A couple of years ago, in the middle of the Me Too explosion, a journalist asked Sharon Stone if she had ever felt uncomfortable in a situation of sexual harassment.
The actress just let out a charismatic and bitter laugh, which confirmed that this question should be rhetorical.
Of course, the official erotic myth of the nineties had suffered sexual harassment.
But only during the collective sensitization that Me Too has meant did the public realize that obviousness.
It's just one example of how, in recent years, Stone's career and public image are enjoying a backward trend of appreciation.
It makes sense, therefore, that his return to the major leagues is at the hands of Ryan Murphy, an author fascinated with turning the lives of women misunderstood or poorly portrayed by historical chronicle: prosecutor Marcia Clark, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Monica Lewinsky.
Ratched
has just been released
,
which vindicates the legendary villain of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, that psychiatric nurse Mildred Ratched, for whom Louise Fletcher won the Oscar in 1976. Here she is played by Murphy's fetish actress, Sarah Paulson.
Stone has a supporting role: an eccentric millionaire who wants the head of a mad scientist on a silver platter.
It relaxes the actress to no longer carry the weight of production on her shoulders: “I am more comfortable in my work than I have ever been.
Now I don't feel the same stress, nerves or anxiety when I go to work as before, ”he says.
Of misunderstood villains, Stone has plenty: during her years at the top, the press accused her of being "a hysterical diva", "an ungrateful" and, ultimately, "a difficult woman."
Only over the years, as if it were a Ryan Murphy character, has Sharon Stone seen her point of view begin to be taken into account.
See your past.
After the first screening of
Basic Instinct,
Stone unsuccessfully pleaded with the director, Paul Verhoeven, to remove a shot in which it turns out that his vulva was accidentally visible.
In her next film,
Sliver (Harassed)
, she refused to strip if her co-star William Baldwin didn't too.
The producer's response: "No actor has managed to be a star by undressing and no actress has achieved it without doing it."
In
The Specialist she
also tried not to have to undress because she was tired of doing it.
"Well, get tired of doing it in someone else's movie," Sylvester Stallone replied.
In those years the world seemed to have assumed that Sharon Stone was Catherine Tramell, the sexual predator she played in
Basic Instinct
.
The truth is that Stone had much less control of the situation than Tramell.
“I often think of the actor who played Charles Manson [Steve Railsback in the
1976
series
Helter Skelter
].
He never worked again, "explains the actress," He played Manson so well, he was so credible, he got so involved in that character that he terrified every living thing.
And no one ever hired him again.
When you do a job so good that people think you are your character, it affects your life, yes.
It didn't help that Paul Verhoeven went around saying he cast Stone because he was exactly like Tramell.
"People want to believe that you are that character, that it has been easy for you, not that you left your ass playing that role," she continues, "but to be good you have to work on it, nobody can play herself.
How do you interpret yourself? ”, He concludes.
The men who launched the actress's career were hell-bent on portraying her as a calculating mantis.
“One of his agents told me that his modeling agency had a saying, 'Leave Sharon alone in a room with the director and he'll close the deal,'” wrote
Basic Instinct
writer
Joe Eszterhas in his memoir.
It must have been a relief to work with a female cast on
Ratched
.
“It is very, very different.
First, women do not automatically assume that we are the bosses.
We are more collaborative, when there is an issue or question we talk about it.
We tend to make every decision together, which is very interesting and very enjoyable.
When you're on a mostly male shoot, guys make all the decisions all the time.
And you stand there and get by with all the decisions that have already been made.
Like Ginger Rogers, you dance in heels and on your back ”explains Stone, who also suggests that when there is an actor on the scene, the good take is the one he chooses.
“Among women there is a collaborative effort, like 'do you prefer to start?', 'When is it good for you?', 'How would you like to do it?'
It is a completely different scenario, because when you work with a man you have to understand what is good for him and then manage to make that work for you as well ”he laments.
Ginger Rogers ended up with bloody feet after dancing for hours in heels and her back soaked from the hot, heavy ball gowns.
But Fred Astaire was always considered the genius of the couple.
The partner with whom Stone has the most scenes in
Ratched
is a monkey, who accompanies her wherever she goes dressed in outfits to match those of her owner.
"When I arrived in the morning, the monkey would come to hug me for five minutes and speak into my ear," she recalls.
Only Ryan Murphy could get Sharon Stone to mimic monkey noises during an interview.
“At the end she started to groom me.
She sat with me and made sure I looked good.
Sometimes I hugged her like a baby and sometimes she started running around playing around me.
But she always wanted to be with me before work.
We were connected in a primitive, emotional way.
Her trainer instructed her what to do and when the scene was over I would tell her if she had done well or that, if it had not gone well, nothing happened.
He seems to have gotten on better with him than with most of his nineties co-stars.
According to Stone, the triumph of Ryan Murphy (Netflix has paid him 300 million to develop series for five years) is that he tells the stories of people that the system has ignored for decades: older women, the disabled, LGTB people, the mentally ill.
Social outcasts who in Murphy's universe can be idols.
“We accepted that little window of white people as our entertainment, when that window didn't represent who we were.
Ryan employs people that everyone wanted to erase, even though they are in the majority, and talks about the reasons why they wanted to erase them.
But if we start to represent who we are, we have to take care of issues like sexuality or mental health.
And that's where I think lies his genius and the reason he's so incredibly popular, because he's speaking to all of us, ”says Stone.
