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Abertay student Teneisha Ellis landed her first film role in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, which stars Oscar-winner Emma Stone
An Abertay University student has revealed how she landed her first ever acting gig in a major movie alongside Hollywood A-listers Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.
PhD student Teneisha Ellis says complete luck led to bagging a role in Bugonia, the latest movie from avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos – the five-time Academy Award nominee behind the likes of Poor Things and The Favourite.
Teneisha initially responded to a call for extras to star in the London leg of the production in 2024 – but the casting crew was so impressed with her that she was offered an even bigger role as a police detective.
Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 44-year-old moved to Dundee to begin her studies at Abertay in 2020. She joked that her only acting experience prior to Bugonia was starring as a tree in a High School production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Teneisha said:
I’m in an ‘American Women in Scotland’ group and we always come together for like The Fourth of July, maybe Halloween. And one of them was like, ‘you know what, we should do this movie because they are looking for extras’. And we were all going to go and rent an Airbnb in London for the time of the shooting because it was only a couple of days. And then someone I think dropped out and they started asking us to try out, and I did. I read for three different parts, but then the casting director came back and said: ‘you look like a detective’. I said: ‘okay, I guess I’ve never really thought about it’. I was a tree in Romeo and Juliet in High School. Like seriously, that was the extent of acting for me. I like movies but it just wasn’t something I’d pursued. Then I got excited about it because it felt right. I just got lucky and then fell in love with it.
Bugonia is a darkly comic, psychological thriller about two conspiracy theorists (played by Plemons and Aidan Delbis), who kidnap a successful entrepreneur, played by Stone – accusing her (amongst other things) of being a bee-killing alien from the Andromeda Galaxy.
Teneisha stars in a pivotal scene in the film’s finale alongside two-time Oscar winner Stone.
She added:
When I first started, everyone on set was telling us about all the roles they’d been in and what they’d done. And they would be saying, ‘oh I’ve been doing this for five years’. And they’d ask me and I’d be like, ‘oh, I’ve been doing this about five minutes’. And they were like, ‘you got a speaking role the very first time?’ I didn’t know how big a deal that was. It was interesting because they were shocked. I got so lucky. Someone told me that he (Lanthimos) likes it when people don’t know what they’re doing and I was like, ‘I’m perfect for that!’ Sally McCleery, the casting agent, she was just awesome. She walked me through everything. Overall, it was actually breathtaking. They were patient with me and I really appreciated that.
Teneisha’s first round of filming on Bugonia took place over a week in London during summer 2024. She was then flown to Atlanta, Georgia, for another week-and-a-half of filming in the states in October that year.
Lanthimos and Stone have formed a strong director-actor partnership since first teaming up for 2018’s The Favourite, working on three further feature films and one short together: Poor Things, Bleat, Kinds of Kindness and now Bugonia. The second of Stone’s two Academy Awards came from her work with the Greek director on Poor Things.
Teneisha said:
They seemed really down-to-earth. They were best friends, Yorgos and Emma. It was just like a brother-sister kind of thing. It was kind of cool. I was shy because all these actors know each other, and were asking these questions. I was nervous. Emma was a really awesome person. She talked a lot. She was just awesome. Just learning the ins-and-outs of it, talking to the sound people, just talking to the other actors and their experiences and everything – I would never have been able to do something like that ever. I dropped Abertay’s name a lot. I’d be like, ‘Oh I’m a psychology PhD at Abertay and they’d be like, ‘you live in Scotland? You don’t live in the US?’ and then I’d start talking about that.
While her Abertay research is now taking priority, Teneisha is open to taking on more acting gigs after graduating from University, which she aims to do in summer 2026.
Teneisha’s PhD research focuses on higher education during times of disruption, with a particular focus on the coronavirus pandemic.
Teneisha added:
The research is number one right now. I am going to keep looking (for acting jobs) but at the same time I’m also planning on starting a business too, that’s what I’ve been working on and towards.
