Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone underwent a remarkable transformation for her role in Bugonia, the upcoming film by director Yorgos Lanthimos. For a pivotal scene, she shaved her head to a bare scalp, a decision that sent shockwaves through the film industry.
Bugonia, which will be released in theaters worldwide on October 31st, follows the story of two men (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO (Stone) suspecting her to be an alien attempting to destroy Earth. The film is loosely based on the 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet.
While filming was still underway late last year, public speculation grew around Stone’s appearance after she was seen wearing a wig at the 2024 New York Film Festival. The reason for the wig was finally revealed at the Bugonia’s premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in August, when audiences witnessed Plemons’s character handing Stone a razor.
Stone, unfazed by the drastic change, said in an interview for Vogue’s September issue that she was eager to shave her head. “No better feeling in the world,” she exclaimed. The actress used a 1.5-millimeter blade to execute the shave, and according to Vogue, “The first shower when you’ve shaved your head? Oh my God, it’s amazing.”
Stone knew from reading the script that shaving her head was inevitable. “There was just never going to be any other way,” she said at a Bugonia screening in New York City on September 5th.
Even though she was prepared, she told Vogue she “burst into tears in her trailer” before filming the scene, partially because of her mother, Krista, who was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2008. “She actually did something brave,” Stone told Vogue, referring to her mom. “I’m just shaving my head.”
There was also a lot of pressure involved in shaving her head on camera because it all had to be captured perfectly in one take. “You did have cold feet once,” director Yorgos Lanthimos said to Stone at the New York City screening in September. “Right before.” “It was a year and a half I knew that I was going to be shaving my head, and then the day of — they were setting up four cameras because we had to get it in one shot,” Stone said at the screening. “It was taking a long time to set all the cameras up, and I just started kind of panicking about that.”
Plemons also shared his anxiety about filming the scene in one take. “It was like, ‘Here we go — Emily has shaved her head,’” he said, referring to Stone by her given name. “We better make this good!”
Stone also wanted to make sure her 4-year-old daughter, Louise Jean, was “very ready” to see her mother bald. “It’s not super-scary. It’s just such a major transformation,” Stone said. “I just said, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I’m going to take my hair off and it’s going to grow back. Isn’t that so silly and fun? We can do whatever we want with our hair, it can change all the time!’ She’s like, ‘OK,’ and then it was totally cool.”
After the scene was filmed, Stone told Vogue that Krista, who has been cancer-free for 12 years, said she was “jealous” of the look and wanted to shave her head again. “I’m shaving my head because I get to do what I love, and my mom was there with me,” Stone said at the screening. “It was actually one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
Stone joins a long list of actresses who have shaved their heads for roles, including Florence Pugh for We Live in Time, Natalie Portman for V for Vendetta, Charlize Theron for Mad Max: Fury Road, and Demi Moore for G.I. Jane. Shaving her head was also the easiest part of filming Bugonia, Stone told reporters at the Venice International Film Festival, where the film received a 7-minute standing ovation. “Was it easy for me to shave my head? That’s the easiest thing ever; you just take the razor and poof,” Stone said. “It’s so much easier than any hairstyle.” Instead, it was the fighting training and the workout class that Stone said were the most challenging parts of preparing for the role.
