With their latest collaboration with everyone’s favourite cult filmmaker garnering yet more critical acclaim, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons tell Ben Tibbits about world-building, logic versus a beating heart, and their shatterproof adoration for Yorgos Lanthimos.

Do you believe in aliens? Pharmaceutical conglomerates? Conspiracy theories? I don’t, either. In fact, most of what Teddy and Michelle – the dual, dichotomised anti-heroes of Bugonia – do and say in the film, the majority of people would refute. Yet both are oddly relatable, deeply empathetic characters who you can’t help but, in some subtly twisted way, root for. 

So what’s that down to? Partially, Succession scripting alum Will Tracy’s razor-tight, emotionally piercing and often downright hilarious re-written adaptation of 2003 Korean film Save The Green Planet!. And, of course, thanks to the auteur-to-rules-all-auteurs Yorgos Lanthimos’ spritely yet grounded and humanist direction. But, overwhelmingly, it’s the intimate and intrinsic bond that the two lead actors bolster that elevates these very different, very difficult characters into something byronic, bohemian, and beloved.

These actors are Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. 36-year-old two-time Oscar winner Stone has been one of Hollywood’s hottest for over a decade and a half, stealing the show in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) before dedicating much of the last third of her career hitherto to Lanthimos’ idiosyncratic canon – from The Favourite to Poor Things.

37-year-old Oscar and Emmy-nominee Plemons, on the other hand, has quietly become one of the most compelling contemporary screen character actors, with unforgettable roles in iconic shows like Breaking Bad and Black Mirror and more recently supporting turns in films like Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Bugonia marks Plemons’ second collaboration with both Lanthimos and Stone, following 2024’s Kinds of Kindness; a divisive trifecta of films crammed into a two-and-three-quarter-hour span, it proved the ideal bootcamp ground for his second collaboration between the trio.

Bugonia, released in UK cinemas today (Friday 31st October), follows Plemons’ Teddy and his cousin Don (the equally wonderful Aidan Delbis) as two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap a powerful CEO of a major company – Stone’s Michelle – convinced that she is an extraterrestrial being trying to destroy planet Earth.

It is the type of film that evinces a whole rainbow of reactions, depending on how you view money, class, art and, of course, aliens. There’s hued embeds of existentialism and nihilism, and – like all Lanthimos films, from Dogtooth to The Lobster and Killing of a Sacred Deer – snapshots of real trauma and shock. But, to me at least, it’s a comedy at heart. The humour cuts through the pain, as long as you swallow it with a pinch of salt. 

In Stone and Plemons here, we have two of the industry’s very finest thespians in top form, well-versed in the dogmas of their director and having the time of their life. “He’s so detail-oriented and instinctual but knows what he’s looking for when he sees it,” Stone pinpoints on her now long-term collaborator. “All of those elements are inspiring to me and exciting to me.”

She tells Wonderland this on a Saturday, late morning, in mid-October. The 69th BFI London Film Festival is in full flow; the second floor of the Corinthia Hotel is commandeered by scores of publicists, welcoming a pantheon of local and global media to spend a pithy but (hopefully) meaningful time with various stars to promote their respective films. It’s a bit like a doctor’s surgery, waiting somewhat patiently and/or nervously for some sort of treatment – only this kind is spiritual, intellectual, and you might see Paul Mescal ushered down the hall whilst sitting outside your allotted room.

So, to discuss Bugonia, the film that boasts one of the best final chapter twists in recent cinema history, as well as powerhouse performances from the two stars sat opposite me, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, spare a moment among the madness of LFF to talk Lanthimos, their complex characters, and what viewers should take away from the pitch-black comic masterwork.

Why this film? 

Emma Stone: Will [Tracy] wrote a really amazing script.  And Yorgos is a great director. And… that was my reason. What was yours?  

Jesse Plemons: It’s always a mix of factors, I think. The truth of the matter is there’s a lot of actors out there that it wouldn’t matter that much what Yorgos was doing, they’d just jump at the opportunity. I had the opportunity to work with him and Emma and [cinematographer] Robbie Ryan and a lot of the crew, and have just a creatively exhilarating time making that movie. And then reading the script it felt like there were elements I was like, ‘Alright I get why Yorgos is drawn to this,’ it also felt like a slightly new direction for him. There’s something different in it. It’s just an amazing, relevant story, and I’m very thankful that there are filmmakers that are making movies that are exploring these very weird, very scary times.  

What’s your favourite Yorgos film that you don’t star in?

Both: Dogtooth.

You’ve both collaborated with Yorgos multiple times; what is it about him and the way that he works that makes you want to keep coming back?  

ES: I love him as a director but I also think that the material that he’s drawn to, whether he writes it with a theme, or if it’s written by Tony [McNamara] or Will Tracy here, I find his worlds to be really fascinating. The characters are incredible. And the crew, he always has the most incredible people, and most of them come back again and again. 

You starred together on Kinds of Kindness, how did your working relationship form there?

JP: [Kinds of Kindness] was a really interesting first film to do together because it was sort of a three for one. It was three stories, three characters and yeah, we got to know each other pretty well and played with different dynamics throughout the making of that. So by the time we showed up for Bugonia, it did feel like we had worked together quite a bit. So that’s very helpful.

And then in Bugonia, the relationship between your two characters in the film is so fascinating. There’s characteristics that are quite similar, this need for control and this desire to be in the moral right all the time. Where do you think is the cut-off point for the two, where they’re just taken in such different directions?

JP: It’s tough because of… I mean on the surface, they have very different socioeconomic situations, that’s a huge one. But there’s something in both of them, an enormous drive coming from two different places.  

ES: To me, Teddy is like a raw nerve. He’s so viscerally and emotionally driven, and that comes out in his relationship with Don. Even though he has maybe a controversial worldview or assumptions, he is a deeply empathetic character in person. And Michelle, on the other hand, as corporate and structured as she is, her method of saving the world or helping people is through pharmaceuticals and through fixing it with a pill. And if we do it wrong, we’ll try it again. It’s a much more  kind of cut and dry idea. It’s like logic versus a beating heart. Ideally you’d be able to combine the two, but here it’s this externalisation of those two things bashing up against each other, which I found really interesting. 

JP: I also really liked how you get this really; to me, how I perceived some of these scenes and some of their responses with one another, as so indicative of the kind of rote responses that opposing sides have with one another. There are all these lines about, ‘You’re going to say this and you’re going to say this,’

ES: Like, stop saying ‘dialogue.’ 

JP: But there’s very little listening. We have such a hard time listening because we’re constantly waiting for that thing that we know they’re going to say. So then we say this. To me, that was a really interesting display between the two characters.  

Yeah, it’s kind of this cat and mouse a lot of times, and sometimes you don’t know who the cat and who the mouse is. Did you guys, when you were reading the script the first time, did you predict the ending? Did you think that was going to happen?   

ES: No. 

JP: No, I mean… Will… cheeky little guy. Because in the exposition, you as the reader might have that thought, he would write something which would throw you off, you know? It was a really brilliantly constructed script in many ways. He did a great job of throwing you off the scent. 

It’s a satire and it’s bonkers and it ends in such a wild way. And there are so many different kinds of messages that come through at different points of the film as well. But what do you want a viewer to take away from it? What do you think is the most important thing about this film?  

ES: It’s always a hard question to answer. Look at the ending, there’s multiple reactions. It’s very hopeful or calming in some strange way, or it’s devastating and  heartbreaking. And I think both are true. I think part of what’s interesting about this story is that you do kind of see both of their perspectives at certain points and then you disagree with them at certain points. Walking out of it the first time, someone said right away like, ‘Wow, she’s such a villain.’ And I was like, ‘She is? Really? Do you think so? I never thought of her that way.’ But of course, yes, she is. And Teddy can be a villain too and also a force for good. It’s just all of it. I don’t know. I don’t know what to take away, but I hope it inspires something to talk about and something to look at and have conversations about and ask questions about the state of the world and the way we believe things and how strongly we do and allowing other perspectives. 

Words – Ben Tibbits