Emma Stone Stuns as the Worst Person in the World

The Showtime series The Curse is a delightful watch, presuming you enjoy having your soul dig its way out of your skin using nothing but its fingernails, then violently grab your shoulders and start shaking you while screaming, “Why in God’s name are you forcing me to watch this?!?!?!”

That’s a high compliment (I think) to what I assume is the intention of the series, which is to make you feel such discomfort and, occasionally, so disturbed that the vibes alone will make you start itching like you have a rash. The finale airs this Sunday night, which means that now is the perfect time to binge the previous nine episodes and catch up, like I’ve been doing this week.

Is it an enjoyable experience? I can only speak to my journey, which began with, “What in the world is this show?” then morphed into, “This show is making me feel so uneasy,” and finally, “Every fiber of my being needs to find out what is going to happen, because I feel like it is going to be so dark.”

The biggest takeaway from that journey, however, is that, my God, Emma Stone is incredible in this. It’s possibly the best performance of her career, which is high praise, as she is currently picking up Best Actress trophies this award season for another towering performance: her career-best film work in Poor Things.

Her character in The Curse, Whitney, is a fascinating contrast to Bella, her role in the fantastical universe of Poor Things. Whitney is both one of the most relatable and knowable people I’ve seen on TV in a long time, and also quite possibly one of the worst humans to appear in any show. That she is so familiar and recognizable, yet so quietly despicable—well, that’s all part of that discomfort I mentioned. (There’s a lot of “oh, you’re horrible” that’s tinged with a wincing “but yeah girl, I get it” that happens when you watch.)

A description of The Curse makes the series sound both more mundane and more bizarre than it actually is, which is what makes it so unique. Unfathomably, as the episodes go on, both of those extremes are amplified; it’s a wild, strange ride.

Whitney and Asher (Nathan Fielder, delivering a similarly stunning acting performance) are a married couple who are filming at first a pilot, and then a full-season order of a new HGTV series in New Mexico. Called Fliplanthropy, it aims to show how the houses they’re renovating incorporate revolutionary—and totally bizarre—eco-friendly technology, and how the couple plans for the buyers of these new constructions to coexist with and bolster the local Indigenous community.

The duo are as shrewd as they are, at times, hapless, as it’s revealed over time how at odds their craven ambition is with their supposed noble intentions. As far as the series goes, the impetus for that unraveling is the suspicion that a curse has been placed on Asher by a local girl during the filming of the pilot. Whether Asher buys into this is mirrored in the viewing experience, coloring every cringe-inducing or legitimately upsetting development with a darkness and foreboding inevitability: If he, and thus his relationship with Whitney, really is cursed, how bleak will things become?

The struggle to get everything right in the filming of Fliplanthrophy runs in tandem with the breakdown of Whitney and Asher’s marriage. It’s obvious from the jump how devoted Asher is to Whitney, and how Whitney’s supposed happiness is derived from having total power over Asher. To a viewer, it’s at once a shockingly toxic dynamic, but also one that’s, if not universally relatable, again, recognizable—and, dare I say, understandable. It’s a fascinating relationship. They are incredibly close and intimate, each other’s closest confidantes and entirely codependent. Yet that closeness is also weaponized. They’re so aware of their deep connection that they’re able to use it in reverse: to alienate each other.

There are twists and wild sequences that happen as the series goes on that it serves no one to spoil. (Though be sure to check out our recaps here.) But watching Whitney’s true colors surface through Stone’s performance—so grounded that the calculatedness, moral compromising, and nefariousness reads concerningly normal—is a visceral experience. Each new development snowballs to the point that it feels like you’re fleeing from it as it speeds toward you down a hill, like in a cartoon.

It shouldn’t be surprising when good actors do good acting. Emma Stone is one of the best actors working today. Nonetheless, there’s something about a performer as endearing as she is—a leading lady who’s very much among America’s Sweethearts—playing a role like this that seems revelatory. So, in context of The Curse, consider it praise when I say: I’ve never enjoyed being so turned off by a character or a performance more.