Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Yorgos Lanthimos Break Down a Scene from Bugonia

We shot three films in one and we're playing three different characters in each story in Kinds of Kindness, so by the time we started Begonia, it felt like we had already done three films together, so that always helps that familiarity and trust. And cut. And check. Check the gate. Take two. Thanks, guys. Hi, I'm Yorgos Lanthimos. Hi, I'm Emma Stone. I'm Jesse Plemons. And we're about to break this scene down. Yes. Break it down. For a letterboxd. Teddy? What? I thought all night about our situation here, and I think I know what's going on. Okay, yeah, please, enlighten me. It's like a pretty trashy basement. I mean, there's a lot of stuff down there. There's a lot of history in a way. The production design team, you know, did a lot of work to fill this space with details that we never even saw on camera, but they were there, and I think it helps the actors as well to forget that they're in a constructed space. So yeah, I mean, a lot of the film takes place there. So look, I feel qualified here because I am a chemist by training, but I also have a psych degree. Oh. Okay, wow. Great. A degree from a university from a credentialist scam for laundering privilege. Amazing. Fully functional, the suits that we're wearing. So much of that was Yorgos and Jennifer Johnson, the costume designer. By the time I'd started, they'd put together this incredible lookbook with all these different ideas, and it was just kind of probably a mix of a lot of different images she found, and I think where it landed was pretty special. You can't talk your way out of this again. I'm not a kid anymore. I have never shaved my head before. There was only a tiny bit of trepidation on the day of, but then I loved it. It felt so freeing. It was great. Where is my hair? Your hair has been destroyed to prevent you from contacting your ship. What ship? Your mother ship. Okay. It was mostly important in terms of the plot of the film, because hair plays an important role. But of course, you know, Emily looked incredible with the shaved head. I knew it. She wasn't sure. Yeah, I think it became this iconic figure in the basement, I think, with the cream as well and the burgundy oxblood trench coat. You know, you could think from Zondark to, I don't know, Nosferatu even. So I think it became a very powerful image. I think you're in a kind of echo chamber. Echo chamber? Right now? Mm-hmm. Echo? Yeah, I read the same 5,000 think pieces about that too. You know, all of these scenes are quite long and the second of three intense interrogation scenes. So I think we were always trying to make sure that there was some sort of an arc there. And yeah, I mean, what I loved about playing these scenes is the way Will wrote them. And they're incredibly funny and in an instant can sort of turn. And so I just remember we played around a lot with tone and all that. Can we have a dialogue, please? Don't call it a dialogue. This isn't Death of a Salesman. Okay, can we talk, please? Or are you just going to keep doing- We don't need to talk. Yes, okay. Because I know exactly what you're going to say. Have either of you ever performed the Death of a Salesman or any other familiar adaptation? I have not. Have you? I have not. Who would I play? The Salesman? The Salesman. I would watch Emily Aniston. You can, you know, it's your gender. Willie Littleman? Yeah. I'd love to play a little Willie Littleman, but no, I have not done it before. I love Death of a Salesman and I do love that there's a reference to it. There is some overlap from the middle story of Kinds of Kindness, where Jesse's character does not believe that Emma is who she says she is. It puts her through some pretty intense body trials of that. For Emma and Jesse, did your previous collaboration kind of key you up for this? And Jesse, will you ever believe who Emma says she is? I mean, if she keeps lying to me, then no. That woman isn't Liz, she's not my wife. That's funny, I didn't think about that, but you're right. Very different details, but similar dynamic in some way. We shot three films in one and we're playing three different characters in each story in Kinds of Kindness, so by the time we started Begonia, it felt like we had already done three films together, so that always helps that familiarity and trust and all of that. I had not put together a kind of Kinds of Kindness, Begonia overlap in that second story, but that really is very interesting. It is funny that he consistently just doesn't believe I am who I say I am. You're going to say that I'm in some kind of internet-induced, auto-hypnotic feedback loop and gatekeepers and norms and all that weak hegemonic horse ----, but that is precisely the limp-dick rhetoric that you've been instructed to counter the human insurgency with. That's the ******* hyper-normalized dialectic by which you've convinced seven and a half billion people that they're not your captives, to keep us believing in these ******* false institutional ******* shibboleths. You mean shibboleths. That's what I said. You said... Yeah, whatever. Sorry. I guess grammar is a false Andromedon construct as well.