Emma Stone recalls a young Shirley MacLaine in the new Vogue cover story. She has that thing, whatever it is, that the camera loves. In case you’re interested in the backstory of La La Land and her life as a young actress trying to break in, Here you go.
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If La La Land has a signature moment, it occurs roughly a quarter of the way into the film, when Stone’s Mia and Gosling’s Sebastian run into each other at a party in the hills and get lost trying to find Stone’s parked car (this is not a spoiler; calm down). It’s dusk, and the L.A. sky is a vivid purple. A song—“A Lovely Night”—ensues. Gosling and Stone tap dance, then twirl together. It’s the first time a romance seems possible. (OK, that’s a mild spoiler; don’t hate me.) Attempted over two nights at magic hour in Griffith Park, the scene lasts around six minutes and required intense planning and more than a bit of luck. When Gosling and Stone finally nailed it, “everybody just exploded,” Stone says.
It goes without saying that Stone very much remembers when she herself was a Mia, an unrecognizable stranger at Paris Hilton’s party who several times a week was in that red Beetle shuttling to and from unsuccessful and sometimes soul-crushing auditions. She recalls the time a woman screamed at her on camera for not properly memorizing a monologue. “That was more bizarre than anything,” she says.
It’s the actor’s predicament that even the successful ones worry that they could be right back there again. Stone is no different. Sure, it’s good now—she acknowledges that her mentality has shifted from “What can I get?” to “What do I want?”—but there’s always a fear that after a few missteps, she could be right back behind the dog-cookie counter.
“You always feel a little bit like that,” she says. “That you could again be an outsider, that something could make people never want to hire you again.”
Point taken, but let’s be real. Do any of us think this is going to be an issue for Emma Stone?
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