Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling look like they're dancing on air—and in one scene, they actually do—in the movie musical La La Land (in theaters nationwide Dec. 9). "We practiced a lot," the 28-year-old actress said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Monday. "There was a lot of rehearsal."
Stone is getting Oscar buzz for her performance—and all the attention can be a bit unnerving. "There could be 100 positive comments, and then there's one negative one and you're like, 'Well, that's obviously true. That one is the true one. The rest—what are you talking about?'" she joked. In all seriousness, she's grateful to anyone who likes the film. "It's very exciting to be part of a movie that people are responding in a joyous way to," she said, "so that's what's fun."
La La Land marks Stone and Gosling's third onscreen pairing after Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad. "It makes it very easy when you know someone, when you've worked with them like that. Learning to ballroom dance with someone you don't know must be terrifying," she said. "With him, I was sweating all over him and felt fine about it. I sweat a lot. After about a minute of any type of physical exertion, I break into a horrible sweat. Any kind of exertion!"
"This is a new problem that I should probably get checked out, over the past year and a half or so," she said. "We would dance for about a minute and he'd be like, 'You all right? You OK?' Everywhere. Just a lot of sweat. I'm glad I can talk about this on national television. This is going to help."
Stone expects to sweat quite a bit when she hosts NBC's Saturday Night Live Dec. 3
"It's madness," said the star, who's hosted in 2010 and 2011. "I love it."
Because Stone dances quite a bit in La La Land, Ellen DeGeneres asked her to play a new game called Last Dance. "It's kind of like Hot Potato dancing," the TV host said. "We're each going to take turns doing whatever dance comes up on the screen behind us, and when you hear the ding that means it's the other person's turn and you have to freeze in whatever position you're in until it goes back to you. When the music stops, if you're the last person dancing, you lose."
Stone was up for the challenge, as she twerked and performed Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" choreography with aplomb. But when the screen displayed the word "spinkler," the actress drew a blank. "Oh, the sprinkler! It says 'the spinkler!'" she said, bursting into a fit of giggles. "What is 'the spinkler'? I was like, 'I do not know that one!'" DeGeneres laughed at the various typos, joking, "I also had 'the roboot.' The spinkler is what I shall call you from now on."