W MAGAZINE – With her role in La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s modern take on the classic musical, Emma Stone emerged as a true Hollywood triple-threat: not only can she act, she can also sing and dance. Here, Stone, who is one of the stars of W’s February 2017 issue, opens up about her favorite musicals of all time, what it was like to sing on camera, and more.

Lynn Hirschberg: How did you get the part in La La Land? Emma Stone: Well, Damien [Chazelle, the director] came to see me when I was doing Cabaret, and he saw me on a night that I was on a lot of cold medicine, which was a lot of nights because I was sick a lot during the run. And, I didn’t know that he had come with the composer, Justin Hurwitz. After the fact I heard he had seen it and I was really upset, because I was like I don’t think I was even in my body for that entire show. I think that was my unofficial audition for La La Land, without knowing it.

Which was your favorite number to perform in La La Land?
I did love doing the audition, although that kind of thing, when it’s just you and it’s one shot, is a little tricky, and maintaining my voice is a feat for me. So I loved doing the duet number on the hill with Ryan [Gosling], where I’m in the yellow dress and he’s in the suit and that was also one shot and we had just practiced for so long, I mean for months and months, so to finally do it on that day was really exciting.

Do you now dance differently at parties?
No, I pretty much always dance like that at parties I think.

You put on the shoes and then you start doing tap dancing.
I say I was born knowing how to do a time-step. I wasn’t, but I learned it when I was little, just a kind of simple time step, and that’s actually something that I can remember doing on sets since I started working. It kind of wakes me up to do a little time step, but that was the only tap that I knew.
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