Emma Stone and the cast of 'Cruella' on continuing the legacy of '101 Dalmations'

Emma Stone and the cast of Cruella talk to Yahoo Entertainment about continuing the legacy of 101 Dalmations. Stone also reveals her injury that set the production back a few weeks, as well as how it affected her Spice Girls concert experience.

Video Transcript

- What was your name?

- Cruella.

- That's quite fabulous. And you designed this?

- You did.

- Oh, no wonder I love it. It's mine.

- I fixed it.

KEVIN POLOWY: As far as Disney characters go, I mean they don't come much more iconic than Cruella de Vil. We have of course had both the animated and live-action versions of her as played by Betty Lou Gerson and Glenn Close. How much would you say you borrow directly from those two in playing the younger version?

EMMA STONE: I did reference the animated version a bit just in physicality. But I really tried not to watch the Glenn Close version, because I would just pale in comparison. So there was no point in trying to do like a crappy imitation of what she already did incredibly well. So I just decided it was probably better to reinvent it in my own way.

But also, you know, with the back story and her being kind of a Stella into Cruella, I felt like it was such a different experience. But I did copy what the animators did in 1961 and I listened to a lot of Tallulah Bankhead.

[HIGH-PITCHED LAUGH]

EMMA THOMPSON: For her voice and her laugh because that was what they had sort of based the original voice off of. And it's just fun to watch Tallulah Bankhead.

KEVIN POLOWY: Paul and Joel, you play Horace, the annoying one, and Jasper, the insightful one which is also annoying, respectively, as they're described. Both canon characters we've seen in those earlier versions, same question for you. I mean are you looking back at those previous iterations pretty closely?

PAUL WALTER HAUSER: Kevin, how dare you call me the annoying one.

KEVIN POLOWY: Oh, I am simply quoting the magnificent Cruella de Vil. I am simply quoting.

PAUL WALTER HAUSER: If she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will. I think I was approaching the character, you know, there wasn't a lot of meat on the bone in the cartoon. The characters are kind of tertiary. So I think thankfully Joel and I got to play around and kind of make it our own. But I didn't rip off Bob Hoskins, the accent I do in the film is 100% me studying Bob Hoskins as me in the movie "Hook."

KEVIN POLOWY: Joel, how about you?

JOEL FRY: I remember the cartoon. I remember like the drawings and the kind of limbs and stuff like that. And some of the like the dynamics that, kind of, there. That was it really.

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: You know I kept staring at you at the party and then it came to me. That's Estella from school.

EMMA STONE: It's not Estella. That's the past. I'm Cruella.

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: Well it was great to be Anita. So I, similarly to Emma, I had obviously I was familiar with the animation and then the Glenn Close version. But I also tried not to look too closely at those because I think you can, like, there's just this kind of osmosis that happens and you can take on characters even unwittingly. But

For me it was much more about figuring out, I think Anita is a lot more kind of gentle, physically, in her ambition than both Cruella and the baroness. So it was really fun for me to play a character that was kind of even-keeled.

KEVIN POLOWY: Mark, John, he's new. Is he new?

MARK STRONG: Yeah, he's definitely new. He just does a lot of lurking, really, certainly for the first half of the movie so you don't really know who he is. And he was fun, actually, fun to do because he has a little pivotal moment in the film that I can't really talk about. But it was just great being on set with everyone.

KEVIN POLOWY: One of the major most questions heading into this prequel was, how in the world do you make Cruella de Vil likeable? Could she be redeemed? I mean just like on the basic, most essential, optics it's like a PETA nightmare. One of the things she's most famous for, what she wants to do this poor, dotted up dogs. Emma, as Cruella, was that ever a concern going in for you? Or was it kind of an immediate resolution to it when you came on.

EMMA STONE: I don't think that Disney would want to make a live-action version of a person that they really were like let's really see her skin some dogs. Like we want to see that. So there is a sort of redemption. You know the thing that I kept sort of repeating to myself over and over as the script went through different processes, because it took about years to come to the final conclusion that we were making this movie, was that you don't ever, in "101 Dalmatians," the dogs are returned. I mean they do escape, we don't actually see her skin the dogs.

So what could be the back story to why she wants to steal these dogs no matter what she's saying. And I think that this movie does enough to sort of open up the lens that it could go potentially either way. And we don't fully know if she's really going to become this person that we've seen or not. And I think it's nice to leave a little ambiguity there. Because I'm a big dog lover myself and I would assume that Disney likes dogs as well and doesn't want to really glorify a true puppy killer.

KEVIN POLOWY: Emma, I read that this production had a Spice Girls-injury-related setback.

EMMA STONE: It's not true. I wish it was true, but it did sort of bite into my Spice Girls concert experience.

KEVIN POLOWY: How so?

EMMA STONE: The night before I went to the Spice Girls concert at the O2 Arena, their kind of reunion tour, I ran in boots on a wood floor in a house and I slipped, and my arm went back and I broke my shoulder in two places. They had to postpone the movie I think six more weeks or maybe eight more weeks so that I could go to physical therapy and heal my shoulder because I couldn't move my arm for a good amount of time.

But the next night was the Spice Girls concert. And we got, like, a sling at Boots. And I was in so much pain, because I hadn't had the X-ray yet so I didn't know it was a break. I thought it was like some type of sprain, which it was not. And then the next day I went to the hospital and I got the X-ray, and it was a break.

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: I didn't know that that was, that it's not Spice Girl related, but even that you were a Spice Girl person because I went to the Spice Girls' reunion, but the other one, you know the one before this one?

EMMA STONE: In 2008? I also went to that at O2.

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: Shut up!

EMMA STONE: Yes! We were probably there the same night.

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: It was phenomenal.

EMMA STONE: Phenomenal. It was incredible. Did you go to this one?

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: No, I didn't go to this one.

EMMA STONE: 2019? Oh, God, it was great. But you know, it was weird because I was in the most excruciating pain and like, it's so fun here.

KIRBY HOWELL-BAPTISTE: It's so fun. I'm holding tight for the next one.

EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, me too.

KEVIN POLOWY: [INAUDIBLE] bringing everyone together. I love it.