TThe final round of voting for the Oscars began last week. As we speak, thousands of Academy members are engaged in the important business of choosing who will win and who will lose at next month’s ceremony. As always, their decisions will likely be influenced by the incessant whirlwind of small awards ceremonies that have taken place in recent weeks, meaning many categories are essentially a foregone conclusion at this point. Oppenheimer will likely win best picture. Robert Downey Jr has been the Best Supporting Actor winner for decades. Barbie will have a disappointing night, and all the worst people you follow on Instagram will make a big deal out of it.
But there is still one category to win. The Best Actress award remains a two-horse race. Lily Gladstone not only took Killers of the Flower Moon’s attention away from some of the most famous actors on the planet, but her victory would also be truly historic; a breakthrough for on-screen representation of Native Americans that would single-handedly help undo years and years of lazy, two-dimensional cinematic depictions. And then there’s Emma Stone. Stone wants you to know that she ate a lot of cake.
Okay, sure, that’s not all she did. His role in Poor Things required the kind of gaudy plate-spinning that would weaken a lesser performer. She had to perfect an English accent, undergo a drastic but seamless transformation in mobility and articulation, and overcome all the mental hurdles of having to do as many sex scenes as she did. Any other year, she’d be walking the Oscars. But this year is tight, and the smallest detail she can give us could work in her favor. And that’s why Stone wants us to know that she really did eat a lot of cake.
During a panel at the Outstanding Motion Picture Producer Award Nominees Celebration in Los Angeles this weekend, Stone said the sex scenes in Poor Things were child’s play compared to the parts where she had to eat 60 cakes, which was not the case. a piece of cake. Stone said the enclosed settings and the presence of an intimacy coordinator helped with the first, whose difficulty was overshadowed by: “Figuring out how to walk or eat 60 Portuguese pies…the first bite is delicious, but at the end, you really want to throw up.”
In all honesty, 60 Portuguese custard tarts is a lot of custard tarts by anyone’s standards. From a purely calorific point of view, this is a tremendous undertaking. Hopefully the Poor Things production team had slightly better standards than these, but a pastel Nata of Pret contains 157 calories. Adapt that to the amount Stone had to consume and you get 9,420 calories. That’s almost five times the recommended daily calorie intake for an adult from pies alone. That’s the equivalent of eating 22kg of blueberries, or 30 Filet-O-Fish, or a mega chocolate cake from a Sainsbury’s birthday celebration tray. Next time you’re in Sainsbury’s, check out the mega size chocolate cake on birthday celebration platter. Stone ate the equivalent of several. She ate it for its art.
In a sense, Stone’s admission to custard pie deserves to be accompanied by last week’s news that Russell Crowe broke his legs during Robin Hood and that Sylvester Stallone broke his neck while making The Expendables. These are all stories of artists willing to push the limits of the human body to the breaking point in order to deliver true satisfaction to the audience. They all suffered too. Crowe suffered immensely for years, Stallone effectively ended his acting career with his injury, and from the sounds of it, Stone probably had to go sit on the toilet for several hours.
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Did Gladstone do this for Flowers of the Killer Moon? Is there a scene where she ate 12 big bowls of mashed potatoes? No. And so, for that reason alone, it’s clear that Stone deserves this year’s Best Actress Oscar. And if she doesn’t, someone will sign this woman up for a remake of Man v. Food as soon as possible.