Emma Stone has won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, for her performance as Bella Baxter in “Poor Things.” This marks her second Golden Globe win after taking home the same prize for “La La Land” in 2017. Altogether, she’s been nominated at the Globes eight times — including for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series, Drama for TV’s “The Curse” tonight, January 7, as well.
This sets Stone up for a sure Oscar nomination for Best Actress when the Academy announces its choices on Tuesday, January 23. She plays a kind of Victorian dystopian spin on a reanimated Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in Yorgos Lanthimos’ sex-crazed and visually eye-popping “Poor Things,” altogether at bat in seven categories at the Globes including Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, Best Supporting Actors Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo, Best Director Lanthimos, Best Screenplay for Tony McNamara, and Best Score for Jerskin Fendrix.
Searchlight Pictures opened a soft launch of “Poor Things” in select theaters in early December before going wider circa Christmas, with a worldwide gross of $11 million and counting so far. The estimated $35-million production is a wide swing for a high-concept original movie, albeit adapted loosely from a 1992 epistolary novel by Alasdair Gray.
Lanthimos and Stone previously collaborated on “The Favourite,” which earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, and the 2022 short film “Bleat.” She stars as well in his next film, the anthology movie “Kinds of Kindness,” which shot in New Orleans in fall 2022 while “Poor Things” was in post-production. Stone’s performance in “Poor Things,” while largely a no-show among critics groups so far, has been widely praised thanks to her comic dexterity in playing a woman who starts from scratch after a brain transplant revives her dead corpse.
Meanwhile, in Showtime’s “The Curse” created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, she plays Whitney, an HGTV-hired host who designs sustainable housing in an underserved New Mexico community, getting in over her head with performative do-goodery. The ninth episode premieres January 7, on Globes night, with the series finale dropping January 14. Hawking her roles in both “Poor Things” and “The Curse,” Stone joined the five-timers club at “Saturday Night Live” to host the variety show on December 2.
