Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are getting crazy Oscar buzz for La La Land, a film that stands largely on the shoulders of their chemistry. And fans will remember the first time that the two shared the screen: Crazy Stupid Love. They also played love interests in that film, and one of their most memorable scenes is when they recreate the lift from Dirty Dancing. It's a pretty fun and romantic scene, made all the more fun when you learn that Emma Stone admits that she had a meltdown and a double had to take her place for her. Don't worry, she's not a diva; it's the funny type of meltdown.
Both Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling were guests on The Graham Norton Show, where the host brought up the numerous times that they've been in movies together. He also noted that La La Land isn't even the first movie where they've danced together. The Dirty Dancing move they recreated in Crazy Stupid Love doesn't seem hard on paper -- you just have to be strong -- but Emma Stone found out she couldn't do it due to a specific unconscious fear of being held in the air. It was definitely not the time of her life.
When we do Crazy, Stupid, Love, I know that we're gonna do the Dirty Dancing lift. I don't know, however, that I have an internalized phobia of being lifted over someone's head at the height of about 6 feet. ... It was a lot. And then it was a meltdown. I mean, I had a real meltdown...I had to go lie down.
As Emma Stone tells it to Graham Norton, when she was about seven years old she took gymnastics class. While standing on parallel bars about six feet in the air, she lost her balance and fell, breaking both of her arms. Not fun. So, she goes her whole life never being six feet off the air until that moment on the set of Crazy Stupid Love, where she needs to perform the lift. Held in the air above Ryan Gosling's head, her unconscious fear very suddenly became conscious and she has her meltdown. Gosling describes the experience best:
I never had this happen, but I imagine if a possum fell out of a tree and tried to scratch your eyes out, it would be something similar.
After this episode happened she ended up leaving set, going back to her room, geting in bad, and watched Labyrinth to calm herself down (Muppets and David Bowie will do that). You can watch Emma Stone recount the entire hilarious story herself in the video below.
If there's anything that this story has taught us, it's that Emma Stone also probably didn't do her off the ground stunts in Amazing Spider-Man. To see more of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling dancing, La La Land is still in theaters.
