The director of Basic Instinct refuted claims that Sharon Stone slapped him during a disagreement about the film’s famous interrogation scene.
The 1992 thriller centres on author Catherine (played by Stone) who becomes a suspect after the brutal murder of a rock star.
Homicide detective Nick Curran (played by Michael Douglas) is brought in to help the case but ends up embroiled in an affair with the prime suspect.
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The movie didn’t shy away from explicit content including one particularly famed scene in which Catherine is seen crossing her legs with no underwear on while being questioned by cops.
In a piece for Vanity Fair back in 2021, Stone said she had been tricked into removing her underwear by director Paul Verhoeven.
Explaining that she first became aware of the scene after watching it back in a room ‘full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project’, she said: “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'."
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Stone claims she was incensed by the scene that she lashed out at Verhoeven.
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“I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer,” she added.
Following publication of the article, Verhoeven responded to the claims made by Stone, saying his recollection of the incident was different.
In an interview with Deadline, he said: “She didn’t slap me at all.”
The Dutchman went on to claim that he and Stone were ‘on good terms’ and added: “My memory is that [that scene] is all based on a woman that I met when I was a student in Leiden, at the university. She would do that: she would come up to us and she would open her legs. My friend and I saw her doing that, so went up to her and said something like, ‘We can see your vagina’. And then she said, ‘Of course - that’s why I’m doing it!’
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“I told that story to Sharon when we were having dinner together during the shoot, and she thought it would be great idea to do that. So, that’s my memory.
“She heard the story, and you know, in Joe Eszterhas’s script, there was already a mention [of that] in dialogue that he wrote between Michael Douglas and Sharon. They’re in the car, after the interrogation. It’s raining, and Sharon says to Michael, ‘You know I don’t like to wear any underwear, don’t you, Nick?’
“That line was in the script, and when you see the scene just before the interrogation, you see [she is getting dressed]. Michael is looking at that, and she puts her dress on, and she has no underwear. So that was already in the script, but, of course, the scene [where she would uncross her legs] was not in the script - that came into the movie when I discussed it with Sharon, when I told her the story. I know her story is a bit different, but that’s my story.”
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