Emma Stone isn’t just another pretty face in Hollywood. After announcing her arrival as a teenager with Superbad and Zombieland, Stone took her first steps into the big league with films like Crazy, Stupid, Love, The Help, and The Amazing Spider-Man franchise with Andrew Garfield. She also created history by winning 2 Oscars before the age of 36 and joined the likes of stars like Hillary Swank and Jodie Foster.
In December 2023, Stone achieved another milestone when she became the latest star to have hosted Saturday Night Live 5 times and thereby became the youngest member to do so. But the Oscar winner realized that the honor of receiving the coveted velvet jacket came with a surprising caveat, which she managed to expertly navigate.
Emma Stone Found A Way Out Of This Strange Saturday Night Live Rule
Since its inception in 1975, Saturday Night Live has thrived on many superstars from different generations hosting and performing entertaining comedic sketches for television. Among the plethora of actors who have been part of this legacy, very few have had the honor of hosting the show 5 times.
In December 2023, Oscar-winning actor Emma Stone joined this elite club while also creating another unique record of being the youngest actor currently to have hosted the show 5 times. After delivering a special monologue to mark the occasion, Stone was bestowed with the customary velvet jacket to commemorate the milestone.
But the La La Land actor was in for a surprise when she was asked to return the jacket after the performance, when she was under the assumption that it was a keepsake that all actors get to have. Having already planned in advance that she would take back this coveted piece of memorabilia, Stone decided that she was not leaving without it.
In an appearance on The Tonight Show, the celebrity elaborated on what went down and how she finally managed to get her way with going home with the jacket in her possession.
They’re like, ‘You know you’re not keeping the jacket. You’re just wearing it for the monologue’. I was like, ‘No. I’ll be taking it with me, I’ll be wearing it to [the] after-party, and I’ll be taking it home’. And I did take it home. And now, it’s in my closet! That’s right! But they also know where to find me.
Stone joins an impressive list of stars, including Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Dwayne Johnson, Chevy Chase, Alec Baldwin, and many more who have had the honor of hosting SNL 5 times. While it is possible that all of them were also surprised by the jacket rule, The Help star went one step further by ensuring that she cleverly worked around it.
Emma Stone’s Faliure To Bag This Role Almost Disheartened Her
With records galore and towering achievments to her name at just the age of 35, it is easy to imagine that Emma Stone’s journey to the top was a bed of roses. But this was quite far from the truth when one looks back at her career in which she faced her share of rejections before becoming the superstar she is now.
The saying goes that failure is a stepping stone to success, and Stone is a perfect example of that. One of the high-profile parts that escaped the Poor Things star was in the hit NBC series, Heroes. The Help actor auditioned for the role of Claire Bennet, which ultimately went to Hayden Panettiere.
Speaking of the acute disappointment and depression she felt on losing out on this marquee gig which she realized, had escaped her grasp even before she went in for her audition, Stone confessed to The Independent and said,
Heroes was tough was because I could hear them through the wall telling Hayden Panettiere, ‘You got the part. You’re the best.’ And then I went in right after her. I was like, ‘f**k, man! Is it never going to be my time?
Fortunately for Stone, who almost lost hope of finding a break, the tide turned quickly, with the actor signing on Superbad two weeks after losing out on Heroes. In retrospect, the star was grateful that these rejections led to the current status that she enjoyed in Hollywood.
