Interview: Emma Stone

Wednesday, 10 August 2011 15:40

Emma Stone is popping up everywhere lately: the recent Steve Carrell comedy, Crazy, Stupid, Love; this month’s Jim Crow period drama, The Help; even popping up in that crazy over-promoted Friends With Benefits.

Turning up in a dazzling green satin dress and flipping her red tinted locks, the 22-year-old guzzled a Diet Dr. Pepper straight out of the bottle during this funny interrogation. She shed light on essential topics like stud muffins, male abs and lame pickup lines, while occasionally flashing, by chance, a mysterious Paul McCartney blackbird wrist tattoo. More about that later.

By Prairie Miller

Hey, Emma. Hello!

I guess good things start with Dr. Pepper. That’s right. That’s my opinion!

So what's up? You seem to be in every movie lately. I'm not in every movie! I can name so many movies I'm not in right now. Transformers, Harry Potter...Although sometimes people do call me Emma Watson, for a long time, people were really convinced that I went to school with them.

You play a Southern society girl, Skeeter, in The Help. Are you anything like her? Skeeter and I have a lot more in common than I would probably care to admit. Of course, I'm not as brave as she is [in the endeavors she's taking on]. I do understand being maybe a little different than your peers.

Everyone's gone through that. I like so much about her, that she wasn't a martyr, the lessons she learns and the way she learns it. I don't know what it was about me. I love this girl.

You’re from Arizona, so what was it like playing a Southerner? I never knew what the real feeling of being in the South was like, and the kind of secrecy and the two sides there are to everybody. We were in a small town and everyone was so nice and so welcoming.

But they also know everything that's going on. And it really shows, really informs what we're talking about in the movie. You know, the secrecy required for something this illegal at the time. I now understand so much more how quickly word travels in a small town in the South.

What turned you on about having newly buffed Ryan Gosling as your object of desire in Crazy, Stupid, Love? It was a couple of scenes. When he first comes on to [my character, Hannah,] at the bar, and then when we did the dirty dancing. But lifting me up was terrifying.

Did you chase after this kooky character, or did they come looking for you? I’d like to think we chased each other.

Are you an L.A. woman? I live in New York.

You must get guys giving you those lame pickup lines all the time, like Ryan's character. No. Not really!

Huh? Well, where? Like walking down the street? I don't really go out to a lot of bars.

C'mon. You know what I mean. So how do you feel about men and the way they try to pick up women that way? Well, to be honest with you, I don't know a lot of guys who pick up women in that way! Or else women figured that out a long time ago and have outsmarted the situation; although, I do see the game a lot. You know, insult, compliment, insult, compliment. So that's the new pickup line, the game. It works!

What's the worst pickup line you ever had? Ugh, I wish I had a better answer to this question. I don't know! I didn't think that people were still using pickup lines. And I realize that I haven’t had people use pickup lines on me, unfortunately. So bring them on!

How much fun is it playing a woman who walks in and gets what she wants for a change? It was really great. The tables were turned. And he's shirtless, and I'm wearing all my clothes! It's fantastic. I mean, I really enjoyed their dynamic.

Okay, was he really that buffed? Ryan? Did people really think that he was airbrushed or something?

He said it. But he could have been joking. Oh, for the love of...Yeah, he absolutely was! Uh huh. But it's got to be a lot of pressure when you read a script, and it says your character is photoshopped, because that was in the script. And he probably had that line ringing in his head whenever he was working out!

Would you ever be attracted to a stud kind of guy like that in real life? Ha! But why not him? Did you see how strong he was? He's pretty muscle-y! But yeah, absolutely. For the record, absolutely.

So what attracts you to a dude? Vulnerability and honesty. I don't like that whole thing where you can sense that they're not telling you something or they're being strong. I think it's a lot sexier and stronger when they admit what they're afraid of. And humor of course. That's huge.

I think a lot of times when you meet a person for the first time you can have a spark and chemistry with them and not necessarily think they are so great as a person, and then get to know them and you can either be proven right or wrong.

Would you ever try to change a guy to make him more to your liking? You mean like from a stud muffin into a hunk-a-hunk of burning love? I always think it’s a bad move to try to change anybody from who they are. I don’t think that you can ever truly change somebody. People change if they want to change.

Do you know who you truly are? Hopefully I'm figuring it out!

So what do you think when you pass newsstands and you're proclaimed Hollywood's summer “it” girl? Well...I wrote all those captions! I had caption-writing approval! So did you agree with them?

I guess... Good, good!

You seem to be so cool with being a celebrity now, like you couldn’t care less. Do you think you'll always feel that way, or that fame will eventually become obnoxious to you? Well, the thing about me, with my job, I hold all that pretty lightly, because it ebbs and flows so much and it comes and goes. I know things will change. So if I get attached to one way of living, or one way of thinking or being, then I'm going to be screwed later on. That kind of expectation just leads to disappointment.

So as long as my relationship with my friends and family is good, then all the stuff that happens with this can't ever really be that bad, because those people are really there through all of that.

That's what I realize about others who have been stars for a long time, is that their families come first. They love their jobs and they have fun, and they're passionate about what they do, but they don't need it. You know, it doesn't fill a hole in them. They're filled by their family and their kids. I really think in any job, that's the most important thing.

You can't take it with you, any of that stuff. So I guess it's just that, focusing on the really important stuff. I'm just so grateful for the opportunities that I have right now, you know?

You can be really funny. Were you always that way? I was like the obnoxious ham from five years old on! If I lived in medieval times, I think I would have been a court jester. So, absolutely. I always made people laugh. That was my survival method, but it was more insanity than gumption.

What kind of funny things did you do as a kid? I hear when you were young you had an awkward period with braces and coke-bottle glasses. I don't think I was that funny; I was just kind of obnoxious! I was loud and it very much mirrors my life now.

I hear you met Paul McCartney. Yeah, we went to his concert the other night.

And? Paul McCartney drew my tattoo!

Get out... Paul McCartney and I...have a longstanding relationship! No, Woody Harrelson introduced me to Paul at the beginning of 2009. We went to dinner at his house and then I wrote him a letter later in the year.

He drew these blackbird feet for me! My mom, dad and brother, we all have it tattooed on our wrists and I've seen him multiple times since then. Then we went to his concert and we got to go backstage and hang out with Paul McCartney and his tiny harmonica that he carries in his pocket! It was pretty great.

That had to have been surreal. It was really surreal. The whole thing is really surreal. But he drew this tattoo and I look at it every day. Every time he sees it he touches it and kisses it. He's the greatest, greatest guy.

He sent me drawings of three different bird feet that he had done. My family and I, we all picked one. My dad and I have it on our left wrists and my mom and brother on their right. It's pretty cool.

What's in your future? Next summer, The Amazing Spider-Man is coming out. I'm not editorializing. They just named it that! And then, I don't know. Maybe something, soon.

Aren't you playing much younger in Spider-Man? Yeah, I'm seventeen.

Speaking of Internet rumors... Oh boy!

Well, all the crap on the Internet about you, what do you think about it? Yeah, but it happens to everybody now. Kids in high school, I mean everybody's getting crap about them on the Internet. I think it's a double-edged sword. I mean, I loved the Internet growing up. I thought I wanted to build websites for a living, so I thought it was incredible. That was before blogs. Then, it was Ezines and a lot of message board stuff. I thought it was so much fun and so interesting.

But now, as with everything we seem to have done as the human race, we take something good and we just blow it to an extreme. But the world is getting smaller, and we're in our tiny houses and boxes, and it's like please, just leave us alone. We don't want to go out anymore. We just want to stay in this little box and communicate through typing, and that's odd to me.

But the thing about writing crap on the Internet, I have asked every one of my friends. Would you go on the Internet and talk crap about someone you didn't know? And it's a resounding “no.” So I always think, cool. Those people writing that stuff probably aren't the people I hang out with! But that's alright, you know? I'm not going on the Internet writing crap about people, but I get it. I mean, it's cool. You can express your opinion and you can say what you want and feel. That's freedom, that's fantastic. I mean, there are these standup comedians who can put their stuff up on Youtube and get discovered in amazing ways. It opens up this opportunity to kind of create on your own. That's so amazing, as an artist. But there's also that dark side to everything.

What type of music do you like to listen to? Um, a lot, a lot. I listen to different things throughout the day on my iPod. That's the great thing about it. I'm listening to the new Fleet Foxes album. It's pretty good. And um, a lot of upbeat stuff walking around. You know, I kind of do walking music the way you do driving music. And I'm always listening to older music. That's always been something, but I'm open to everything, except for pan flute music! Like, they've convinced us that it is soothing music at spas. That is not soothing music. It's a pan flute! Sorry to speak out at all the pan flute players, but I hate that.

So what are you going to be doing in The Amazing Spider-Man poster? Just putting my chin in my hands and smiling. Really ridiculously!

You're pretty funny. Would you ever be into writing your own comedy? Yeah, absolutely. I would be amazing! Sweet. But I'm riding this train as long as I can.

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Comments (1)

• |2012-04-14 11:32:57 Tattoo Ideas
  Awesome interview!

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