Emma Stone, in another life, would have been a good HGTV host. The actor, currently starring on Showtime’s The Curse as an aspiring real estate entrepreneur-cum-lifestyle host, is of course easy to look at: huge, expressive eyes, bright smile and, in the show, hair and clothing that’s not quite derivative but not alternative, either. On The Curse, the hourlong brainchild of Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder, Stone plays the dual role of Whitney Siegel on and off camera and, in host mode, Whitney is brittle but formidable. She understands the demands of the job: the host must project design knowledge, sunniness and perky determination (on top of being white, thin and conventionally attractive).
The Curse, like Whitney, is trying to do a lot, among them: cringe comedy, gentrification satire and surreal, genre-bending drama with commentary on everything from Indigenous rights to insurance policies. It being a Fielder production, a good portion of the viewing experience is excruciating, arguably unnecessarily so (the less said about a plotline involving male anatomical size, the better). The show’s predominantly voyeuristic aesthetic – characters are often filmed from behind bushes, windows, cars, fences and more – and extended scene length strands viewers in unbearably awkward moments for minutes at a time, and at odds with the slick, clipped grammar of prestige television. The Curse is anti-binge not just in its weekly release format but in that I actually cannot stomach more than one episode at a time. And yet it’s frequently fascinating, never more so than when it’s centering Whitney, a typically complex and slippery Stone creation, and taking aim at HGTV – at times, remarkably, by name.
