Emma Stone Surprises Crowd at Screening for Silent Film “Bleat”: 'If I Never Had to Talk Again, I’d be Thrilled’

"I think people can say a lot more without speaking,” the actress said during a Q&A with the film's director, Yorgos Lanthimos

Emma Stone surprised audiences when she made an appearance at the New York Film Festival (NYFF) on Wednesday.

The actress, 34, attended the premiere screening of director Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bleat at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City, where she called the 30-minute silent film a dream come true.

“If I never had to talk again, I’d be thrilled,” she said during a Q&A moderated by the festival’s artistic director, Dennis Lin, Variety reported. “And so would a lot of other people.”

She elaborated, “I’m being serious. It’s my favorite thing to not have to speak. I wish often [that] we could cut many lines of dialogue because I think people can say a lot more without speaking.”

Bleat, which sees Stone playing a mourning woman opposite Damien Bonnard, marks the third time the actress has worked with Lanthimos, 50, since their first collaboration, 2018’s The Favourite.

Their other project is Poor Things, which had a screening at the NYFF days prior. There, Lanthimos could speak about the feature-length movie but Stone was unable to amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. However, Variety reported that Bleat secured an interim agreement with the union, allowing her to talk with the director about the short film during the festival's screening and Q&A.

According to the outlet, Stone apologized for feeling “pretty nervous” during the conversation, acknowledging how long it’s been since she’s been in the spotlight. “I haven’t done this in a while. I’m sorry!” she said.

Related: Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn to Reunite with 'The Favourite' Director Yorgos Lanthimos on New Movie

Of working together again, the pair joked that Lanthimos’ projects, including The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, always explore themes related to sex, death and goats — and Bleat is no exception.

“It’s, like, nonstop, every day. He calls me and he’s like, ‘Goats — what do you think? Death?’ I’m like, ‘OK, still? We shot this three years ago,' ” Stone said, per Variety.

Set on the Greek island of Tenos, Bleat follows a mourning woman inside a simple house, where “reality blends with dreamy imagination, and tradition with insidious desires,” according to IMDb. 

Related: Emma Stone Is Reborn in Fantastical 'Poor Things' Trailer: Watch

Although they didn’t talk about their other film, Poor Things, Lanthimos spoke about Stone’s character in the graphic, fantastical thriller at both the Venice International Film Festival premiere and NYFF screening.

"It was very important for me to not make a film that was going to be prude, because it would be completely betraying the main character. So we had to be confident," the director said in Italy. "The character [had to] have no shame, and Emma had to have no shame about her body, nudity and engaging in those scenes, and she understood that right away."

As PEOPLE previously reported, Poor Things is based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name. And while the film features several unflinchingly graphic sex scenes, Lanthimos praised Stone’s ability to tackle her character’s sexuality sans inhibitions.

"There was a script but, for the sex scenes especially, we sat down with Emma and decided: ‘So what kind of position should we do here, what kind of thing should we do there, what is missing? You know from the experience of sex and the different desires people have, what do we need to portray to make this complete and make it enough of a representation of human desire and its idiosyncrasies, and all these kind of things,'" he said.

The crew also hired intimacy coordinators to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for Stone and her costars. "She made everyone feel very comfortable," Lanthimos said of one of the intimacy coordinators, Elle McAlpine.

Related: Why Willem Dafoe Had Emma Stone Slap Him 20 Times for Off-Screen Scene in Upcoming Movie

Poor Things, which is slated to premiere in theaters on Dec. 8, also stars Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.

An official synopsis for the film describes it as "the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter [Stone], a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter [Dafoe]." Under Baxter's tutelage and influence, Bella is "eager to learn" but that quickly evolves into a hunger for "the worldliness she is lacking."

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Stone's character ends up running off with "Duncan Wedderburn [Ruffalo], a slick and debauched lawyer" on an adventure across continents. Free from "the prejudices of her times," she discovers her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

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