Emma Stone and Emma Thompson Talk “Cruella” During Press Conference

Hi everyone!

I was invited to the virtual press conference for  Cruella, which debuts on May 28th, 2021 in theaters and also on Disney+ with Premier Access. The press conference was multi-part, with Emma Stone (Cruella) and Emma Thompson (The Baroness) appearing together after the filmmakers.

Thompson was asked what the process was like in creating the Baroness. Thompson answered, “I draw on life, obviously. I mean, I think if my husband was in the room, he’d say, ‘And no acting required, really'” (to laughter). Thompson continued that she had a lot of fun playing the character. She said she’d been asking to play a “proper villain” for years. Thompson spent years playing what she called “good women in frocks” before playing the evil women in frocks. “Every time Em and I would come on set, we’d just look at each other and walk around each other, like we were sculptures or works of art or something, which we were”.

Images copyright Disney

Stone talked about her favorite costume in the film – and there are a lot of costume changes for both Thompson and Stone. “My very, very favorite outfit was the absolutely ludicrous dress that I wear on the garbage truck, because there was a 40-foot train.” Stone says that the train wasn’t attached to the dress until it was added at the last minute, and that it “is nothing you’d ever be able to even remotely wear in real life”.’

Stone also mentions a skirt she used to cover a car in one scene. “Trying to walk up onto a car and then cover an entire car with a swish of the skirt was just fantastic.” Thompson interjected about it not being CGI and that Stone had to do it “a million times” because it was hard. The garbage truck scene also has a “snakelike thing” with the dress – also not CGI, and Thompson says she loves that about the film. They do single out scenes with the dogs as having some CGI, to make the friendly dogs look mean. The dogs were continuously on set.

Thompson was asked how hard it was to be mean to Emma Stone in the film. Her reply? “So delightful”. Expounding on that, “Of course, we’re acting, so we’re not really being mean….I found pretending to be mean horribly easy”.

The setting for Cruella is 1970s London, and Thompson said it was like being transported back to being a teenager (she was born in 1959). Thompson reflected on the red London buses and the clothing being what she remembers from her teenage years. “So when I saw the bus that Emily gets on when she jumps from the store where she’s been, it was a little like being a teenager going into London to maybe buy myself a top, you know, which would have cost maybe 50p or something, because we’d only just gone decimal. I mean, it’s the dark ages”.

I will have more from the virtual press conference this week!