Why Emma Stone Was ‘So Afraid’ to Shave Her Head On-Screen

Emma Stone isn’t one to shy away from tough movie scenes, as evidenced by her Academy Award-winning performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things.

But for the director’s upcoming movie, she had to do something on a completely different level: getting her head shaved on camera.

If you look at any of the promotional material for Bugonia, Lanthimos’ new comedy-horror-thriller starring Stone and Jesse Plemons—who both starred in the director’s last film, the black-comedy thriller Kinds of Kindness—the posters, the trailers, the ads all prominently feature a bald Emma Stone. How did we get here?

The plot of Bugonia revolves around two conspiracy theory obsessed men (Plemons and acting newcomer Aidan Delbis) who kidnap a pharmaceutical company’s CEO (Stone) because they think she is an alien who wants to destroy the Earth. Believing that her hair lets her communicate with her kind, they shave it all off while she’s passed out.

Who is in control? pic.twitter.com/pUShvljXcn

— Bugonia (@bugoniafilm) October 20, 2025

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Stone said she was “so afraid” because the shot could only be done in one take—if she flinches or messes up, it’d be impossible to recreate.

“’Stay still.’ That was it. I was meditating on ‘stay still, just stay still,’” she said. “Because I am not awake there, I was like, play dead, basically, play dead… It was one take and there were four cameras set up just to make sure.”

Director Lanthimos said it wasn’t difficult at all to get Stone to shave it all off on camera.

“I mean, it was in the script, so I didn’t even have to tell her. She read it first, and she had the slightest hesitation just before, not hesitation to do it, but she had kind of a knot in her stomach,” he said. “But it happened. Thankfully, we did it. We only had one shot to achieve it. And then she felt great. She saw herself and she really loved it, and she felt very free.”

It seems to have paid off, with tons of early Oscar hype for both Stone and Plemons. The film currently sits at a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus agreeing that “Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are at the top of their game.”

Bugonia is in theaters now.