‘Poor Things’ Writer Tony McNamara Talks the Origin of Emma Stone’s ‘Punch That Baby’ Line and What ‘The Great’ Season 4 Would’ve Looked Like
variety.comJenelle Riley Deputy Awards and Features Editor Actors often talk about how freeing it is to play characters that live in the moment — a sentiment that “Poor Things” screenwriter Tony McNamara understands.
In writing the character of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman who has an infant’s brain implanted in her body, McNamara says he was working with a blank slate. “The fingerprints of childhood and society weren’t on her as a character,” McNamara tells Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. “I’m writing someone who just greets experience in a really open, adventurous, optimistic [way]: ‘I wonder what it is.
And I don’t have any preconceptions about how I should feel about it, how I should judge it. Anything. I’m just in a constant state of self-creation.’ “There is a kind of wish fulfillment in the movie,” he adds. “Like, What would my experience be if I could let go of all this stuff I carry around?” McNamara says he and Stone took away similar lessons from the experience. “I think we both learned from it – a bit how to live your life in some ways.” Asked if he found it changing his personality to more optimistic, McNamara laughs. “Probably not as much as it should.
I probably should have learned more.” McNamara just earned an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay; he was previously nominated for his original screenplay for 2018’s “The Favourite.” Both films were directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and featured Oscar-nominated turns by Stone.
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