unsuspecting people flocking to the cinema as the weird and wonderful work of Yorgos Lanthimos or Nathan Fielder washes over them, leaving people shocked, disgusted, outraged and most importantly, entertained. I present to you, the power of cinema.
However, in recent years, there have been many public conversations about the disparity between men and women in leading roles within the film industry, with the majority of projects disproportionately being directed by men. Actors such as Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Reese Witherspoon have signed varying contracts pledging to work with more female directors in an active bid to address the gender gap in Hollywood, using their fame to elevate the voices of other women in film. And for someone who frequently makes bold career choices and lends her fame to more risky projects, this is surprisingly something that Stone has not yet done.
Stone has worked on over 30 feature films, and all of them were directed by men besides a female co-director on Battle of the Sexes (the irony is not lost on me). More than anything, this is a massive oversight on behalf of the actor, and when people discuss their values and how strongly they believe in them, you’d expect to see this reflected in their actions. But, alas, this is Hollywood, and we’ve seen countless male actors and directors claim to be feminists while also doing things that are in the politest of terms, not very respectful to women.
It begs the question – at what point do we separate the art from the artist?
When so many people are making an active effort to address the gender gap within Hollywood and the barriers that stop women from directing, why are there not more people participating in this? And when Stone continues to work with the same man over and over again and uses her name to elevate his work, making a bold stance about independent cinema, I am baffled as to why this wouldn’t extend to female directors, who absolutely need the support more than Yorgos Lanthimos, who has been consistently working for years and never struggles to take his next oddity off the ground.
In a recent Hollywood Roundtable interview with Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and Sofia Vergara, the actors expressed mutual dismay over the lack of female directors, to which Dunst pointedly said that she’d never had an issue finding female directors to work with, you just have to make more of an effort to seek them out. Dunst has worked with many first-time female directors and insists that it is their responsibility to elevate their voices. The comment caused some of the others to sheepishly nod, perhaps rethinking their own approach to selecting projects, because it’s true – there is no excuse, you just have to try a bit harder.
While I love Stone as a performer and have enjoyed many of her recent projects, the mismatch between her publicly professed feminist values and lack of collaboration with female filmmakers strikes me as a strangely intentional choice and a massive shame. An active decision has been made to support the work of these male directors, and after working in the industry for so many years without making the effort to diversify who you work with, it does not look good at all. Unfortunately, the Hollywood brand of feminism only seems to go so far, and an alarmingly small number of people are actually doing the work to do better.
