Emma Stone made a shocking discovery while on the set of coming-of-age comedy Easy A.
The Oscar winner played protagonist Olive Penderghast in the film directed by Will Gluck. Loosely inspired by the 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Easy A sees Olive lie to her bestie about her sexual experiences, with the rumours spreading quickly among her high school pals. She then decides to use her newly acquired reputation to her advantage, embracing it and helping down-on-their-luck male students.
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She makes new friends along the way, as well as winning the heart of Todd, played by Penn Badgley well before his You days.
When closeted friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) asks Olive to make others believe they are sleeping together so that bullies would leave him alone, she accepts to play along. To make it plausible, Olive suggests they can simulate having sex while at a party.
On set, all the frantic jumping around led Stone to discover she had asthma, a lung condition she didn't know she was suffering from prior to that moment.
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"Oh, for the love, I can't even simulate sex without dying!" she told MTV during the film at the time of promotion.
"I had a little asthma attack, without any prior knowledge that I had asthma, during the scene where we had to jump up and down for hours and hours screaming and yelling on the bed."
Stone recalled the incident as 'humiliating' as it happened early on in production, with her subsequently fearing the entire crew would judge her, much like in high school.
"[It] was humiliating, because it was the second day of shooting," Stone explained.
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"Here's what it's going to be like the whole movie, as I'm breathing into an oxygen tank," she continued.
"The crew was like, 'She's going to be a real blast. Wow. Amazing. A 20-year-old having an asthma attack.'"
Stone went on to have quite the acting career since her little Easy A incident, with the actor bagging an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2017 for her role as Mia in Damien Chazelle's La La Land.
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Following her most recent big-screen role as villainess Cruella in the Disney movie of the same name, Stone will next be seen not in one, but two projects from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos.
The pair are teaming up again after she starred in his 2018 period drama The Favourite. She reportedly finished filming on the director's upcoming work Poor Things, in which she also serves as a producer, and is currently shooting And, an anthology drama from Lanthimos also starring Jesse Plemons, Willem Defoe, Hong Chau and Margaret Qualley.
Topics: TV and Film
Stefania Sarrubba