While promoting her new film Bugonia, Emma Stone was asked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert which celebrity she thinks could be “secretly an alien.” She didn’t hesitate: she named Willem Dafoe and treated it as an obvious, funny answer rather than a serious claim.
Why did she pick Willem Dafoe
Stone’s joke leaned on Dafoe’s distinctive screen presence and the idea that, if he turned out to be otherworldly, most people would simply accept it. In the same moment, she framed that as a compliment—suggesting that if “aliens” were like Dafoe, she’d welcome more of them.
The context behind the joke
The question came up because Stone’s current press run has had an intentionally “out-there” tone: Bugonia is a Yorgos Lanthimos film in which her character is suspected of being not human. That makes alien talk an easy, playful fit for late-night interviews.
Stone has also publicly said she believes it’s unlikely humans are alone in the universe, and she has joked about the idea that she herself could be an alien.
How Dafoe and Stone are connected
Stone and Dafoe have worked together in Lanthimos projects including Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, which adds to why her pick landed as an affectionate inside joke rather than random speculation.
This wasn’t a “reveal” so much as a fun celebrity prompt that Stone answered with a quick, memorable punchline. The moment worked because it blended three things: a late-night question built for humor, a co-star with an instantly recognizable vibe, and a press tour already leaning into sci-fi themes.
