The Rehearsals For Poor Things Were All About Embarrassing The Cast

Yorgos Lanthimos might subject his actors to some embarrassing exercises, but he doesn’t make them do it alone. Emma Stone says that the director sometimes joins in on the exercises and other times “laughs through the whole thing.”

Robbie Ryan, the cinematographer for “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” would occasionally come by rehearsals to meet the cast and establish a rapport. Between the cast and the main crew, Lanthimos wanted everyone to feel “silly” and “like a troupe with each other.”

The “Cruella” star said that the “Poor Things” cast felt like a seasoned theater company before the shoot even began. This helped the cast feel comfortable exploring new things with one another during the shoot.

“You’re like — we’ve already had dinner every night,” she continued, “we’ve already been all over each other in rehearsals, and, you know, have made fun of each other and been embarrassed, so there’s nothing that really feels like it’s off limits when you’re on set because you’re with your friends.”

Lanthimos knows that his pre-production methods are unconventional in cinema. While most productions try to spend as little time as possible on the project to save money, he knows the value of a lengthy rehearsal process.

“I think I do things that are more common in theater,” he admitted in a 2018 interview with The Guardian. In Lanthimos’ improv games, the actors “get entangled, and they have to figure out how to get untangled, and while they’re doing that, they might be doing their lines, so the lines get distorted.” The director uses these exercises “to infuse the scenes and actors with an unpredictability that I find is there in real life, but isn’t there when you sit down and intellectualize a scene or a role”.