Nowadays, Emma Stone is well-known as being one of the best actresses of our generation with two Academy Awards to show for it, but there was a time when she was a gem of a talent waiting to be discovered. Her Zombieland co-star Jesse Eisenberg got to see this firsthand when she auditioned for what’s considered one of Emma Stone’s best films and among great zombie movies these days, and effectively blew him away.
After Emma Stone crushed it with her first role in Superbad at the age of 19, the actress popped up in comedies all over the place, from The House Bunny to Easy A. One of those early roles was, of course, Zombieland, where she played a survivor of the zombie apocalypse who goes by Wichita. Jesse Eisenberg recently spoke about his first time crossing paths with the co-star of the 2009 movie starting with these words:
I was already cast in the movie, so I was auditioning like many people for her part that day. The actors at that point were all amazing actresses, but they were all, like, trying to get into the movie, and so they were being really polite and everything.
Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone recently worked together on one of the latest 2024 movies, A Real Pain. Eisenberg wrote, directed and stars in the dramedy and had the assistance of Stone as a producer. While speaking on Sirius XM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw (via People), he shared that he got cast in Zombieland before Emma Stone and watched a lot of other actresses try out for Wichita. However, here’s how Stone stood out according to Eisenberg:
And then [Stone] came in, and she just started making fun of me in the scene, like just assaulting me with insults in the scene and it was so funny. They were so quick and so funny and cutting. And she left the room and I just felt so, so small. We were like, ‘Oh my God. That person is a genius.’ And maybe she was 19 even at that time of the audition. I mean, she's a truly spectacularly, unusually brilliant person.
Now, that’s how you make an impression! As Jesse Eisenberg spoke about, Stone was really different from all the other hopeful actresses because of her magnetic personality, and barraging insults toward his character of Columbus. A lot of the other actresses were “really polite,” but when it comes to a biting comedy like Zombieland, Stone is exactly what the movie needed, and thus a star was born. Zombieland also became a hit in theaters and among critics when the comedy also starring Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin came out in the fall of 2009, and all four reprised their roles in 2019 for Zombieland: Double Tap.
Fifteen years later, it’s a given that Emma Stone is practically a “genius” when it comes to her acting ability. She just came off a second Best Actress win for Poor Things earlier this year after previously dazzling us with her first Best Actress win with song, dance and sass in La La Land. It’s no wonder Eisenberg and Stone have remained filmmaking collaborators. Stone (along with her husband Dave McCary) also produced Eisenberg’s directorial debut, When You Finish Saving The World, before working together again on A Real Pain.
A Real Pain is currently in theaters. It’s one of the best movies we’ve seen this year. Oh, and if you want to relive Zombieland, it’s streaming now with a Netflix subscription.
