This article contains spoilers for The Curse episode one, Land of Enchantment.
Showtime and A24’s The Curse is an anomaly among prestige television: neither of its male leads are primarily known as actors. The comedy-drama-horror series follows Asher and Whitney Siegel (Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone), a newlywed couple filming an HGTV show in Espanola, New Mexico, with the help of an unpredictable producer, Dougie Schecter (Benny Safdie).
The show was created by Fielder and Safdie, and if you know their names, it’s likely that you don’t know them, first and foremost, as actors. Fielder is a comedian who, for four seasons, hosted the reality comedy series Nathan for You on Comedy Central. Safdie rose to prominence as one half of the directing duo The Safdie Brothers. With his brother, Josh, he directed 2017’s Good Time starring Robert Pattinson and the 2019 Adam Sandler anxiety thriller Uncut Gems.
Since their breakouts, Fielder and Safdie have broken out of the roles they were initially associated with. Since Uncut Gems, Safdie has acted in a variety of film and television projects, including Oppenheimer, Licorice Pizza, and Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. Fielder, meanwhile, worked with HBO to create 2022’sThe Rehearsal, a series that initially seemed to follow in the docu-comedy footsteps of Nathan For You, before zagging in a far more meta direction to comment on the production and ethics of reality TV.
Fielder is working in a similar vein with The Curse — though this time, the series is entirely fictional — and Safdie’s anxious sensibility is a good match for Fielder’s. I’ve seen most of Safdie’s post-Uncut Gems performances and this the first performance that has really sold me on him as an actor, and Fielder is similarly impressive, given that, until now, he’s largely played a deadpan version of himself. The first scene I saw from the show was a clip I stumbled onto on Twitter in which Asher and Whitney are being interviewed by a local reporter. When the journalist brings up Whitney’s family, who the couple don’t want to be seen as connected to, Asher snaps and aggressively presses the interviewer about whether she would want to be held responsible for the actions of her parents.
Fielder is good in the scene, and it’s outside the realm of anything he’s done before on Nathan for You or The Rehearsal. But as I saw a commenter reply to the clip, Stone is doing just as much with much less material. Fielder is communicating aggression and barely restrained anger, effectively performing the dialogue. But Stone plays a range of emotions with her eyes and face, taking in Fielder’s off-script outburst, and attempting to spin it with a smile while clearly freaking out. Fielder is good at performing what is on the page, but Stone is playing a hundred tiny beats that feel believably human, even when she isn’t speaking.
It may be because she’s working with two less experienced actors, but I’ve rarely seen the cliche that “acting is reacting” more obviously proven true. In one memorable scene toward the end of the episode, Whitney and Dougie share a strange, awkward moment. Whitney doesn’t trust Dougie, and in this scene, he seems to be trying to ingratiate himself to her, first by criticizing Asher, and then pivoting to praising the work the couple are doing together. As Dougie monologues to Whitney, Stone plays a million shades of discomfort without saying a word. She tilts her head to watch him through the corner of her eyes. She narrows her eyes, and blinks slowly. At one moment, she purses her lips, blinks, and knits her eyebrows, watching him skeptically. As he finishes his speech, she widens her eyes. Through her use of her facial features alone, we have a very good idea of what she’s thinking and feeling. But on the page, she has no words to say.
Emma Stone is having a moment on the big screen, too, with significant Oscar buzz for her performance in Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things, which she also produced.
Being able to play these moments where nothing is there in the script reveals a deeper understanding of the character. Figuring out how they would deliver a line is one thing, but figuring out how they would flinch or gasp or gulp is something else. It’s what makes the performance remarkable, and what proves Stone deserves her Oscar.
NEXT:Netflix’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher Deserves The Hype
