Emma Stone’s Professional Personal Relationship

There are pictures over the weekend of Emma Stone and Chris Pine shooting The Catch, an upcoming feature directed by her husband, Dave McCary. It’s due out next May and has been shooting all summer, with an all-star cast including Ashley Padilla, clearly beloved by literally everyone, Tim Robbins, and Sissy Spacek.

Now, I fundamentally hate that I included the clause ‘her husband’ in the above paragraph. In theory, this is a movie starring Emma Stone, directed by Dave McCary, and that’s the entire story. Their personal relationship has nothing to do with it. When I looked at some of these pictures, though, I started feeling differently.

Maybe it’s because this is the third story about a personal relationship today, after seeing pics from the Babies premiere and a story about Chris Rock directing his daughter in Misty Green (also at TIFF), but I really started to think about the dynamics of going to work with your spouse in this way. On the one hand, it’s actually surprisingly easy not to be in the same space when you’re working on a feature like this, until you’re actually physically on set – in theory these two can have their own spaces and leave home stuff at home.

On the other hand, though, this is 2026, and so looking at those kissing photos – even though they look more heartfelt and affectionate than steamy, possibly due to Pine’s arm in a sling – I wondered whether there was an intimacy coordinator involved, and what those conversations look like.

It’s not a given that there would be an intimacy coordinator here, since the widespread adoption of the role has largely been centered around situations of nudity or simulated sex. And there are definitely stories where stars have eschewed the idea – Jennifer Aniston’s comments come to mind – and Emma Stone is obviously big enough to have communication with her director be as straightforward as she wants… or not.

But it sent me down the imagination google hole. Imagine McCary, on the long list of things he has to do in a given shoot day, sitting down with the IC, and being told ‘okay, the performers have decided they’re OK with A and B, but not C’ and he has to be like “oh really, because that’s not what I was told at the breakfast table this morning”?  Except not really, because that would be unprofessional, which is exactly what this situation is trying to avoid?

But then, of course, the alternative is worse. Imagine for the sake of argument that they’re doing this kissing scene, and the director, McCary, wants more, or for that matter, less? “For this next take, can you both give me a little more heat?” That’s going to raise eyebrows, as will “Pull back a little bit, you two,” won’t it?  Like, both are incredibly normal things for a director to say in this situation, but either is going to want to make all three of them, never mind the rest of the crew who are watching, sink into the floor. I feel like the only way for McCary to stay purely professional is to watch impassively as they do two identical takes, say “Great! Cut! Check it, Let’s move on” and pretend it never happened. Either way, he’s not making eye contact with either of them for the next hour or so – enough time to set up the next scene and remind themselves this is just another day in a bananas professional life.