The final round of Oscar voting began last week. As we speak, thousands of Academy members are getting down to the important business of choosing who will win and who will lose come the ceremony next month. As ever, their decisions are likely to be swayed by the never-ending swirl of smaller awards ceremonies that have taken place over recent weeks, which means that many of the categories are essentially foregone conclusions at this point. Oppenheimer will probably win best picture. Robert Downey Jr is the surest best supporting actor winner for decades. Barbie will have a disappointing night, and all the worst people you follow on Instagram will make an almighty fuss of it.
But there is one category that is still up for grabs. The best actress award is still very much a two-horse race. Lily Gladstone not only ripped the focus of Killers of the Flower Moon away from some of the most famous actors on the planet, but her win would also be truly historic; a breakthrough for onscreen Native American representation that would single-handedly help to undo years and years of lazy, two-dimensional cinematic depictions. And then there is Emma Stone. Stone wants you to know that she ate a lot of cakes.
OK, sure, that isn’t all she did. Her role in Poor Things required the sort of showy plate-spinning that would debilitate a lesser performer. She had to perfect an English accent, track a sweeping yet seamless transformation in both mobility and articulation, and overcome whatever mental obstacles come from having to make quite as many sex scenes as she did. In any other year she would walk the Oscar. But this year is tight, and any little detail she can give us might work in her favour. And this is why Stone wants us to know that she really did eat a lot of cakes.
During a panel at the Celebration of the Nominees for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures in Los Angeles this weekend, Stone said the sex scenes in Poor Things were a piece of cake compared with the parts where she needed to eat 60 cakes, which was not a piece of cake. Stone said that closed sets and the presence of an intimacy coordinator helped with the former, the difficulty of which was eclipsed by: “Figuring out how to walk or eat 60 Portuguese tarts … the first bite is delicious, but by the end you really want to puke.”
In fairness, 60 Portuguese custard tarts is a lot of custard tarts by anyone’s standards. Purely from a calorific point of view, this is a mighty undertaking. Hopefully the Poor Things production team had slightly better standards than this, but one pastel de nata from Pret contains 157 calories. Scale that up to the amount Stone had to consume and you’re looking at 9,420 calories. That’s nearly five times the recommended daily adult calorie intake, on tarts alone. It is the equivalent of eating 22kg of blueberries, or 30 Filet-O-Fish, or one and a bit Sainsbury’s Birthday Celebration Mega Chocolate Tray Bake Cakes. Next time you are in Sainsbury’s, go and look at the size of a Birthday Celebration Mega Chocolate Tray Bake Cake. Stone ate the equivalent of more than one of those. She ate it for her art.
In a sense, Stone’s custard tart admission deserves to sit alongside last week’s news that Russell Crowe broke his legs while Robin Hood, and that Sylvester Stallone broke his neck making The Expendables. They are all stories about artists who were willing to push the boundaries of the human body to breaking point in order to deliver genuine satisfaction to the audience. They all suffered, too. Crowe was left with tremendous pain for years, Stallone, in effect, ended his action career with his injury and, by the sound of it, Stone probably had to go and sit on a toilet for several hours.
Did Gladstone do this for Flowers of the Killer Moon? Was there a scene where she ate 12 big bowls of mashed potato? No. And so, for this reason alone, it is clear that Stone deserves the best actress Oscar this year. And if she doesn’t, someone sign that woman up for a Man v. Food remake asap.
• The headline on this article was amended on 26 February 2024 because an earlier version contained the incorrect plural of pastel de nata.
