Emma Stone and Jesse Ple­mons: ​‘Is Yor­gos okay with us giv­ing away the secrets?’

Two of the finest actors of their gen­er­a­tion pair up for the first time – one a Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos vet­er­an, the oth­er a new­com­er to this world. When Emma Stone first part­nered with Lan­thi­mos on The Favourite in 2018, it was the begin­ning of a beau­ti­ful cre­ative part­ner­ship, which has now pro­duced three fea­ture films (includ­ing Poor Things and now Kinds of Kind­ness) and one short (Bleat). Kinds of Kind­ness is Jesse Ple­mons’ first time work­ing with both Stone and Lan­thi­mos, and across the film, the pair play near strangers, a mar­ried cou­ple, and devot­ed cult mem­bers, adding to their already impres­sive act­ing CVs. The trio will reunite on Lan­thi­mos’ next project, Bugo­nia, a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 sci-fi com­e­dy Save the Green Planet!

LWLies: What is your read on what Kinds of Kind­ness is actu­al­ly about? 

ES: Oh, God. We’re not going to have good answers for that.

JP: I know Willem’s going to be the one who has the answer.

ES: Willem will do it. But it’ll only be his inter­pre­ta­tion. That’s part of the amaz­ing thing that I think Yor­gos is able to sort of utilise in a lot of his sto­ry­telling. It real­ly leaves itself open to many dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions. And I think he’s much more inter­est­ed in what peo­ple think than what he nec­es­sar­i­ly means by it. Or in say­ing what he means by it.

JP: He’s an observ­er of life. And this is a mod­ern film for him. Sort of.

ES: It takes place in some kind of now, and it’s deal­ing with uni­ver­sal themes, but a con­cise answer is tricky. And it even changes for me, you know, from when I start­ed shoot­ing to then see­ing it last night. It kind of morphs as you go.

Was the Cannes pre­mière the first time you had seen the fin­ished version? 

ES: I’ve seen it a bunch of times. Jesse had nev­er seen it. And it made my night hav­ing Jesse here for the first time. That’s a big way to watch that movie and have your­self in that movie. It’s a vul­ner­a­ble thing.

JP: I felt like I made a ter­ri­ble mis­take. And then five min­utes in, I calmed down and I real­ly had to pee, so that kind of helped.

How much does it mat­ter for you as actors if you under­stand the cen­tral con­ceit of the film? 

ES: Just speak­ing for myself, in most films, I think I gen­er­al­ly do under­stand the cen­tral con­ceit or the nar­ra­tive struc­ture, all of that. This one was a very spe­cial expe­ri­ence because it was so open to inter­pre­ta­tion that it was fun to just find the mean­ing your­self. And I think every­body would agree – and we weren’t dis­cussing what every­body else thinks of it. It was fun to build this absur­dist dream-like world. This was an inter­est­ing exercise.

JP: To me, hav­ing not been in the Yor­gos sphere before, it was so excit­ing and so scary because I feel like there’s some instinct in you to try and under­stand and con­trol and realise ear­ly on that’s not the name of the game with this. It’s like sit­ting in a pool of feel­ings and let­ting all of that guide you and then it just felt like repeat­ed­ly step­ping off a ledge and hop­ing for the best. And at that point, when you get that that’s the game, it’s real­ly exhil­a­rat­ing and becomes a lot of fun.

One of the pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tions of the film is about that need to con­trol and desire for pow­er, and then for actors to be put in a place where you are putting a lot of faith not only in the direc­tor but in each oth­er because you’re work­ing with such a small cast across sto­ries. So you’re get­ting the 4DX expe­ri­ence while you’re work­ing on it. 

ES: Yeah, I think that’s very astute.

You two have the main roles in the three dif­fer­ent films – what did your prepa­ra­tion peri­od look like before you got to the rehearsal? 

ES: I think it was the same as the prepa­ra­tion process for any char­ac­ter. There hap­pened to be three char­ac­ters, but one of the things that we learned ear­ly on from Yor­gos’ sug­ges­tions was that we were going to play them as truth­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, and their look would change and some of their char­ac­ter­is­tics would be dif­fer­ent, but it wasn’t so immense, like Orphan Black where every­one is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter, in the way that you’re approach­ing it.

JP: Yeah that was my expe­ri­ence too. In the begin­ning with any script, you’re just kind of search­ing and cir­cling try­ing to find the most excit­ing, inter­est­ing way in for your­self, so it doesn’t feel like work. You’re just fol­low­ing your curios­i­ty and you spend a lot of time with the script, and the mean­ing is con­stant­ly chang­ing. Even­tu­al­ly, you’ll have an Eure­ka moment and then you’re like, ​‘What? No that’s not it,’ and then you get to rehearsals and noth­ing makes sense.

ES: Yeah, rehearsals don’t help. Or, they do, but they don’t feel like they do. They actu­al­ly real­ly do in hind­sight. There’s an instinct to intel­lec­tu­alise and get cute or smart with some­thing, rather than lead with char­ac­ter, cir­cum­stances, and the feel­ing that’s built-in. But with Yor­gos it’s grad­ual. These things reveal them­selves. We were lucky to shoot chrono­log­i­cal­ly too, so we shot the sto­ries in order. Each sto­ry gets more and more out­sized and insane, so it gave us a sort of process. Jesse, you had to do so much upfront. That was great. I didn’t real­ly have to do that much in the first story.

JP: Yeah, but then you had two mas­sive mono­logues as well.

ES: That was fun.

JP: Sor­ry to bring that up.

ES: There’s noth­ing I get more pan­icked about than a monologue.

Real­ly?!

ES: Oh my god. Yeah, Yor­gos keeps giv­ing them to me. He just loves to throw me a damn monologue.

He sens­es that anx­i­ety and he’s like, ​‘I’m going to give her anoth­er one.’ 

ES: He doesn’t sense it. He knows it! I’ll say ​‘I don’t want to do mono­logues’. He’s like, ​‘You’re doing a mono­logue’. It’s good, you know, it helps you to expand.

JP: It’s expo­sure therapy.

ES: Yeah, it’s good. That’s act­ing in gen­er­al, it’s therapy.

Jesse, when I inter­viewed your wife, Kirsten Dun­st, she men­tioned dream­work was a big part of her cre­ative process, and that you do it too. I was real­ly inter­est­ed if that was a fac­tor in this film because the sub­con­scious is such a big thing in Yor­gos’ movies. 

JP: It was, and it always is. It’s real­ly anoth­er way to sort of pre­vent your­self from intel­lec­tu­al­is­ing and get­ting too cute with it. It grounds the mate­r­i­al deeply with­in your­self and some­times leads you to a take on it or a per­cep­tion or an idea that you oth­er­wise wouldn’t have come across.

You men­tioned the rehearsal peri­od on Yorgos’s films ear­li­er. How was it for this one? 

JP: Is Yor­gos okay with us giv­ing away the secrets…

ES: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is, that’s fine.

JP: I’m sure one of the ones you guys did on Poor Things was the trust exercise.

ES: The chairs? Yeah, I love the chairs. That’s my favourite one.

JP: It’s great. It’s like you’re at a sum­mer camp or some­thing. So basi­cal­ly, there’s one per­son that’s in charge of the chairs. Every­one else is walk­ing around with their eyes closed. When­ev­er they feel like it, they slow­ly go to sit down and the per­son with the chairs has to quick­ly put the chair beneath them so they don’t fall.

ES: But three peo­ple could be sit­ting down at once because they all have their eyes closed. You’re wan­der­ing around just like, who are you going to let fall…

The per­son with the chairs is real­ly stressed. 

ES: Yeah, it’s real­ly intense. But it’s great. I think the best part about all of it, hav­ing done this rehearsal process quite a few times now, is what it engen­ders among the cast. Like the humour and embar­rass­ing your­self and you laugh a lot in the rehearsals because it’s just all so sil­ly. But it real­ly breeds a deep sense of trust. Before you’ve even gone to set, you feel a kin­ship with the troupe. And I think it makes for a real­ly nice expe­ri­ence rather than being like, hey, day one, good to meet you.

JP: And my take­away for it is that the only real objec­tive of the game is to com­mit and lose your­self in the process, which does make you feel real­ly con­fused and lost, which then I think is maybe the point too. Just ful­ly throw­ing your­self into some­thing ridicu­lous is a lib­er­at­ing, ben­e­fi­cial thing for actors, but almost for most people.

That ease with each oth­er and the mate­r­i­al is impor­tant for com­e­dy espe­cial­ly, so it feels nat­ur­al. Yor­gos’ com­e­dy has such a dif­fer­ent rhythm too, and you’ve both done com­e­dy, but I’m inter­est­ed in whether this expe­ri­ence felt any dif­fer­ent from your pre­vi­ous ones. 

JP: I was ner­vous about the tone. You know, I’ll be honest.

ES: All right, he’s giv­en one hon­est answer, finally.

JP: Because Yor­gos kept insist­ing that it’s a com­e­dy and I–

ES: It is!

JP: I know that. I laughed, you know, uncom­fort­ably in many moments in his movies.

ES: Sacred Deer. [imi­tat­ing Kim in The Killing of a Sacred Deer] ​‘Mom, Bob’s eyes are bleed­ing! Bob’s dying!’

JP: I don’t remem­ber the ques­tion. Oh – yes, I was ner­vous about find­ing that tone but I think again, it’s kind of a trust exer­cise and like hop­ing that some sort of osmo­sis, you know, occurs and just by sit­ting with­in some­thing for long enough with these peo­ple, some­thing hap­pens. And you’re also fol­low­ing what every­one else is doing. It’s a real group col­lab­o­ra­tive thing and so every­one is adding to it and so you kind of fall in.

When I heard the orig­i­nal name of the film was And., it remind­ed me of improv, you know, the whole rule being ​“Yes, and…” 

ES: Well you know, the orig­i­nal, orig­i­nal name was just R.M.F. For a long, long time, many years. And then it changed to And., and I was like ​’And?!’

JP: I loved And. It took me a sec­ond to get used to Kinds of Kindness.