Emma Stone hated playing elf in Netflix’s ‘Maniac,’ doesn’t like fantasy

(L-R) Julia Garner and
Emma Stone in “Maniac.”
Michele K.
Short/Netflix

• Emma Stone really didn’t want to play an elf on the Netflix
  show “Maniac.”
• When the show’s director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, suggested it,
  she immediately nixed it, telling the director she only liked to
  play real characters. 
• But Fukunaga told Business Insider he couldn’t resist writing
  it into the show.

Warning: Spoilers below if you haven’t seen episode
seven of “Maniac.”

It turns out there’s a reason why we’ve never seen Emma Stone in
a fantasy movie: she only likes to play realistic
characters. 

“Maniac” director Cary Joji Fukunaga discovered that early on
while developing the Netflix show with the Oscar winner. While
kicking around ideas for the different type of roles she and her
costar Jonah Hill could play on the show, when their characters
are on drugs, he had a thought. 

“I said, ‘How about an elf or a vampire?’ Fukunaga
recalled to Business Insider. “And she said, ‘No. Nothing
that’s not real.'”

“Just personally, that’s not her taste,” Fukunaga said.
“She’s never seen ‘Lord of the Rings,’ she can’t get into things
that aren’t real.”

But as the show continued in the development process,
Fukunaga and show creator Patrick Somerville couldn’t resist
writing the elf role in, with Stone’s hatred of the genre as part
of the story. It was especially fitting because one of the three
drugs Stone and Hill take on the show is called “Confrontation,”
and is to be taken to overcome anxieties, fears, and
depression.

“Patrick and I thought, well, doesn’t that make sense for
the Confrontation drug? Something she really doesn’t enjoy? So we
wrote that mildly into the character,” Fukunaga said. “And when
she did the scene she was just like [gritting his teeth] ‘Cary, I’m doing this for you!'”

Despite Stone’s hatred of playing an elf, her performance
(in episode seven) is one of the highlights of the show. While
taking the Confrontation drug, she is transported to a Middle
Earth-like location and is dressed like an elf with a bow and
arrow. Through the episode, Annie (Stone) is trying to lead
another elf to a mythical water source that will cure the girl’s
illness. That girl is actually Annie’s sister, Ellie (Julia
Garner), who died when the two were in a horrific car
accident.