SAN DIEGO — Emma Stone has gone from layperson to expert on the two publishing sensations she's helping to bring to Hollywood this summer and next.
Stone had not read Kathryn Stockett's The Help before auditioning for the lead role in the drama, filmed in Jackson and the Delta, about a white woman who rocks the Deep South establishment by chronicling the hard lives of black maids in the early 1960s.
And before earning the female lead in The Amazing Spider-Man, Stone knew the Marvel Comics superhero mainly from Sam Raimi's three past big-screen Spidey adventures and glimpses of the web-slinger on memorabilia.
Stone has been on a steady rise in Hollywood, co-starring in 2007's teen romp Superbad and 2009's horror comedy Zombieland, then charming audiences with her first big-screen lead in last year's The Scarlet Letter twist Easy A.
After supporting roles in back-to-back romantic comedies with last week's Friends With Benefits and this week's Crazy Stupid Love, also with scenes shot in Mississippi, Stone's profile shoots higher with the Aug. 10 debut of The Help, co-starring Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard and Octavia Spencer.
Stone said she was about to meet with The Help's filmmakers for the first time and gave her mom a call.
"I've got a meeting tonight for The Help," Stone told her mother. "And she screamed so loud my eardrums burst. She said, 'You've got to read this book! You have to go and read this book right now!' My mother is, like, she fainted, she was so beside herself."
The Help is expected to be a summer hit driven by the best-seller's female fans, a rarity in a season dominated by action tales and comedies aimed at young males.
As Gwen Stacy, the romantic interest for Garfield's Peter Parker in next July's Spider-Man reboot, Stone will be in the thick of a fan-boy frenzy. Yet the fact that Peter's a skinny, bullied kid who leaps to hero status through the bite of a mutant spider makes him an idol for everyone, not just comic-book and action fans, Stone saids.
"Batman's great, but this isn't a rich guy building a suit. And Superman's great, but this isn't an untouchable guy like we've never seen before on this planet," Stone said. "This is someone you could go to school with and work with, that all of sudden, one day is able to fight off superhuman villains. It's pretty incredible. I get it now. I really do."v