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Emma Stone’s new movie Bugonia features unknown teenage actor Aidan Delbis, who landed the role while in high school.
“I wasn’t really sure that I wanted it to be my main career. But it so happened that this happened while I was in high school, and here we are,” Delbis said of his experience making the movie
Bugonia follows two men who kidnap a powerful CEO they believe is an alien
Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons‘ new movie Bugonia has a small cast, and their costar is a brand-new face in Hollywood.
Bugonia features Stone, 36, as Michelle, a pharmaceutical company CEO abducted by Teddy (Plemons, 37), who is convinced Stone’s character is an alien conspiring to take over Earth. In kidnapping Michelle, Teddy enlists his neurodivergent cousin Don. The production cast Aidan Delbis, then an unknown 17-year-old soon-to-be high school graduate, to play the part.
Delbis, as the Los Angeles Times reported on Oct. 22, replied to an open casting call for the movie and landed the part in 2024. Per the L.A. Times, director Yorgos Lanthimos wanted to find a nonprofessional actor to portray Don, believing “the character would be more interesting if he was neurodivergent.”
Per the outlet, Delbis “chooses to self-describe as autistic rather than neurodivergent.”
Now 19, Delbis was in his senior year of high school when he was cast in Bugonia. He had only started taking acting more seriously in his drama classes the prior school year. “I wasn’t really sure that I wanted it to be my main career. But it so happened that this happened while I was in high school, and here we are,” he told the Times.
Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features
Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in Bugonia
The young actor intended to take a gap year after graduation, but his self-tape impressed Stone, who produced the new movie, as well as Lanthimos, 52.
“Just from watching that first tape, you could see there was something so magnetic about him,” Stone told the L.A. Times, adding, “It’s a big leap for any nonprofessional. It’s a big part in what is essentially a three-hander.”
The outlet reported that Bugonia kept Delbis’ involvement largely a secret until a trailer rolled out for the movie.
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Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features
Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in Bugonia
Delbis has since traveled with the movie’s cast to a few of its premieres. An Instagram account that appears to be run by him shared photos of the actor posing with Plemons and actor-comedian Stavros Halkias at the Venice Film Festival, where the movie premiered in August.
Though Lanthimos sought authenticity by casting a neurodivergent actor for the role, Delbis told the L.A. Times he does not feel strongly about whether autistic actors should always play those roles. He does think, “we should try to be more empathetic to people with different worldviews because you never really know what those people are going through.”
“The movie feels very relevant to that theme. God knows, people aren’t always willing to be tolerant,” he added.
Bugonia is in theaters now.
Read the original article on People
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source nz.news.yahoo.com ’
