Sharon Stone is going full steam ahead with her painting career because she’s not getting the acting roles she deserves. As she just told The Guardian about Hollywood, “I want to work with the masters because I have earned my place there.” Goals. So while the film industry slowly catches on to what they’re missing (if at all, let’s be honest), Sharon is exhibiting her vibrant artwork across the globe. She has a show right now in Berlin, and another one coming up in San Francisco. To promote her work, Sharon just chatted with Dana Carvey and David Spade on their Fly on the Wall podcast, and they discussed the time in April 1992 when Sharon hosted SNL and… a lot happened:
“I came out to do the monologue live, which is super scary, and a bunch of people started storming the stage saying they were going to kill me during the opening monologue,” Stone recalled. “The security that was in there froze because they never had seen anything like that happen.”
“Lorne started screaming at [security], ‘What are you doing? Watching the f–king show?’ And Lorne started beating them up and pulling them back from the stage,” she said. “The stage manager looked at me and said, ‘Hold for five.’ So all these people were getting beat up and handcuffed in front of me as we went live.”
“If you think the monologue is scary to begin with, try doing it as people are getting handcuffed in front of you,” Stone added.
She said the protesters were mad at her “because it was the beginning of my work as an AIDS activist. No one understood at the time what was happening and they didn’t know if amfAR could be trusted or if we were against gay people. Instead of waiting for an intelligent, informative conversation they thought, ‘Oh let’s just kill her.’”
“I was so not prepared,” Stone continued. “As you remember, the audience wasn’t up like it is now. Every time we were making a change you’re really physically changing your clothes while you’re running through the audience. I was just terrified. I honestly blacked out for half of the show.”
When the conversation pivoted to some of the sketches, Carvey noted that Stone “was such a good sport” and “the comedy we did with Sharon Stone, we’d literally be arrested now. That was 1992.”
One of the more controversial segments was “Airport Security Sketch,” in which Stone played a woman who gets stopped by airport security and asked to remove one item of clothing at a time. Stone isn’t carrying anything dangerous, the security guards just want to see her take her clothes off. Carvey appeared as an Indian security guard.
“I want to apologize publicly for the security check sketch where I played an Indian man and we’re convincing Sharon, her character, or whatever — to take her clothes off to go through the security thing,” Carvey said, with Spade chiming in that it was “so offensive.”
“It’s so 1992, you know, it’s from another era,” Carvey continued.
Stone said she actually didn’t mind the sketch at all, adding: “I know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. And I think that we were all committing misdemeanors [back then] because we didn’t think there was something wrong then. We didn’t have this sense. That was funny to me, I didn’t care. I was fine being the butt of the joke.”
Was Sharon’s character really the butt of the joke? From my 2024 vantage point I think it’s the guys in the sketch who are the jokes; they come off as giggling school boys who can’t think of anything better to do with a woman than ask her to take her clothes off. I can’t help but think of Sharon Stone doing the sketch now, and imagine her stripping, proud and secure in her presence, knowing full well the men are completely in over their heads. It was only right for Dana and David to apologize for the sketch as a whole, and especially for Dana to acknowledge how inappropriate it was for him to play an Indian character. I was intrigued with Sharon’s misdemeanor vs felony analogy, but at the same time I wonder, what is the statute of limitations on the “it was another era” defense?
Also, Lorne Michaels snapping at the too-stunned-to-act security guards had me laughing out loud. “What are you doing? Watching the f–king show?” Nailed it.
photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon and via Instagram and screenshots from YouTube
