Sharon Stone stopped by Dana Carvey and David Spade's “Fly on the Wall” show to discuss her time hosting “Saturday Night Live” in April 1992 shortly after the release of her thriller “Basic Instinct.”
Stone recalled being “terrified” during the live taping when protesters stormed the stage seconds before her monologue. Ultimately, six men were arrested over the incident. Stone said that “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels “personally saved my life” when he charged protesters.
“I came out to do the monologue live, which was very scary, and a bunch of people started storming the stage saying they were going to kill me during the opening monologue,” Stone recalls. “The security there froze because they had never seen anything like this happen.”
Lauren started screaming [security], 'What do you do? Are you watching the damn show? “And Lorne started hitting them and dragging them off the stage,” she said. “The stage manager looked at me and said, 'Wait for five.' So all these people were beaten and handcuffed in front of me during our live broadcast.
“If you think the monologue is scary at first, try doing it while people are handcuffed in front of you,” Stone added.
She said that the demonstrators were angry with her “because it was the beginning of my work as an activist in the field of combating AIDS.” No one at the time understood what was happening and they didn't know if amfAR could be trusted or if we were anti-gay. Instead of waiting for an intelligent, informative conversation, they thought: “Oh, let's kill her.”
“I wasn't ready for that,” Stone continued. “As you remember, the audience wasn't as awake as it is now. Every time we had a change, you literally changed your clothes as you ran through the audience. I was just terrified. I honestly missed half the show.”
When the conversation turned to some sketches, Carvey noted that Stone “was a good sport” and that “the comedy that we did with Sharon Stone, we're literally arrested now. That was 1992.”
One of the most controversial clips was “Airport Security Sketch,” in which Stone played a woman stopped by airport security and asked to remove one item of clothing at a time. Stone isn't carrying anything dangerous, and the security guards just want to see her take off her clothes. Karvey appeared as an Indian security guard.
“I want to publicly apologize for the security screening scene in which I play an Indian man and we get Sharon or her character or whatever — to take off her clothes to pass the security,” Carvey said. That it was “very offensive.”
“It's 1992, you know, it's from another era,” Carvey continued.
Stone said she actually didn't mind the drawing at all, adding, “I know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. And I think we've all been committing misdemeanors.” [back then] Because we didn't think anything was wrong then. We didn't have that feeling. It was funny to me, and I didn't care. It was nice to be the butt of the joke.
“We are in such a strange and precious time,” Stone continued. “People have spent so much time alone. People don't know how to be funny and intimate and any of that stuff with each other. Everyone is so afraid and putting such barriers around everything that people can't be normal with each other anymore. He's lost all Logical sense.”
