When Emma Stone came backstage to speak with press after winning her second Oscar, this time for her work in “Poor Things,” a journalist felt she looked as shocked as any winner he’d ever seen on the Academy Awards stage.
“I think I blacked out,” Stone said. “Yes, I was very shocked. I still feel like I’m spinning a little bit. It’s a huge honor, and I’m very, very surprised.”
It didn’t help Stone’s shellshock that as she took the stage, she turned around to reveal to the camera that her dress had split from the back. She said she thought she must’ve torn it while rocking out during Ryan Gosling’s wild performance of “I’m Just Ken.” So, backstage, it was the second question that was perhaps the most pressing of the evening: How’s your dress doing?
“They sewed me back in, right when I came back,” she said incredulously, showing off her now-repaired gown. “I genuinely think I busted it during ‘I’m Just Ken.’ That number blew my mind. I was going for it, and things just happened.”
Of course, Stone was also stunned because she won over Lily Gladstone for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” denying the history books the chance to award the first-ever Native American Best Actress winner. Gladstone was arguably the most likely of any Oscars “Killers” was supposed to take home. It wound up winning none out of its 10 nominations.
Stone told press backstage at the Oscars that “I really miss playing her,” in reference to her character Bella Baxter, having wrapped shooting on “Poor Things” over two and a half years ago.
“She is a character that is so important to me,” Stone said. “She is just joy and curiosity, fascinated by all of it. That was an amazing lesson to try and take with me every day.”
While Stone had no interest in falling out of her dress on the Oscars stage, she did plenty of that in “Poor Things,” saying earlier in awards season that she needed to have “no shame” about all the film’s nudity and graphic sex scenes.
But she fully trusted her director Yorgos Lanthimos, with whom she previously collaborated on “The Favourite” and will team again for his next film, “Kinds of Kindness.”
