When Emma Stone won the Best Actress award at the Academy Awards ceremony Sunday, her grandmother Jean Morgan watched from Willow Valley Communities with tears in her eyes.
“I was as shocked as she was,” Morgan said in a phone call with LNP | LancasterOnline. “You can see, she was taken back and surprised. I think we all were.”
Stone won her second Academy Award for Best Actress Sunday, March 10, for her role as Bella Baxter in the science-fiction/black comedy movie “Poor Things.” The film also took home awards for makeup and hairstyling, costume design and production design.
It was her second Oscar win for Best Actress; she also won for her performance in 2016’s “La La Land.”
Morgan said she saw Stone in New York in January, and Stone predicted that “Killers of the Flower Moon” lead actor Lily Gladstone would win the Best Actress award.
But, Stone took home the award. As Stone got on stage to accept the award, she remarked that her dress broke in the back.
“It was a shame,” Morgan said. “I loved the color. I personally think that her stylist is good. I seem to like almost everything (she) wears.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Morgan had not yet talked to Stone about her win.
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“Poor Things,” which Morgan described as “certainly not a grandmother movie,” tells the story of Bella, who at the beginning of the film has the brain of an infant, but quickly grows into adulthood, navigating the pains and pleasures that come with maturing.
The film’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, previously worked with Stone on 2018’s “The Favourite.” The pair will collaborate again on an upcoming movie, “Kinds of Kindness.”
“Yorgos gives her pretty free reign,” Morgan said. “She respects him, as you can tell with her acceptance speech. … He, in turn, feels the same way about her.”
Morgan said she saw “Poor Things” twice with “open-minded” friends.
“We’re old,” she said with a laugh. “We’re a couple generations away from you young people.”
But, nonetheless, Morgan loved Stone’s performance and says she’s a natural.
Morgan recalls a time when Stone was 11 years old, acting in her first children’s theater production, “The Wind in the Willows” as Otter.
“She even had that husky voice then,” Morgan said.
Morgan said she told Stone that she was going to be a better actor than Bette Davis, known for movies like “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and “All About Eve.” Stone didn’t believe Morgan.
“Fast forward, she won her first award at Academy for ‘La La Land’ and I called her and I said, ‘Well, Bette Davis, move over,'” Morgan said.
But Morgan admires more about her granddaughter than just her talent; she also appreciates the importance family has in her life. Stone and her husband, comedian and writer Dave McCary, welcomed their first child, Louise Jean, in 2021. (Morgan’s first and middle names are Jean Louise.)
In Stone’s acceptance speech, she thanked her daughter, who “has turned our lives technicolor,” she said. “I love you bigger than the whole sky, my girl.”
Morgan said Stone and McCary are wonderful parents who love their child dearly.
“I think that came across with the Oscar speech,” Morgan said.
Morgan says that she would parallel Stone with actor Meryl Streep, as they’re both capable of doing anything and aren’t often typecast.
“(Emma’s) just good. She’s brilliant,” Morgan says. “She just knocks my socks off. She always has.”
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