Emma Stone Stans the Super Bowl, Squarespace and K-Pop: HUNTR/X ‘Reminds Me of… the Spice Girls’
Few things seem to really rile up Emma Stone these days, but if her new Super Bowl commercial is to be believed, not having her own website is one of them.
The Oscar-winning actress stars in a new Super Bowl ad for Squarespace, which finds the Bugonia star struggling to secure the domain name for EmmaStone.com. Appropriately titled “Unavailable,” the commercial re-teams the actress with Bugonia director Yorgos Lanthimos, who captures an increasingly frustrated Stone as she desperately — and dramatically — tries to re-acquire a piece of her digital identity, seemingly to no avail.
Shot on black-and-white analogue film and presented like a series of cinematic vignettes, a 30-second version of the Squarespace ad will air between the first and second quarters of Super Bowl LX on Sunday. The pitch: just like the play action clock ticking down on the field, you want to get your domain online before it’s too late.
Stone says she was drawn to the “over the top” premise for the commercial, explaining that, “I’m playing ‘quote-unquote’ myself and she’s getting more and more nuts. It’s like a documentary and it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to really showing who I really am,” she jokes.
The Super Bowl spot allowed Stone to re-team with Lanthimos and Oscar-winning production designer James Price, after working with the two on Poor Things and Bugonia, and the actress calls it “such a gift” to work with them again. “This was so much fun and I got to work with all my favorite people,” Stone says.
Rolling Stone got on the phone with Stone to talk about the Super Bowl campaign, her online history, and how her music tastes are now shaped by equal parts motherhood and nostalgia.
What made you want to partner up with Squarespace for this commercial?
Their idea for this was very over the top and very funny to me. It was just the arc of becoming progressively more insane, which is a joy for me. One of the great perks of this whole situation was that they had to — in order for the commercial to work at all — secure EmmaStone.com, which I’ve never owned. So I guess now I can have a website?
Why didn’t you acquire your domain name before this?
I don’t know what I never actually did that. Squarespace kind of had to deal with my lack of foresight. So I’m very grateful they did or else the commercial really would not have worked. It would have been weird if you went to EmmaStone.com and it was… I don’t even know what might have been going on over there.
Now that you have your official domain name registered with Squarespace, have you thought of what you’ll use the site for? Would you ever turn it into a lifestyle site like other celebrities have done?
One hundred percent no. That’s why I don’t even have Instagram. I’m too afraid of my own mental health to be engaged in that way, and that’s why I’m such a lurker and love following other people’s stuff.
Did you ever have a blog or run any websites back in the day?
I was very into building kind of prototypical sites — do you remember, like Geocities and Angelfire? I was really into that. I built a presentation for class when I was in elementary school and I remember that I had to bring people to the library to see my presentation. I was really proud of my drop-down menus, and you know, all the things that you could do on Angelfire, basically. So I was very into that. I also remember the LiveJournal time, and I was such a blog reader for so long. It was like my favorite thing, and so now I’m truly one of the Substack freaks. I’m spending a lot of money on Substack.
What do you like about Substack?
I like a lot of fashion content. I like creative writing. I like a little bit of the gossipy stuff. Sometimes I really like to read, so I like a lot of substance. It’s a nice nighttime, wind-down activity. But because I loved blogs so much, I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re kind of back.’ It’s not just captions anymore!
Squarespace
You shot this Super Bowl commercial but are you actually going to be tuning into the football game?
I’m definitely going to watch the Super Bowl — I am very invested in it. My brother was a high school quarterback, so I will be watching with him, and that’ll be fun. But I’m really excited for Bad Bunny, obviously.
Have you ever seen him in concert?
No, but I would love to. So I feel like I’m gonna see him in concert in a couple of days. We all are!
Have you ever been to a Super Bowl?
We went to what was one of the most famously slow and kind of uneventful Super Bowls in history, apparently. It was in Atlanta a couple years ago, we were shooting Zombieland 2, and so the whole cast and crew kind of went and watched it, and not much happened, but it was still fun.
Who played the Halftime Show?
That’s a really good question. Let me Google that, give me one second (pauses). Clearly this was not… oh — Maroon 5.
What’s on your current playlists these days?
To be quite honest with you, the thing that we’ve been listening to day-in and day-out, non-stop around the clock, because I have an almost 5-year-old, is the entire soundtrack of KPop Demon Hunters. It’s all we listen to from 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Has your daughter watched the movie?
It’s out of control. It’s all we do. It’s the entire lifeblood of this family. I also would be doing this, with or without having a 5-year-old. It has completely captured the imagination in a way that almost reminds me of like, when I was growing up with the Spice Girls. It’s like all we could think about, and all these kids now definitely are like, ‘I’m Rumi and you’re Mira,’ and it’s the same way that we were like, ‘I’m Baby Spice and you’re Ginger,’ y’know?
Aside from Demon Hunters, are you into K-pop?
I absolutely love K-pop, and one of the coolest experiences ever was I hosted SNL and BTS was the musical guest. I’ve never heard pandemonium like that at SNL. People were sleeping on the street for like days to get tickets for the show. It was unbelievable. And so, that was what really kicked into high gear my passion for BTS. I very much would like to go see them [on tour].
Did you interact with the group members at all?
They had me after the show was over, I got to go backstage, take pictures with them and say, ‘Hey.’ But they were very focused before that, I didn’t really talk to them during the week, except for when we did the promo video that you do for the commercial. But it was amazing. I got to meet them all, and they gave me some signed stuff, and I really felt like a kid again, just really excited.
What was the last concert you went to?
I think the last concert I went to was the Eras Tour. I saw the opening day in Arizona, which is where I’m from, and then I went to two nights in L.A. I think she should bring it back.
I think you’d like the Backstreet Boys residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Oh my god, how was it?
It was so good. They have two weeks left so you should go see them.
I mean, I’m not going to be able to go to Vegas in the next two weeks! But yes, it’s the nostalgia; we need it. We had no idea how good we had it in the Nineties. It was such a beautiful time to grow up. Have you gone to any of the Spice Girls reunion shows?
I went to the first one, when Geri came back and Victoria was there, but I didn’t go to the one in the UK just before the pandemic.
I went to that one and I went to the one in 2008. Victoria was there for the first one and then this most recent one, she wasn’t there.
She’s not rejoining the group.
She said it’s not her passion anymore. We watched the documentary.
Squarespace
You can watch Stone’s Squarespace commercial during the Super Bowl this Sunday, airing live on NBC. The game day spot is part of a broader campaign that will feature additional film clips showing the actress’ journey to reclaim her namesake domain.
“In today’s crowded digital landscape, claiming a plot of virtual real estate matters more than ever,” reads a release. “A domain is the first step to getting online—and with Squarespace, it’s also a starting point for building a brand or business that can be scaled over time.”
Squarespace says it currently has millions of users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Get a free trial here.
