Emma Stone nearly backed out of the most dramatic hair transformation of her career. The Poor Things Oscar winner admitted getting serious cold feet before shaving her head for Yorgos Lanthimos’s conspiracy thriller Bugonia. But leave it to her frequent collaborator to talk her through the panic attack with some surprisingly touching perspective about her mother’s cancer battle.
Emma Stone Bugonia Transformation Gets Real Personal
“From the moment I read the script, I knew I’d have to shave my head, because there was just never going to be any other way,” Emma Stone revealed during a September 3 Q&A in New York City. Director Yorgos Lanthimos quickly added, “You did have cold feet once,” referencing the day they filmed the scene requiring four synchronized cameras and VistaVision equipment.
Emma Stone Bugonia collaboration marks their fourth project together after The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness. The film, written by Will Tracy and based on 2003 South Korean thriller Save the Green Planet!, follows conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Stone), convinced she’s an alien destroying Earth.
Emma Stone Finds Strength in Her Mother’s Cancer Journey
When panic set in during the elaborate filming setup, Emma Stone remembered her mother Krista’s 2008 battle with triple-negative breast cancer. “She did something legitimately hard, and she lost her hair. And the first thing she said was, ‘I am so jealous, I want to shave my head again,'” Stone recalled. “And I was like, I’m shaving my head because I get to do what I love, and my mom was there with me.”
The Emma Stone Bugonia experience became “one of the greatest experiences of my life, very freeing, and it’s hair,” she explained. Stone unveiled her buzz cut at January’s Golden Globe Awards, though she’d been spotted wearing wigs at October 2024’s New York Film Festival to hide the transformation.
Jesse Plemons, who plays the conspiracy theorist responsible for the shaving scene, told Vogue: “It was like ‘Here we go — Emma has shaved her head.’ We better make this good!” The single-take requirement meant no room for error during the irreversible moment.
Bugonia premieres in limited theaters October 24 before expanding October 31, produced by Stone herself alongside Lanthimos, Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Ari Aster, and Lars Knudsen for Focus Features. Alicia Silverstone joins the cast, reuniting with Lanthimos after The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Emma Stone Bugonia represents another bold creative risk from an actress who consistently chooses challenging material over safe commercial projects.
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