Emma Stone’s Remarkable Performance Is the Key to Cracking ‘The Curse’
[Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for “The Curse” through Episode 5.]
“God damn it!”
More from IndieWire
Meet the Creatures of 'Poor Things': gooseWillis, billThe Kid, and barkWahlberg
'Poor Things' Only Needed 4 Lenses to Achieve Its Distinct Look
Whitney Siegel is not pleased. Already today, Emma Stone’s frustrated entrepreneur/”artist” has lost a prospective buyer, wasted precious production hours on people that won’t be included in the show, and witnessed her so-called friend make fun of her on camera, in a home Whitney designed, with the entire crew watching. Now, the fake couple Whitney is paying to pretend like they’re excited about purchasing her passive house is saying they don’t want to fake everything. Rather than be paired up with a more camera-friendly stranger, the long-haired “actor” would prefer to walk through the home with his real-life, less aesthetically pleasing partner.
That’s the last straw for Whitney, and before walking outside, plastering on her semi-permanent smile, and facing the source of her irritation, she lets out a rare expletive. “God damn it!” she shouts. Is the handsome stranger she hired about to get an earful? As the co-creator and co-host of “Fliplanthropy,” will she exert her will in order to execute her vision? Will she, in other words, “handle it”?
No, of course not. The second Whitney greets Pascal (Alexander Adrian Gibson), and he tells her he’d rather record alongside his girlfriend, Whitney agrees. Not only does she agree, but she doesn’t even ask the question. Sure, she checks if they’re “OK” — “if they need a water or something” — but Whitney waits for Pascal to bring up his request, and then proceeds to act like she wasn’t aware he’d even made it. “Who said that?” she asks, her eyes narrowing in confusion, her smile stretching into feigned bewilderment.
It’s clear to the audience that Whitney is hiding. Pascal and his fellow actors may suspect as much, too. Plenty of people hide parts of themselves they’re embarrassed by, but Whitney is consumed by her concealment to the point that it defines her. She’s a people pleaser. Her life is shaped not by doing good, but appearing to do good.
“Whitney is, in my mind, completely created by the environment she’s in at any given moment, and that can move on a dime,” Stone said in a recent Q&A moderated by Variety’s Jenelle Riley. “Whatever energy is coming at her, she’s shifting into what she believes she needs to be in that circumstance.”
In this instance, Whitney can’t explain why she’d prefer Pascal partner up with a stranger, so she doesn’t even try. Any explanation could come across as crass, hollow, or dismissive of his girlfriend. It might scare him off, and she needs him. It’s far easier, far safer, to compromise — one of many concessions made in Episode 5, “It’s a Good Day.”
What’s interesting is where she doesn’t. With Lucinda (Nikki Dixon) and Dennis (Eric Peterson), Whitney has a couple actually looking for a new home in Española. They’re legitimate buyers, even if they need a little hand-holding to cross the finish line. Asher (Nathan Fielder) understands as much, not pushing the contract on the nervous duo. Dennis is literally sweating through his shirt, and Whitney still goes at him with both barrels: No, you can’t install your own air conditioning units. Yes, you have to sign the contracts. What do you mean you don’t support the tribe?
These are dealbreakers for Whitney because they violate her core principle: You always have to look like you’re doing the right thing. Lucinda and Dennis aren’t focused on appearances, especially when the cameras are off. They don’t care about maintaining the house’s passive certification; they want to make sure they’ll be comfortable in their future home. They don’t care about superficial, “non-legally binding” gestures toward the Indigenous community; they care about protecting their future home. They care about their home — and Whitney, as has been made evident all season, doesn’t even see it as their home. It’s hers. She’s just choosing the caretakers.
“[With Whitney], there’s something deep down that is true,” Fielder said during the Q&A, “but there are a lot of external forces at play. If someone always wants to do what’s right, and they’re trying to do what’s right, what does that do to a person?”
Whitney is a thoroughly considered character on the page. Fielder and Benny Safdie, the co-creators of “The Curse,” wrote a lead whose lack of transparency is in constant conflict with her need to appear transparently good. That’s an incredible story engine for a series about exploitation cloaked in cosmetic kindness. But without Stone, Whitney — and “The Curse” — would never work. The dialogue isn’t even half the story; there’s always a look, a gesture, an inflection, an extra piece of unwritten information that’s given to the audience through Stone’s performance. Much of it even goes a step further, where the implied meaning remains intentionally ambiguous to Whitney, whoever she’s speaking to, and/or those of us watching.
Take the end of Episode 5. After losing their preferred buyers, Asher convinces Whitney to reconsider Mark (Dean Cain), who was originally written off because of a Blue Lives Matter bumper sticker on his car. When she confronts him about it, Mark admits, yes, he supports the police. But he also supports UNICEF and the World Wild Life Fund. Beyond donations, he’s also truly dedicated to passive living in a way that none of their other candidates have been and has Indigenous ancestry, which makes supporting the tribe’s fight a cause close to his heart.
Watching Stone’s face as Mark lays out his ideological resume is a masterclass in silent communication. The pursed lips when she thinks she’s proven his immorality. The slight, cryptic head tilt when he mentions Christian missionaries. The premature smile permeating her neutral demeanor when Asher brings up the tribal easements, and the rising disappointment that spreads as soon as Marks takes her side on the issue. Even Stone’s shallow breathing in the seconds that follow speaks to Whitney’s rising anger — an anger that eventually becomes her only discernible emotion. For the final minutes of Episode 5, she barely speaks — letting Asher talk and talk, as she “thinks,” moisturizes, and goes to bed.
“A lot of our characters are projecting things that may or may not exist onto everyone around them, and everyone is sort of doing that to each other,” Fielder said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “The idea of what’s actually real, or what matters in a situation, is a lot of what the show is exploring and reveling in. Because it’s easy to sort of go, ‘Oh, well this person’s good or bad,’ or ‘this is real or fake.’ But in a lot of these situations, it’s so much more complicated than that.”
Complicated is a bit of an understatement. What comes next in “The Curse” is anyone’s guess — and intentionally so. Whitney probably doesn’t even know what her next move is, after all those setbacks, all those concessions, in Episode 5. But the audience is right there with her, through every agonizing shift of her inner turmoil, thanks to Stone’s finely tuned work. She’s completely in control of her character’s contradictions — perfectly comfortable in the discomfort all around her.
“The Curse” releases new episodes every Friday on Paramount+ with Showtime, as well as Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on Showtime’s linear channels.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
