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‘Easy A’ premiere: Emma Stone’s nerves, Penn Badgley’s girlfriend

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‘Easy A,’ the new comedy starring Emma Stone, may take place in a high school -- but director Will Gluck wants to make one thing very clear: It’s not a ‘high school movie.’

‘I kept saying to everyone, ‘I don’t want to make a high school movie,’’ said Gluck, who directed the cheerleading movie ‘Fired Up!’ ‘... I see it as a movie that takes place in high school, but it’s not about if you kissed a guy and if you like him.’

[Click the picture of Stone with Taylor Swift to launch a gallery of red-carpet arrivals from the ‘Easy A’ premiere.]

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So then what is it about? The story centers around a brassy teenager who mistakenly gains a reputation for sexual promiscuity, and then fuels those rumors to toy with her own identity, à la ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ It was a role that 21-year-old Stone went after aggressively -- but when she landed the part, the ‘House Bunny’ veteran became nervous about carrying her first major film.

‘I had to do my job, but between each take I was still kind of freaked out,’ the actress told us on the red carpet at the movie’s premiere in Hollywood Monday night.

‘She’s very self critical,’ director Gluck said of his leading lady. ‘She’s very hard on herself. She was worried that she wasn’t going to be able to pull it off, so I had to keep convincing her ...

... that ‘Yes, you can pull it off, and of course you can pull it off.’ She’s fantastic.’ Penn Badgley, who plays Stone’s love interest in the film, said he thought his co-star pulled off a successful performance.

‘Emma, really, she’s the tentpole that we all stand under,’ he said.

‘Easy A’ opens this Friday, as does ‘The Town,’ which stars Blake Lively, Badgley’s girlfriend and ‘Gossip Girl’ costar.

‘I want her to fail!’ he joked. ‘No, we couldn’t be more supportive of one another.’

The 23-year-old is such a supportive boyfriend, in fact, that he left his own premiere so that he could fly out of town for Lively’s big night, which is taking place in Boston on Tuesday evening.

‘I’m doing it alllll for her,’ he smiled.

--Amy Kaufman

Twitter.com/AmyKinLA

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