by Gill Pringle
Emma Thompson has been yearning to play a villain for the longest time, and finally her wishes were granted, cast as the bad-to-the-bone Baroness in Cruella.
Starring opposite Emma Stone’s Cruella de Vil in Disney’s live action origin story, the two Emmas fight like two dogs with a bone, over who can be the most wicked.
Without giving away any plot spoilers, the Baroness – a self-styled queen of couture – is rarely seen without her trio of gnashing Dalmatians as the two women’s stories point to a complex relationship and a future rivalry.
“I’d been asking for quite a number of years if I could be a proper villain,” says two-time Oscar-winner Thompson, celebrated for her roles in Howard’s End, Sense and Sensibility, The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father.
“I spent decades playing what my mother used to call ‘good women in frocks’ and now I got to play an evil woman – in frocks,” she adds wryly.
“But, oh boy, the frocks. They wore me actually, is what really happened.”
Not that wearing those sensational costumes was particularly fun for the actress. “No, not all; my underwear was sort of like a ship’s rigging. There were people hauling on ropes. It was a lot, so peeing was hard and involved a team of people; also, the shoes were a real challenge because I don’t wear anything higher than a flip-flop really in real life.
“And also, I have wigs, so I was a great deal taller than I am used to being. I would have to move in and out of spaces sideways and generally I had three Dalmatians at my feet too so, yeah, the underwear was a big deal. Not for La Stone obviously because she is as slender as a lily and didn’t need to wear a corset like a frigging whalebone aria,” she laughs, although she doesn’t expect to feel much empathy from Stone.
“But the thing is with Emma, because she’s so little and slight,” Thompson says, explaining the process to her younger co-star. “If you have flesh – which is what they used to do in the olden days – is you take that flesh, and if you’re like me, if you squeeze it in the middle, it moves up and down like toothpaste in a tube so you can make quite extreme shapes and that’s really good fun.
“It’s not fantastically comfortable at the centre of the toothpaste tube but, our wonderful tailors and designers had such a good time just pulling in the corset tiny enough so that bits of me would squish out of the top of the costume and then they’d push a bit back again and squish it back down and then pull it again. Oh my goodness! It was kind of cookery as well,” she laughs.
Helmed by Aussie Craig Gillespie, best-known for I, Tonya and Lars and the Real Girl, co-producer Kristin Burr believes he was the best man for the job.
“With I, Tonya, he demonstrated he knew how to tell the story of a female antihero. His kinetic, energetic style gives the movie pop and makes it feel cool. Craig had a vision for this movie from our very first meeting,” she says.
“And Emma Stone is one of the best actors of her generation. She can do it all. Period. Who better to not only be deliciously evil but heartbreakingly sympathetic? And, she looks fab with black-and-white hair.
“Cruella has all my favourite things in life: fashion, dogs and revenge,” continues Burr. “Early on, we decided to set the movie in ‘70s London. It was so exciting, because it was our first live-action character based on animation that we were setting in the real world. It was a real opportunity to push the envelope. London was the centre of fashion and anarchy at the time. What a nice parallel to Cruella!”
Recalling how he was first approached, Gillespie tells us, “I got a call from Disney’s head of production Sean Bailey, who asked, ‘What do you think about Emma Stone playing Cruella?’ And then he threw in – set in 1970s London. That combination, to me, was irresistible. He had me. I was immediately intrigued and delighted at the prospect. Emma is such a phenomenal actress, and she has such range, and to be able to play with her in a landscape like this was exciting.”
Co-producer Matt Platt couldn’t imagine anyone else in the lead role: “When Emma called me and asked if I would consider producing this film, I was instantly interested. I thought, this is a fantastic marriage of actress to character. I can think of no other actress who could define the journey from Estella to Cruella as specifically and vividly as Emma Stone, who brings so much fun, so much edge, so much deliciousness and yet so much truthfulness to that character.
“Cruella is one of the great villains in a tremendous array of Disney villains,” says the storied producer who worked with Stone on La La Land.
Fellow producer Andrew Gunn agrees, “For the role of Cruella, Emma Stone has a wonderful ability to play a nasty, selfish character, as she did in The Favourite, and have an audience root for her. She can go from evil to heartbreaking in a matter of seconds. She is an actor that audiences want to come out on top at the end of the film. She has impeccable comic timing and truly inhabits the characters she creates, making each one distinct and memorable. We knew that she would create something riveting and timeless with Cruella.”
As Disney’s first and only choice for this role, Emma Stone explains, “There was a lot to figure out to see if it made sense to tell a story about her. But the character’s so much fun and so intoxicating, they had an interest in finding what that story could be.
“I think Disney really let Craig and Tony [McNamara, screenwriter – also Australian] write and make what they wanted to make. It’s definitely dark for a Disney movie, maybe not for a really intense R-rated film, but it was darker than I have seen a Disney movie for a long time,” says Stone.
“And I think by taking her and putting her in the ‘70s, as much as she is Cruella from 101 Dalmatians, she’s also not because we’ve taken this character and created a whole new story for her, obviously with fun nods to 101 Dalmatians. I think once Craig and Tony came on board, it really started to fly and get very exciting.”
Combining all these creative minds, a plot-line was constructed that revealed how an inventive child, Estella, became the revenge-bent Cruella, with the majority of the action taking place in 1970s London, a time of disruption in the music and fashion worlds due to the emerging punk movement.
Audiences see her metamorphosis from a scrappy, Dickensian orphan into a rebellious, resourceful, bold and ingenious antihero. Along the way, she learns who she really is and to be true to herself.
Filmed largely on location in the UK, 1970s London harked right back to Thompson’s own childhood, growing up in Hampstead.
“I was in my teens in the 1970s so, for me, especially in the London streets, it was surreal because I have actually worn some of those clothes. I think some of the supporting artists were in my old gear!” laughs Thompson.
“I mean, we were all in Afghan coats and clogs and smocks and cheesecloth and maxi-skirts and wet look boots – and it was very touching actually because the red London buses look very different now but, when I was a little girl, they were exactly the same and it was the same number 159 bus that brought me into town from where I lived – and where I still live because I’m weird.
“So, when I saw the bus that Emma [Stone] gets on, when she jumps on from the store where she’s just been, it was just like being little again and being a teenager going into London to maybe buy myself a top, which would have cost 50p or something, because we’d only just gone decimal. I mean, it’s the dark ages!” she says.
“I had just the best time and every time Em and I would come on set, we’d just look at each other and walk around each other like we were sculptures or works of arts or something – which we were. In a way, everyone else created the Baroness and then I just sort of stepped in and said the words,” she says with typical modesty.
Cruella releases in Australian cinemas May 27 2021 and on Disney+ with Premier Access May 28, 2021
