Quote · The Louis Theroux Podcast
S7 EP8: Yorgos Lanthimos discusses working with Emma Stone, suffering for his art, and directing a Bourne movie
Where this was said
Suffering for Art: Why Filmmaking Gets Harder, Not Easier
At 32:39 · chapter starts 31:10
Louis surfaces a quote from Emma Stone confirming that Lanthimos grows more miserable on set with each successive film, a characterisation Lanthimos accepts without much resistance. He explains that the suffering is not physical hardship — it's the weight of responsibility that comes with total creative freedom: every decision is his, every failure is his, and unlike someone doing an objectively gruelling job, he chose this and cannot redirect blame elsewhere. He acknowledges the absurdity of calling filmmaking hard when compared to real-world suffering, but insists that within the logic of his own life and values, it genuinely is hard. The stress has compounded rather than diminished with experience.
Emma Stone told an interviewer that Lanthimos is 'really miserable' while filming, and confirmed it has gotten worse over time, not better. Lanthimos admits it: he has complete creative freedom, which means every failure is entirely his own fault, and the weight of that is genuinely crushing even if it looks absurd from the outside.
Bugonia was the most stressful film Lanthimos has ever made, and the reason is straightforward: he made Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Bugonia consecutively without any break between them. By the third film, the accumulated pressure with no recovery time had become genuinely overwhelming.
Lanthimos made Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Bugonia consecutively without a break, which he believes contributed to Bugonia being his most stressful production.
