Nathan Fielder Says Emma Stone Is Great at Comedy Because She’s ‘Near Un-Offendable’

According to Nathan Fielder, there isn’t a comedian alive who is capable of telling a joke that will trigger Emma Stone — not even Jimmy Kimmel.

At last month’s 96th Academy Awards, Stone accidentally went viral on Twitter twice — first, when Kimmel made a joke about how next to none of her scenes in Poor Things were fit for broadcast on ABC, Stone appeared to tell her husband that Kimmel was a “prick,” according to the amateur lip-readers on the internet. Later that night, when Stone won Best Actress for that same performance, she again created an unintentionally clickable moment when she appeared visibly mortified to have to take the stage wearing a dress with a busted zipper. 

Stone claims that the viral lip-read was completely misinterpreted, and according to her co-star in the black comedy A24 series The Curse, a wardrobe mishap is infinitely more likely to phase the A-lister than any joke.

In a joint interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stone and Fielder opened up about the origin of their collaboration, and Fielder explained how unusual it is that a star of Stone’s caliber is willing to commit to the most debased and degrading bits that the Nathan for You mastermind can concoct.

In The Curse, Fielder and Stone play a husband and wife who attempt to launch a reality show about their real estate business wherein they build eco-friendly homes in lower-to-middle income neighborhoods. Fielder said that, when it came to making his first attempt at dramatic-ish acting across from an Oscar-winner, “I was super intimidated,” explaining, “It wasn’t so much my acting as just really making sure that people could buy into that relationship and be like, ‘I can understand how this couple got to this place and what they might see in each other, or why they might need each other.’ You could look at them and be like, ‘Why are they together?’ But also you start to see, ‘Oh, they also couldn’t exist apart.’”

Stone’s participation in the experimental series was slightly surprising for an actress that high on the A-list, but she claims that, going into the project, she was the one feeling starstruck. “I came in as such a huge fan of Nathan and Benny (Safdie, co-creator and co-star of The Curse), and I was panicking because I felt like I was going to feel so false,” Stone said. “Seeing Nathan for You, I was like, ‘He’s really able to just maintain the reality and adapt to all these real people all the time.’ I was like, ‘I’m completely going to fuck this up because it’s going to feel so false and like I’m “acting” next to him.’”

However, Stone didn’t fuck it up at all. In fact, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for the performance. But the real pressing question from the interview was about a completely different awards ceremony and a certain Jimmy Kimmel who seemed to piss her off. Said Stone of the viral Twitter clip, “I didn’t call him a prick! … What did I say? I didn’t call him a prick. I wasn’t upset with him at all. I’ll have to look that up.”

“I will just say this about Emily (Stone’s legal first name) … It is incredible: Emily’s always down for a joke,” Fielder said in his co-star’s defense, to which she replied, “I’m near-unoffendable.”

“Yes. Near-unoffendable,” Fielder continued. “And this is something that you would think someone who’s making work at her level … would be like, ‘Do I want to put myself in this situation? Do I want to do this?’ But if she hears something funny, she’s like, ‘Yes,’ right away. She doesn’t consult. She doesn’t analyze. She knows what makes sense to her. I get in my head about things, I’m overanalyzing things. And she will very confidently say, ‘Yeah, that sounds funny. Let’s do it.’”