Sharon Stone has been associated with some of the sexiest moments in screen history, with hormones practically radiating off the screen in “Basic Instinct” and “Total Recall.” But there’s one occasion where chemistry with her costar did not come across, and on Louis Theroux’s podcast she revealed late producer Robert Evans‘ coercive suggestion to correct that.
Evans, who died at 89 in 2019, suggested that she have sex with her “Sliver” costar Billy Baldwin. Then, surely, they’d have true chemistry.
“He’s running around his office in sunglasses explaining to me that he slept with Ava Gardner and I should sleep with Billy Baldwin, because if I slept with Billy Baldwin, Billy Baldwin’s performance would get better,” she said.
“And we needed Billy to get better in the movie because that was the problem. And if I could sleep with Billy then we’d have chemistry on screen, and if I would just have sex with him then that would save the movie.”
This bit of sexual extortion or coercion — by any standard, the kind of on-set sexual harassment Hollywood has tried so hard to leave in the past, certainly after the revelations of the #MeToo movement in 2017 — is appalling, of course. Stone felt then that the burden was on her to save the movie.
“The real problem with the movie was me, because I was so uptight, and so not like a real actress who could just fuck him and get things back on track. The real problem was I was such a tight ass.
“I didn’t have to fuck Michael Douglas [on ‘Basic Instinct’]. Michael could come to work and know how to hit those marks, and do that line, and rehearse and show up. Now all of a sudden I’m in the ‘I have to fuck people’ business.”
Stone is rarely one to mince words about issues she’s had with men while making her movies. In her 2021 memoir “The Beauty of Living Twice,” she opened up about multiple instances of sexual harassment she’s endured in Hollywood, and even mentioned this particular incident — though did not mention Evans or Baldwin at the time. (For his part, Baldwin surely did not know about this, because if he had, would it not have made his own performance even that much more self-conscious?)
In the book, Stone wrote, “Now you think if I fuck him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed,” she wrote, “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 fuck him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so.”
