Emma Thompson Joked Acting With Emma Stone Was Hard Because She Was ‘More Talented’ in ‘Cruella’
Emma Stone and Emma Thompson collaborated not too long ago for the hit Disney film Cruella. The pair famously played rival fashion designers, with Stone portraying the titular villain. But Thompson quipped that her character’s jealousy of Cruella Deville might’ve mirrored her own envy of Stone.
What Emma Thompson thought about working with Emma Stone
Thompson and Stone both had more than a good time doing Cruella. The feature saw Thompson’s ambitious fashion designer, Baroness von Hellman, taking Stone’s Cruella under her wing. The two characters would soon engage in a heated rivalry, both trying to come out on top in the fashion world.
Because of their fierce competition, Thompson’s Baroness spent much of the film being cruel to Stone. But Thompson asserted there were no hard feelings had between the actual actors. Thompson even had a good time playing nasty for a change.
“There is nothing more fun than pretending. I found pretending to be mean came horribly easily,” she said in an interview with Collider.
Thompson delved deeper into her character’s motivations for despising Stone’s Cruella. But she also joked the Baroness’ feelings somewhat aligned with her own.
“When she finally sees someone who’s not only talented, but actually more talented than her, and younger and more beautiful, she finds it very difficult indeed. And of course, I found it very difficult being with Stone, who’s more beautiful, young, talented, etc. [than me]. I swallowed my bitterness and dealt with it, mostly through drinking Negronis, one after the other, late into the night,” Thompson joked.
Emma Stone loved that ‘Cruella’ didn’t have a love story
There was no romance present in the feature Cruella. The movie was a bit of a character study showing Stone’s transformation into the hardened 101 Dalmatians villain. Cruella’s rivalry with the Baroness was a huge part of Cruella’s arc, which Stone was glad the film focused on.
“One of the things I loved the most about the relationship between these two women is that there is no love story. There are no men involved,” Stone said to Entertainment Weekly. “It is completely about two women that have a lot of genius in them and are not afraid to go toe to toe and to do whatever it takes to come out on top. I don’t know that trying to drag someone else down to get to that place is something that I would personally love in real life, but my god was it fun to play.”
Thompson agreed, and felt the feud between the Baroness and Cruella had a deeper commentary about ambitious women in the creative industry.
“Not only is there a great truism with some women who are at the top and won’t allow room for another woman to be at the top, but also the great genius artists sometimes absolutely can’t cope with any competition, and are sort of inhuman in their ambition and their need to be on the top,” Thompson said. “It’s frustrating sometimes because you think, if these two got together, they’d be pretty something — but that’s just not the story [here]. You feel like they’re fighting to the death, and it’s such a wonderful thing to watch because it’s so icy, and sort of precise in a sort of surgical way as well. And exciting!”
Emma Thompson and Emma Stone had too much fun doing ‘Cruella’
Although they were playing intense rivals, Thompson and Stone asserted that their time on set was anything but tense. The pair enjoyed themselves so much that they needed to be reined in a bit while filming.
“We had to control ourselves, put it that way,” Thompson said. “We had to prevent ourselves from having too much fun, because then the job would simply not have got done and we’d have had to have our makeup done lying on the floor, with ice bags on our heads.”
