Emma Stone Had One Condition for Shaving Her Head in ‘Bugonia’ (Exclusive)

Emma Stone agreed to shave her head Bugonia Only if director Yorgos Lanthimos did the same.

“When I knew we were going to do this… I said to Yorgos, ‘We have to shave your head too so we can stay united.’ And he says, ‘Okay,’ the Oscar-winning actress says in a behind-the-scenes video shared exclusively with PEOPLE.

The clip features footage of Stone, 37, personally taking the buzzer over the head of his frequent collaborator Lanthimos.

She says, “It was exciting, but it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be to have his head shaved. It was cool. But it felt more dramatic, my beard. I don’t mean to brag, but my hair was quite long, and his wasn’t.”

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Hair and makeup designer Torsten Witte says that the team had to re-shave Stone’s head every three days during filming to maintain the correct length for continuity.

“She loves it and she looks great without her hair,” says Witte.

In BugoniaStone plays a CEO named Michelle Fuller who is abducted by two conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who are convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying the Earth. Before she is locked in her basement, people cut the CEO’s hair because they think it is her way of approaching motherhood.

Stone previously worked with Lanthimos, 52, in films favorite bad things And types of kindness,

In a Q&A in September, Lanthimos said that Stone got “cold feet” for a while about the major hair change. The actress then confirmed that the scene happened just before it was filmed in one take.

“For a year and a half I knew I was going to shave my head, and then the day came — they were setting up four cameras, because we had to get it all in at once and we were shooting on VistaVision for the most part, which is a gorgeous but very moody camera that would stop a lot of the time — so they were setting up, and it was taking a long time to set up all the cameras. And I was just starting to get nervous about it,” she said at the time.

Bugonia Available to rent or own on digital November 25, then on Blu-ray and DVD on December 23.