The Emma Effect

Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone slips into tennis whites in this month’s Battle Of The Sexes, the big-screen account of the legendary 1973 showdown between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Here, she talks to co-star Sarah Silverman about what’s changed since then, what hasn’t, and getting what’s yours

SARAH SILVERMAN: Emma Jean Stone [Stone’s real name] took tennis lessons from Billie Jean King. Did you mention that same-middle-name fun fact to her?

EMMA STONE: I did bring it up to her pretty early on, and I think that bonded us quickly. Our tennis coach, Vince Spadea, who was also [co-star] Steve [Carell’s] double, gave me tennis lessons every day. But I met Billie Jean a couple of months before we started shooting. We went to this court in New York and she realised no one had ever really played catch with me or monitored my hand-eye coordination. [So] I became like a human golden retriever, and she would just throw the balls at me. We had to start simply like that. So that was what my tennis lesson was like with her. It was playing catch.

SS: I feel you truly inhabited her. Was there some kind of exterior element for you, like when you put the glasses on?

ES: There were a couple of things. I had never really considered the physicality of a person or of a character. So that was what I focused on more than anything: building from the outside in. I said to Billie Jean, “I’m working with a voice coach every day,” and she was like, “Why? I have the same voice.” And I was like, “Back then, you had this kind of high voice. You were much quieter.” And she was like, “Well, we had to be. The only way we could get our point across as women was to move gently. We couldn’t say something loudly and forcefully, ever. You would scare people off.” That was very interesting.

SS: Even though she took a giant outspoken step forward, she still concealed so much from herself and from the world. [King felt she could not reveal she was a lesbian in the 1970s. But she was outed in 1981, after her partner sued her for palimony.]