Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo & Director Yorgos Lanthimos Break Down 'Poor Things' Scenes

She was the s-

[all laughing]

[all laughing]

Stop it.

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[all laughing]

I'm Emma Stone.

I'm Yorgos Lanthimos.

And I'm still Mark Ruffalo.

And this is, Notes on a Scene.

Bella,

let us take the air,

in our cabin.

These two were fighting

and ideas are banging around

in Bella's head and heart.

This scene takes place

What's the scene?

on a ship.

Yeah.

We're sailing from Lisbon to technically Athens,

but we stop in Alexandria along the way.

You've been kidnapped, basically.

I've been sort of kidnapped.

Yes.

Bella,

let us take the air.

This is Mark Ruffalo.

[Mark] That's me.

[Yorgos] This is Mark Ruffalo.

[Emma] He plays Duncan Wedderburn.

This is Jerrod Carmichael.

This is Hanna Schygulla.

This is the back of my head.

[pen clicking]

And these are just some friends we picked up

along the way.

[all laughing]

[Mark] This isn't CGI.

This is an actual practical LED screen.

[Yorgos] LED screen.

We used a lot of the painted clouds

and some formations from other liquids that we shot.

We put all that together in post production.

On the day, it was actually playing

behind the actors.

Which gets a little nauseating, to be honest.

And the waves were actually breaking

up against the ship from time to time.

Mark, that's not true.

Well, they were like

There wasn't water.

No, but there was,

it was a representation of water

[Emma laughing]

that was constantly moving.

The only V effects enhancing that we did here was,

like if you see there's like a little bit of a spray

of water here that we added,

later in post production.

And the only V effects that the LED screen,

I think, came about up to here.

[Yorgos] And we just filled in this in post production.

Just an extension of the set,

but everything else that you see is,

was actually there.

The reason we built this set,

and actually the whole film is shot on sound stages.

[Yorgos] We just wanted to build this world

that represented the way Bella,

the main character,

sees and experiences the world.

[Yorgos] So, we thought that it would be interesting

if we built every set.

Even exteriors or,

you know, the ship that you see here,

inside a studio and then we would

control the lighting, the background,

and we would manage to acquire this non-realistic feeling

for the entire film.

Let us take the air.

In our cabin.

Duncan's, I guess what you would call

a rake or a cad.

[Mark] He's a bon vivant.

He's someone who loves to live life in it's fullest,

and to totally satiate all of his senses

of whenever given the opportunity.

Even to the point of stealing away

a young, beautiful, naive woman.

[Emma laughing]

His relationship with Bella

is really to teach her the beauties and the loveliness,

and all the sumptuous activities of the world,

as kind of her Pygmalion,

as her tutor of life.

These two were fighting

and ideas are banging around

in Bella's head and heart.

Like lights in a storm.

[Mark] Oh.

[Emma] So-

[Emma laughing]

[all laughing]

[all laughing]

[Yorgos] That's a very good frame.

My approach to Bella. Oh boy.

I guess

for while I thought it was,

you know a very-

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[all laughing]

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For a while, she was a very difficult

character to play but then I realized,

in a way, it was only because she was-

[all laughing]

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Stop it.

[all laughing]

[all laughing]

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But I realized that it's because-

Don't start yet, I'm crying.

[all laughing]

[all laughing]

She was so simple.

Do you have a close up of her?

Okay, great.

Just go unheard for a second.

Hi. You're watching, Notes on Scene.

You're always reading now, Bella.

You're losing some of your adorable way of speaking.

[Bella] I'm a changeable feast.

As are all of we.

[Emma] Bella, at this point in her sort of,

development, she has been introduced to philosophy,

by Martha and she is beginning to read the books of

many different philosophers and a lot of things are

being illuminated to her about, you know,

different ways of approaching life and what it all means

and it's a very pivotal moment in her sort of growth

that she's discovering her own, sort of, belief system.

[Emma] In terms of physicality, her specific kind of

walk and way of speaking.

A lot of that is in the script,

of how it's evolving.

Apparently, according to Emerson,

disagreed with by Harry.

[Dunncan] Come, come, just come.

You are in my sun.

What?

He feels like he's losing control of her

in this scene.

[Mark] The books are kind of,

a symbol of her being educated and

him feeling like she's leaving his control and

possession so as she's given more books,

he throws them off the boat.

She's a surprise to him in every way and

it certainly peaks his arousal that

he can't control her and I think he finds that

very exciting until it becomes challenging to his ego.

I think in this particular moment,

she is starting to find him very annoying.

She's expanding so rapidly in so many ways and

it's becoming more and more threatening to him and

he's starting to bug her.

[Yorgos] There was a language, a filmic language,

that we developed with Robbie Ryan,

the cinematographer.

We started kind of using it during the making of

The Favourite and on this film,

we just wanted to go even further.

So we remembered during The Favourite,

[Yorgos] we did a lot of tests we, you know,

and on this one as well.

And we remembered this fish eye lens that

we used that actually created this circle.

[Yorgos] You know, people feel like very enclosed,

in a kind of claustrophobic way in the frame.

And, you know, the four millimeter was just this

option for us to, in certain moments,

you know, create this kind of awkward feel to this

scene and, you know, like in this moment

he just picks up her books and throws them

into the sea and just felt like the right moment

to use that.

But in general, we used like very wide angle lenses

and fish eyed lenses in order to

be consistent with how we are building the world

and make it feel even more vast.

[Mark] You do a career and you're in a franchise

for a long time and people start to, you know,

see you in a certain kind of role,

or you have your social media, you know,

people start to see you in a certain way.

In some sense, you even might start to see yourself

in that way and it's deadly for a creative person.

I think, ultimately, but it's also very comfortable

and it's hard to break free.

The more you break free, it's harder to break free

the next time and so playing this part

came up and I was like to do people want to even

see me in this part? Can I play it?

You know, I have never played anything.

I have never played anything so gregarious,

so cockture, so narcicisstic.

With that kind of language and that kind of an accent,

in a period piece, I have just never done

anything like it. And so it scared me, honestly.

I have such admiration for him and I didn't want to

let him down and I didn't want to let her down

and so yeah, I was scared.

I now feel kind of afraid of doing something that

I don't feel this way about, more than anything.

I kind of want to have this

feeling all the time, exclusively.

You don't always get to make all of

the choices as an actor of who you get to work with or

what roles you get to play and so,

[Emma] Learning about Bella, I was just totally

in love with her and so I'm trying to just follow that

instinct, whether it comes to a filmmaker or a story.

It doesn't always work, necessarily,

but I kind of only want to feel that way.

We're probably the worst people that

have ever been in this thing.

No, we haven't gotten started yet.

I think once we get going, we're gonna really be-

Tangy

Great.

[all laughing]