In a 2018 interview, Sharon Stone was asked if she had ever been sexually harassed. She laughed and said, “I’ve been in this business for 40 years. Can you imagine the business I stepped into 40 years ago, looking like I look? I’ve seen it all.” At the time, she didn’t give any specific details.
This week, she appeared on Kelly Ripa’s podcast and revealed an example of what she endured in the 1980s. Several years before her big break starring in Basic Instinct, Sharon she had a general meeting with the head of Sony. She said she was sitting on a low sofa in his office. He complimented her, saying, “Oh, it’s true what they say about you and you’re the most gorgeous. We haven’t seen anyone like you in decades. Everybody’s talking about you and look at you. You’re the most articulate. You’re so smart and beautiful and that hair.” That’s when things took a turn.
Sharon described the rest of the interaction:
[sensitive content]“Then he came walking right up in front of me and he said, ‘But first … ‘ and he took his p*nis right out in my face. Of course I was very young and what I do when I’m nervous, because I’m basically a very bubbly person, I started laughing. I started laughing and crying at the same time and I couldn’t stop because I became hysterical. I couldn’t stop, so he didn’t know what to do. So, of course, he put it away and he went through this door behind his desk, which I thought was that he left, so I didn’t know what to do. I was just sitting there hysterical and eventually his secretary came and led me out, right? This was not the last of many weird experiences like this in my career.”
She noted that she is willing to accept apologies from men who mistreated her in the past, but that the men who haven’t apologized should not attempt to sit next to her unless they plan to apologize. “I’ve gone to screenings where the only seat left was an empty one next to me and I’ve had men sit on the stairs in the aisle because they know, don’t sit next to me if you’re a Me Too that Me Too’d me, don’t sit in that empty chair next to me unless you’re gonna say sorry.”
