It’s Hard to Believe How Much Crap Sharon Stone Has Had to Put Up With
On-screen chemistry can make or break a movie. Take for example this year’s attempt at a big ensemble Christmas movie, Happiest Season. It was a pretty enjoyable film, but any review will tell you the same thing you were bound to notice if you watched it: Kristen Stewart has absolutely no chemistry with her love interest Mackenzie Davis but there are sparks all over the place in her scenes with Aubrey Plaza, in a way that derails the film.
Needless to say, producers and directors will go to great lengths to ensure their leads have chemistry. Sharon Stone was not willing to go to the lengths one producer suggested to her, and I absolutely cannot blame her for that.
Here’s what she said about it in her upcoming memoir, via Deadline:
Among the most striking revelations to come out of the excerpt was the fact that a producer had once approached the actress, suggesting that she sleep with her male costar. “He explained to me why I should f**k my costar so that we could have onscreen chemistry. Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational!” Stone wrote. “Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause.”
The actress remembered thinking at the time that inadequate chemistry between herself and her costar had nothing to do with her. “I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could f**k him themselves and leave me out of it,” she wrote. “It was my job to act and I said so.”
Have you ever seen Community? You know it’s a running gag that Pierce tells everyone he had sex with Eartha Kitt? That is the energy I feel coming from this producer in this story here.
She also said she was blindsided when she saw her vagina in Basic Instinct.
“After we shot Basic Instinct, I got called in to see it. Not on my own with the director, as one would anticipate…but with a room full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project,” she recalled. “That was how I saw my vagina shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, ‘We can’t see anything—I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on.’”
Following the screening, Stone says she headed into the projection booth, “slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer, Marty Singer.” Singer advised her that the film could not be released in its current form—at the time, the interrogation scene would have landed Basic Instinct an X rating—and that if she wished, she could “get an injunction” to stop its release.
Eventually, she decided to let the film go out because it was the right move for the film. Director Paul Verhoeven says he was up-front with Stone about showing the world her lady bits.
Most of the time when an actress does a nude scene in a Hollywood film, the studio will have her wear a merkin, or a pubic wig, precisely so it looks like she’s naked but the vagina is still covered, despite this going against, let’s say, current grooming trends. So it was certainly possible for Stone’s assets not to be on full display, but I think she’s right that the scene does make it a better film. I mean, can you name one other thing that happened in Basic Instinct?
