INT: Emma Stone

In the upcoming bloody fun fest ZOMBIELAND, Emma Stone plays Wichita, one of the few survivors after a zombie plague hits the US. Jesse Eisenberg’s nerdy Columbus is desperate to brush her hair behind her ear, her younger sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) depends on her and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) is just trying not to get played by her. Gotta love a scary hot chick. I just got a chance to chat with Stone, who told me about filming in the cold, the mystery cameo everyone is talking about and her upcoming film EASY A.

Emma Stone

Stone gets to kick some serious zombie ass in this film. “There is a long history of kick ass chicks in movies. There’s Ripley and Linda Hamilton…I mean, there’s a history.” She said she loved learning to shoot guns, telling me that the entire cast named them. Apparently this was Breslin’s idea. “She has a habit of naming inanimate objects,” she told me. I asked if becoming an action star was something she wanted. “I’m not very good at it. I’m not very good at running or anything…it would require a lot of training. I’m just not up to the task of doing right now. I like to eat a lot of chili cheese fries and I’d have to stop doing that and that sounds super shitty. So I might someday be up to the task of doing more action movies, but at this point, comedy allows me to be lazy,” she laughed. “I really enjoy that. I love shooting guns and I loved learning how to shoot, but I’m just such a terrible runner it’s just shocking.“

Stone told me that filming the scene in the carnival (one of the final scenes in the film, but one of the first to be shot) was a bit rough. “It was like 30 degrees. It was cold. I mean, it was February and it was in the south, which is really hot during the day and it gets really cold at night in the winter. It wasn’t snowing or anything…it did snow one day, but it wasn’t too too bad. But late at night, it was hell.”

The zombie makeup in this film is pretty damn cool, so I asked Stone if she ever got jealous of the slime-covered extras. “Not really. I know Abigail was, but I wasn’t. I didn’t really want to be in zombie makeup that badly…it was incredibly sticky and the contacts hurt pretty badly I think. They looked really cool, but they were much better at it than I could have been.”

I had to censor my next question about the extra cool cameo. Apparently the cast and crew were instructed not to talk about it. I asked Stone what it was like to work with this mystery actor. “I can’t talk about that. I wish I could. I really wish I could. I’ll just say that whoever makes the cameo…greatest ever.” It’s really weird, I told her. This person is listed on IMDB. “Yeah, I know. There’s also Wikipedia. It’s listed on Wikipedia too. Who knows if it’s true? The studio is not letting us talk about it. I wish I could, but we’re just not allowed.”

Stone’s doing mostly films these days, but a while back she was on a favorite TV show of mine, DRIVE. The show was canceled far too early, like most good shows on that network. “Well Fox really has an affinity for canceling programming that should keep going. How can you blame them? It’s in their nature.” The show also starred Nathan Fillion, who has gone through that particular drama twice. “I know,” she said. “Nathan’s so awesome. I can’t believe it keeps happening to him.” I asked if she’d ever do TV again after that experience. “Yeah, there’s some insane TV on right now. It’s so cool. There is such good TV happening. I’m insanely crazy about MAD MEN. I’m insanely crazy about it. I want to be Christina Hendricks. I love that show, and there is one reality show I like. That’s Anthony Bourdain’s NO RESERVATIONS. I’d do that show and go taste testing with him all across the world,” she laughed. “HBO’s got great programming and Showtime. I would definitely consider TV again. I don’t know if I would consider Fox again…after ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT…I still have a beef.”

I asked Stone about her upcoming film EASY A, which is reported to be loosely based on the book, THE SCARLET LETTER. Stone said that this wasn’t entirely accurate. “It’s not really. I mean it’s the story of a girl who is reading THE SCARLET LETTER in class and this rumor gets started about her and she compares her life to Hester Prynne’s. The fact that she’s being completely ostracized by all of her fellow students, like Hester Prynne was ostracized. But you know, Hester did commit adultery and my character did not do what the rumors being said about her…she didn’t do anything wrong really. Except for the fact that she’s perpetuating this rumor. It’s very funny and it’s not in any way based on THE SCARLET LETTER in any other way than she feels like her life is mirroring Hester’s and she just happens to be reading it in class.”

ZOMBIELAND opens on October 2nd.