Beyond the Big Screen: the Wild Television Roles You Never Knew Emma Stone Played
By Maya Lin-Takahashi
Five years before The Curse, Stone signed on to headline the Maniac Netflix series, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Re-teaming with her Superbad co-star Jonah Hill, the 2018 limited series followed Annie Landsberg, a grief-stricken woman dealing with borderline personality disorder who enters a mysterious pharmaceutical trial to process systemic trauma.
The miniseries allowed Stone to execute a masterclass in versatility. Because the experimental drug trial forced patients into shared hallucinated dreamscapes, each episode shifted aesthetic genres. Stone played an embittered Long Island retail worker, an elven warrior in an Arthurian fantasy, a 1940s con artist attempting to steal a lost chapter of Don Quixote, and an anxious 1980s suburban mother caught in a wildlife-smuggling ring.
The project signaled Stone's entry into dark comedy television roles. Rather than taking on straightforward procedural television or comfortable prestige adaptations, she gravitated toward fragmented, psychologically demanding narratives. The visual scale of Maniac competed directly with high-budget cinema, but the structural format gave Stone eight hours to build a messy, unvarnished emotional arc.
Maya is a hardware enthusiast who tests and reviews smart home devices, smartphones, wearables, and audio gear. She focuses on practical consumer value and build quality.
