The 2025 Oscars were more unpredictable than usual, with nearly every major category being a toss-up. ‘Best Picture,’ ‘Best Director,’ and ‘Best Actress’ were impossible to call, and when Sean Baker’s Anora swept the evening, it came as a surprise to nearly everyone.

The one category that was seen as the closest thing to a certainty, however, was ‘Best Supporting Actor.’ Kieran Culkin dominated the awards season, taking home nearly every precursor award for his performance in Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy-drama A Real Pain.

When his name was called from the Oscars stage, it was, no offence to him, one of the least exciting moments of the evening.

As it turns out, however, it was very close to not happening – not just the award, but the performance itself. At one point, Culkin backed out of the project, and it took the strategic mind of Emma Stone to lure him back.

In A Real Pain, Culkin plays Benji, a free-spirited loose cannon who reunites with his cousin (Eisenberg) for a Jewish heritage tour in Europe to honour their late grandmother.

It’s a deceptively nuanced performance. There are certainlyelements of his Succession character, Roman Roy, in the mix, but Benji is more redeemable, and his inner suffering is more poignant.

Eisenberg hadn’t seen any of Culkin’s work before casting him in the film. It was his sister who read the script and immediately knew that the actor was the perfect fit.

After Culkin had signed on to the project, however, he realised that it would take him away from his family for 25 days, which was well over the eight-day maximum he had set for himself during the run of Succession.

In an interview on the Kermode and Mayo’s Take podcast, Culkin said, “I had to weigh, ‘Why am I doing this movie? Creatively, I want to. I love this movie.

But why am I doing it if it’s going to break me as a person, take me away from my family?’” He decided to stick to his eight-day rule and informed the film’s producer, Emma Stone, that he was backing out.

“It was a phone call,” he remembered. “She did a little reverse psychology thing on me. She completely understood. She was like, ‘I get that, family first.’” When he told her he had some ideas about who to cast instead and offered to set up a few phone calls, she responded, “No, no, no.

If you back out, the whole movie falls apart, but it’s fine… Put family first. My love to the wife and kids. Don’t worry about it. The cleanup is my job, not yours.’”

This did the trick, and Culkin caved. Eisenberg had no idea that his co-star had tried to quit the film. “Emma’s a great producer,” he said in the interview. “And that’s the kind of thing that a great producer does.”

Although she is far more well-known for her work in front of the camera (she herself has won two Oscars and been nominated for three others), Stone has become a prolific producer in recent years.

Among her credits in this role are Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and Jane Schoenbrun’s award-winning drama I Saw the TV Glow, and it’s only a matter of time before she starts winning Oscars for her work behind the camera, too.