NEED TO KNOW
- Sharon Stone alleged to Business Insider that she and Michael Douglas got into an “argument” when they first met, prior to making Basic Instinct together
- “Eventually,” she added, “we became the greatest of friends, to this day”
- A rep for Douglas says in an exclusive statement to PEOPLE that the actor “was very surprised” by Stone’s quotes, as he doesn’t remember even meeting her until her screen test
Sharon Stone is opening up about how her relationship with Michael Douglas has changed over the decades since they first met.
The actors famously starred together in the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct, and they’ve kept in touch in the decades since. But as she alleged in a newly published interview with Business Insider, they didn’t see eye to eye right away.
In fact, according to Stone, 67, Douglas was hesitant to do the movie to begin with, as he “did not want to put his bare ass out on the screen with an unknown — and I understood that.”
“He wouldn’t even test with me, but that was also for a different reason: We had an argument prior to that,” she said, before detailing an alleged incident that took place at the Cannes Film Festival.
“A bunch of us were all sitting, and he was talking about someone and their kids. I really, really knew this person he was talking about,” Stone said of Douglas, now 80. “So I said something and he responded to me, saying, ‘What the f— do you know?’ It was in regard to a father-child relationship.”
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“Clearly, it triggered him,” she continued. “So he screams this at me across a whole group of people. And I’m not the person who goes, ‘Oh, excuse me, superstar.’ I pushed back my chair and said to him, ‘Let’s step outside.’ That’s how we first met.”
After they stepped outside, “I explained to him what the f— I knew about this family he was speaking about, and that I was best friends with the children and the parent,” Stone claimed to the outlet. “And then we parted. I wouldn’t say as best friends, but amicably.”
“So, fast forward to casting Basic Instinct, I don’t think he wanted me to be his costar,” she added with a laugh.
In an exclusive statement to PEOPLE, a rep for Douglas, Allen Burry, says the actor is “very surprised [by Sharon’s quotes],” as “he doesn’t remember any argument in that timeframe” between them.
“He actually only remembers seeing and meeting Sharon for the first time when he saw [director] Paul Verhoeven’s screen test of her for Basic Instinct and [Michael] said, ‘Absolutely, she’s the one,’ ” Burry continues.
And while Douglas “definitely spent time with” Stone at Cannes, “that was later, when they were promoting Basic Instinct in 1992,” Burry alleges in his statement. “And by the time they’d done the movie, they were friends.”
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According to Stone, per her comments to BI, the previously tense dynamic between herself and Douglas “worked great” once they got on set together, “because I was not rattled if he yelled at me.”
“That was interesting for the character because Michael has a temper, and I didn’t care. That worked very well in our dynamic,” she said.
Regardless of how they met, though, from Stone’s perspective, the past is in the past now. As the Academy Award nominee told BI, “Eventually, we became the greatest of friends, to this day.”
“I admire him tremendously,” she added.