What Emma Stone has said about shaving her head for ‘Bugonia’ — and why she cried before filming the scene

Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone underwent a dramatic transformation for her role in Bugonia, the forthcoming film from director Yorgos Lanthimos, in which she shaves her head in a pivotal scene.

Bugonia, which will be released in theaters worldwide on Oct. 31, follows two men (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO (Stone) who they suspect is secretly an alien trying to destroy Earth. The film is loosely based on the 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet! 

While filming was still underway late last year, public speculation grew around Stone’s appearance after she was seen wearing a wig at the 2024 New York Film Festival. The reason for the wig was finally revealed at Bugonia’s premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in August, when audiences watched Plemons’s character hand Stone a razor.

Stone didn’t mind shaving her head, she said in an interview for Vogue’s September issue, although the experience did make her somewhat emotional.

“No better feeling in the world,” Stone said. The actress used a 1.5-millimeter blade to do the shave, according to Vogue. “The first shower when you’ve shaved your head? Oh my God, it’s amazing.”

Stone said she knew from reading the script that shaving her head was inevitable. “There was just never going to be any other way,” she said at a Bugonia screening in New York City on Sept. 5.

Even though she was prepared, she told Vogue she “burst into tears in her trailer” before filming the scene, partially because of her mother, Krista, who was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2008.

“She actually did something brave,” Stone told Vogue, referring to her mom. “I’m just shaving my head.”

There was also a lot of pressure involved in shaving her head on camera because it all had to be captured perfectly in one take.

“You did have cold feet once,” director Yorgos Lanthimos said to Stone at the New York City screening in September. “Right before.”

“It was a year and a half I knew that I was going to be shaving my head, and then the day of — they were setting up four cameras, because we had to get it in one shot,” Stone said at the screening. “It was taking a long time to set all the cameras up, and I just started kind of panicking about that.”

Plemons told Vogue he was also anxious about filming the scene in one take.

“It was like, ‘Here we go — Emily has shaved her head,’” Plemons said, referring to Stone by her given name. “We better make this good!”

After the scene was filmed, Stone told Vogue that Krista, who has been cancer-free for 12 years, said she was “jealous” of the look and wanted to shave her head again.

“I’m shaving my head because I get to do what I love, and my mom was there with me, and I was like, ‘What a gift! It’s hair,’” Stone said at the screening. “It was actually one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

Stone joins a number of actresses who have shaved their heads for roles, including Florence Pugh for We Live in Time, Natalie Portman for V for Vendetta, Charlize Theron for Mad Max: Fury Road and Demi Moore for G.I. Jane.

Shaving her head was also the easiest part of filming Bugonia, Stone told reporters at the Venice International Film Festival, where the film received a 7-minute standing ovation.

“Was it easy for me to shave my head? That’s the easiest thing ever; you just take the razor and poof,” Stone said. “It’s, like, so much easier than any hairstyle.”

Instead, it was the fighting training and the workout class that Stone said were the most challenging parts of preparing for the role. While some early reviews for the film have praised its “sharp and piercing” dialogue, according to the Hollywood Reporter, viewers can also expect “explosive violence [and] bursts of slapstick physical comedy.”

While some fans were shocked that Stone shaved her head for the movie, she reminded the audience at the September screening, “It’s just hair.”