Welcome to Emma Stone’s Freak Era

When Emma Stone won her first Academy Award, for La La Land in 2017, she took the stage with an open mouth and a sideways glance that seemed to say, Can you even believe this? But when she won again last year, for her performance as the childlike Bella Baxter in Poor Things, she seemed to be the one in disbelief. Although Stone was widely considered the favorite for Best Actress, the look on her face as Michelle Yeoh read out her name wasn’t the carefully rehearsed who, me? of a foreordained winner but a shock so intense it verged on physical discomfort. By the time she got to the microphone, Stone had collected herself sufficiently to breathlessly utter her list of thank-yous, but for a moment, she seemed to be experiencing something a little less like gratitude, and a little more like dread.