Dakota Johnson tried out a new side gig on Friday night, serving as moderator for a Bugonia conversation with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and director Yorgos Lanthimos — while also teasingly suggesting herself for the filmmaker’s next project.
Johnson said she had seen Bugonia — which follows two conspiracy-obsessed men who kidnap a major CEO when they become convinced that she’s an alien who wants to destroy Earth — twice in the past 24 hours, but repeatedly told the crowd that she was “the wrong person” to be moderating. “This is not going to be a good interview. I just want you guys to be aware I’m not good at this. I don’t know why I was asked but here we are,” she said to laughs.
As Johnson weeded through questions on her phone, she brought up the fact that this is Lanthimos’ fourth film with Stone, following The Favourite, Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness. “Are you aware that there are other actresses, that are really talented, maybe even very close by?” she joked, as Stone chimed in, “What! No, right?,” while looking at the filmmaker. She turned back to Johnson and said, “No, go for it, do your pitch, work on your pitch.” The Materialists star admitted, “I already did and it didn’t work, remember? You were there,” as Stone laughed.
Johnson also praised Stone for shaving her head for the film and noted how she is covered in skin cream or blood for the majority of the movie. “Who on Earth looks so beautiful with a shaved head covered in blood?” she mused, while Stone joked back, “You’re flirting.”
Plemons also spoke about his own hair journey, as he wore extensions to play his conspiracy theorist character. “Hair was a big thing, the losing of the hair and then the gaining of the hair — there was a while there where when I first got any extensions in, I would come up to Yorgos and was maybe like experimenting with some of the physicality and every time he would see me, he would just laugh,” the actor remembered. “I was like, I don’t know if this is good?”
Later in the chat, Stone commented on the film’s big twist ending, noting how “I had never played a character that I thought about the audience seeing it for the second time before. Would it still make sense? Would it be able to track through if you were watching the film again, knowing what you know — like I did after reading the script for the first time — and have more to give or be interesting in some way? I don’t know that that was effective, but it was a really fun challenge.”
Johnson closed out the conversation by declaring, “I regret doing this. I’ll never do it again. [Stone] warned me, but I had said yes already. Is there anything you guys would like to say before this terrible interview is over?”
Plemons insisted, “It really hasn’t been that bad,” as Lanthimos teased, “I think you’re the third best moderator that we’ve had,” on a night when they were doing several chats. Johnson replied, “That’s huge. I’ll come on the road.”
