The new conspiracy-laden film Bugonia<\/i><\/a> has been described by critics and audiences alike as \u201cbleak.\u201d But the comedy writer who penned the script doesn\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast<\/a>, Will Tracy shares how he went from The Onion\u2019<\/i>s editor-in-chief to winning Emmys for Last Week Tonight<\/i> With John Oliver<\/i> and Succession<\/i> to writing the mind-bending script for Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 latest collaboration with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.<\/p>\n He discusses Bugonia\u2019<\/i>s very 2025 political message and unpacks what could be considered a deeply cynical ending that he finds oddly hopeful about the future of the planet\u2014if not humanity. Tracy also explains why he found writing for John Oliver so miserable, how he managed to identify with Kendall Roy on Succession<\/i>, and what it feels like to act opposite Jeremy Strong.<\/p>\n Tracy hadn\u2019t even heard of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!<\/i> when his friend, director Ari Aster, suggested he take a look at it for a possible English language adaptation. \u201cThere was something in the premise that felt like it could be adapted to a contemporary American context,\u201d he recalls of the story, which focuses on two disaffected young men who kidnap a high-powered CEO they believe to be an alien.<\/p>\n While the CEO in the original movie was a man, Tracy originally envisioned the character as an older woman in the mode of General Motors boss Mary Barra, 63. But once Lanthimos agreed to direct the film, there was only one female lead in mind: 36-year-old Emma Stone, who has become that director\u2019s muse in four consecutive films, including Poor Things<\/i>, for which she won her second Best Actress Oscar less than two years ago. All of a sudden, the character of Michelle started looking a lot more like the disgraced biomedical entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes.<\/p>\n Then there is Michelle\u2019s tormenter Teddy. They needed someone who could be \u201cquite menacing and scary, but also kind of sweet,\u201d Tracy says. He had to have the \u201csubtle comic chops\u201d to pull off the film\u2019s pitch black humor without going \u201ctoo big\u201d and pushing it into broad comedy. Jesse Plemons, 37, ultimately became the only choice in Tracy\u2019s mind because of how \u201chonest\u201d he is in every performance he gives. \u201cI was just enormously lucky,\u201d the screenwriter says of landing, perhaps, the two greatest actors of their generation in his film\u2019s two lead roles.<\/p>\n Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis, Yorgos Lanthimos and Will Tracy attend the <\/p>\n Plemons\u2019 character, with his true belief in seemingly outlandish conspiracy theories, could have easily become a caricature of the hyper-online American male in 2025. But Tracy was determined to avoid turning him into a stereotypical \u201cincel\u201d or even spelling out which side of the political divide he is on\u2014a trait he happens to share with many of America\u2019s current crop of political assassins. \u201cI wanted him to be a guy who went through all that stuff and didn\u2019t find what he was looking for,\u201d Tracy says, \u201cso he had to create his own reality\u2014of which, by the way, he\u2019s not wrong about everything!\u201d<\/p>\n This brings us to the controversial ending of the film and just how right Teddy is about the alien race that he believes is out to destroy humanity. As soon as Bugonia<\/i> premiered, articles proliferated across the internet that purported to give readers the film\u2019s bonkers conclusion \u201cexplained,\u201d but Tracy cautions against anyone walking away from the theater with a concrete idea about the \u201ctruth\u201d of his story.<\/p>\n Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone behind the scenes of director Yorgos Lanthimos’ \u201cBugonia.\u201d \/ Atsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features \/ Atsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features<\/p>\n \u201cI certainly wouldn\u2019t endorse any article saying, \u2018here is the explanation,\u2019\u201d Tracy says of the film\u2019s ending, which\u2014spoiler alert!\u2014reveals Emma Stone\u2019s character really is an alien who ends up deciding to kill the human race because of its failure to coexist peacefully on Earth. The writer admits that it\u2019s \u201cperfectly valid\u201d to consider that outcome \u201cbleak,\u201d but he also sees it as \u201chopeful\u201d in the sense that \u201cthe planet will be much better off without us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, a bleak ending would be to show the world at the end of a film as it really is and say, that\u2019s how the world is and there\u2019s nothing we can do about it,\u201d he adds. \u201cAt the end of this film, we\u2019re seeing something that hasn\u2019t happened, and I\u2019m 99.999% certain will never happen, which is what the world would be missing without us. How can we understand each other and also see what we look like when we\u2019re not yelling at each other? By definition, to me, that\u2019s not really bleak.\u201d<\/p>\n Tracy says he never considered writing any other endings, nor did Lanthimos shoot any alternate conclusions. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a big swing, that ending,\u201d he admits. \u201cSo it\u2019s the kind of thing where you could end up in the editing room looking at it and saying, boy, it\u2019s a big swing. I wish we kind of had a few other swings in the old swing bag. But we didn\u2019t shoot in the other ones. Maybe we should have, but I trusted in Yorgos\u2019 ability to execute that ending.\u201d<\/p>\n Comedian Stavros Halkias plays a supporting role in \u201cBugonia.\u201d \/ Atsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features \/ Atsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019ve done your job correctly and you\u2019ve written the characters correctly, then the ending is the only place where the car can go, any other direction wouldn\u2019t make sense emotionally,\u201d Tracy continues. \u201cAnd so I felt that that was the only way to do it. I mean, I guess you could have had an ending where she is just a run-of-the-mill CEO who did a really good job of fooling a guy and she\u2019s set free. That might say something about our culture and our politics, but I think in this case, the scope widens a bit of what the movie can be about.\u201d<\/p>\n Tracy starts to compare the end of his film to the final frames of Robert Altman\u2019s Nashville<\/i>, where the camera pulls back and you see the full stage with the American flag and realize you were watching a movie \u201cthat\u2019s bigger than the Nashville subculture that we thought it was about.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about something bigger, and that might be a possible way to look at the ending of this film,\u201d Tracy says before stopping himself and laughing. \u201cNot to compare myself to Robert F—ing Altman, sorry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to the episode now and <\/i>follow The Last Laugh<\/i><\/a> on <\/i>Apple Podcasts<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>Spotify<\/i><\/a>, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The new conspiracy-laden film Bugonia has been described by critics and audiences alike as \u201cbleak.\u201d But the comedy writer who penned the script doesn\u2019t see it that way. In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Will Tracy shares how he went from The Onion\u2019s editor-in-chief to winning Emmys for Last Week Tonight With John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2137122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[310048,407224,309385,350537,310365,354809,345734],"class_list":["post-2137121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-emma-stone","tag-green-planet","tag-jeremy-strong","tag-jesse-plemons","tag-john-oliver","tag-tracy","tag-yorgos-lanthimos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Inside-the-Darkly-Funny-Film-That-Perfectly-Sums-Up-2025.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137123,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137121\/revisions\/2137123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2137122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
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