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Emma Stone Turned Down Ghostbusters Because It Wasn’t the Right Time

Special Screening Of Columbia Pictures'
Emma Stone. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

In a cover story for Wall Street Journal Magazine, Emma Stone discusses everything from Andrew Garfield and Woody Allen to the Sony hacks and her panic attacks as a youngster without acting in her life. Perhaps most interesting, though, she gives writer Josh Eells a comment about the Ghostbusters rumors and why she ultimately turned the film down. “The script was really funny,” she says. “It just didn’t feel like the right time for me. A franchise is a big commitment — it’s a whole thing. I think maybe I need a minute before I dive back into that water.” The 26-year-old actress added that she’s just come off a big year — which is why she’s back in California to chill for a bit — and would be into playing a villain, or something less chill, sometime soon. Cool.

Here are some other highlights from the interview.

On her panic attacks and why acting helped:

The first time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my friend’s house, and I thought the house was burning down. I called my mom and she brought me home, and for the next three years it just would not stop. I would go to the nurse at lunch most days and just wring my hands. I would ask my mom to tell me exactly how the day was going to be, then ask again 30 seconds later. I just needed to know that no one was going to die and nothing was going to change. … There’s something about the immediacy of acting. … You can’t afford to think about a million other things. You have to think about the task at hand. Acting forces me to sort of be like a Zen master: What is happening right in this moment?

On her (questionable?) relationship with Garfield:

[I]t’s so special to me that it never feels good to talk about, so I just continually don’t talk about it.

On her reaction to the Sony hacking scandal:

I did one of the worst things ever, which was react really quickly. … I was getting all these emails and texts from people I didn’t know — ‘Hi, I’m Joe from the U.K. I like your movies’ — and I was so overwhelmed that I went to my in-box and I deleted all my emails. In about a 30-second span, I hit ‘Select All’ and ‘Delete Forever,’ and thousands of emails, like six years of emails, are now gone forever. I was just so freaked out that someone was in there. … It was horrible. I cried for like an hour. Most of the emails I’m mourning I can still talk to the person and get them back. But there’s others where the person is actually gone. It really sucks.

On working with Woody Allen:

It’s terrifying. … He doesn’t do table reads or any rehearsal. You can’t even ask questions about your character, because he’ll be like: ‘You know this is a movie, right?’

Here’s the full story, which also includes fun bits about Bill Murray and Damien Chazelle’s La La Land.

This Is Why Emma Stone Turned Down Ghostbusters