Emma Stone’s ‘Bugonia’ Haircut Was Done in One Take

Shaving the head of a two-time Oscar-winning actress is serious business. If there are any mistakes whatsoever, it’s not like you can grow the hair back and do it again. So, it probably goes without saying that for Bugonia, shaving Emma Stone’s head was done in one take but, hearing it from her, the stress levels around that were through the roof.

“It was one take and there were four cameras set up just to make sure,” Stone told Entertainment Weekly. She was “so afraid” that she was going to ruin the take, she decided to only think of one thing. “Stay still,” she said. “That was it. I was meditating on stay still, just stay still… Because I am not awake there, I was like, play dead, basically, play dead.”

Director Yorgos Lanthimos, who has worked with Stone for his past three films, was less worried about it than his leading lady. “I mean, it was in the script, so I didn’t even have to tell her,” the Poor Things director said. “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. 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’s funny that that’s when she felt free because, in the film, it’s exactly the opposite. Shaving the character’s head is precisely when she is no longer free. Stone’s character is kidnapped by two men (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) because they think she is an alien—an alien that, of course, can communicate with her hair. Whether or not that’s true or not is at the center of the excellent film, which opens in wide release on Friday. Definitely check it out and keep an eye on the head-shaving scene. It’s even more impressive now.

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