“If I never had to speak again, I would be delighted.”

“I think people can say a lot more without talking,” the actress said during a question-and-answer session with the film’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos.

Emma Stone surprised the audience during her appearance at the New York Film Festival (NYFF) on Wednesday.

The actress, 34, attended the premiere screening of the film by director Yorgos Lanthimos Bleat at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York, where she called the 30-minute silent film a dream come true.

“If I never had to speak again, I would be thrilled,” she said during a question-and-answer session moderated by the festival’s artistic director, Dennis Lin, Variety “And many other people would do the same.”

She explained: “I’m serious. My favorite thing is not having to talk. I often wish we could cut out a lot of lines of dialogue, because I think people can say a lot more without talking.”

Bleatwhich sees Stone play a grieving woman opposite Damien Bonnard, marks the third time the actress has worked with Lanthimos, 50, since they first collaborated in 2018. The favourite.

Their other project is Poor thingswhich had screened at the NYFF a few days earlier. There, Lanthimos was able to talk about the feature, but Stone was unable to do so due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. However, Variety reported that Bleat She secured a tentative agreement with the union, allowing her to speak with the short’s director at the festival’s screening and Q&A session.

According to the outlet, Stone apologized for being “pretty nervous” during the conversation, acknowledging that she hadn’t been in the spotlight for a long time. “I haven’t done this in a while. I’m sorry!” she said.

Related: Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn to Reunite with ‘The Favourite’ Director Yorgos Lanthimos for New Film

As for their collaboration again, the couple joked that Lanthimos’ projects, including Lobster And The killing of a sacred deerstill explore themes of sex, death and goats — and Bleat is no exception.

“It’s like that, non-stop, every day. He calls me and says, ‘Goats, what do you think? Death?’ I say, ‘OK, always? We shot that three years ago,’” Stone said, according to Variety.

Located on the Greek island of Tenos, Bleat follows a grieving woman inside a simple home, where “reality mixes with dreamy imagination and tradition with insidious desires,” according to IMDb.

Related: Emma Stone Is Reborn in Fantastic ‘Poor Things’ Trailer: Watch

Although they didn’t talk about their other film, Poor thingsLanthimos spoke about Stone’s character in the graphic, fantasy thriller at the Venice International Film Festival premiere and NYFF screening.

“It was very important for me not to make a film that would be prudish, because that would completely betray the main character. So we had to be confident in ourselves,” the director said in Italy. “The character had to be unashamed, and Emma had to be unashamed of her body, her nudity and her scenes, and she understood that right away.”

As PEOPLE previously reported, Poor things is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray. And while the film features several very explicit sex scenes, Lanthimos praised Stone’s ability to approach her character’s sexuality without inhibitions.

“There was a script, but especially for the sex scenes, we sat down with Emma and decided, ‘So what kind of positions should we do here, what kind of things should we do there, what’s missing? You know, based on the experience of sex and the different desires that people have, what do we need to represent to make it complete and to adequately represent human desire and its idiosyncrasies, and all those kinds of things,’” he said.

The team also hired intimacy coordinators to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for Stone and her partners. “She made everyone feel comfortable,” Lanthimos said of one of the intimacy coordinators, Elle McAlpine.

Related: Why Willem Dafoe Asked Emma Stone to Slap Him 20 Times for an Offscreen Scene in His Upcoming Movie

Poor thingswhich is set to premiere in theaters on December 8, also stars Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.

The film’s official synopsis describes it as “the incredible story and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Dafoe).” Under Baxter’s tutelage and influence, Bella is “hungry for learning” but this quickly evolves into a thirst for “the knowledge of the world she lacks.”

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Stone’s character eventually runs away with “Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo), a debauched and dishonest lawyer” on a continent-spanning adventure. Freed from “the prejudices of her time,” she discovers her purpose: to champion equality and liberation.

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