Is Emma Stone the smartest actress in Hollywood? Emma Stone is indeed the smartest actress in Hollywood. Her Oscar nomination for Poor Things, her penultimate collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, is all but guaranteed. And, if time is not too cruel to her, the 2025 Emmys will remember her performance in The Curse. Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie's series made a last-minute entry into the recent Golden Globes and still secured a nomination, all thanks to Stone, of course. That's the level of stardom she enjoys.
It is precisely for this reason that the actress would have no reason to participate in a show as offbeat as The Curse. With this uncategorizable series, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie reaffirm their status as the industry's biggest eccentrics. Safdie penned the incredibly strange (miraculous, even) Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler, and Fielder is the mastermind behind some of the greatest follies that TV has allowed in recent years. He's the genius behind the wonderful Nathan for You and has contributed to scripts for Sacha Baron Cohen's Who Is America? Nathan Fielder's indescribable yet unmistakable sense of humor aligns with Larry David, The Comeback, and everything to do with recognizing that we live in a post-everything, meta-everything, performance-obsessed, simulacra-obsessed world. Fielder also stars in The Curse, playing Asher Siegel, a disconcerting loser married to Whitney (Emma Stone). The Siegels are in the business of improving the world by building eco-responsible homes for the poor, putting them next door to a specialty coffee shop (the kind where you're frowned upon for putting sugar in your coffee) and filming the process to produce a docu-reality about what good people they are and how much good they're doing.
With that premise, the awkward comedy naturally ensues. However, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie aren't content with having it all (including a superstar like Stone willingly diving into the mud) to give us bittersweet laughs; they take The Curse much further. The discomfort isn't just in the series' tone but also in its characters, genre, and appearance. Fielder and Safdie never allow the viewer to relax; they constantly challenge and disrupt. Their series is, indeed, post-comedic and meta-terrifying. With its lengthy sequences and elusive characters, The Curse never lets itself be caught at any moment. It's as if the viewer has to chase it all the time to avoid falling behind. Surprisingly, this effort is addictive. I'm still not clear on what this series is trying to tell me, but I need to find out. Emma Stone probably had a similar sentiment when she discovered this project's existence: "I'm not sure yet what these guys want to convey, but I need to work with them." She, the face of Louis Vuitton, one of the most conservative luxury industry giants, is simultaneously an almost punk artist. Emma takes risks and succeeds. And we all win.