Stone recalled watching the interrogation scene for the first time. “After we shot Basic Instinct, I got called in to see it. Not on my own with the director, as one would anticipate, given the situation that has given us all pause, so to speak, but with a room full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project,” she wrote.
“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.'”
According to Stone, she “went to the projection booth, slapped (director) Paul (Verhoeven) across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer, Marty Singer.”
While the 63-year-old star, who played murder suspect Catherine Tramell, acknowledges there are “many points of view on this topic,” she asserts that, as the “one with the vagina … the other points of view are bullsh*t.”
After consulting with her lawyer, Stone said, she ultimately chose not to seek an injunction over the controversial scene, according to the excerpt in Vanity Fair. “Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it,” she wrote.
Verhoeven previously denied that Stone didn’t consent to her crotch being filmed as she crossed and uncrossed her legs.
“Sharon is lying,” he told ICON in 2017. “Any actress knows what she’s going to see if you ask her to take off her underwear and point there with the camera.”
A representative for Verhoeven declined to comment on the matter Friday.
Stone’s memoir also details some of the sexual harassment she faced throughout her career — specifically being advised by a producer to sleep with a male co-star to improve their “onscreen chemistry.”
“I felt they could have just hired a co-star with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines.”