Michael Douglas is reacting to Sharon Stone‘s claims about the beginning of their decades-long friendship.
The 80-yer-old Oscar-winning actor and the 67-year-old actress starred together in the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct and have stayed friendly ever since.
However, in a new interview, Sharon alleged that she and Michael did not see eye to eye right away.
Keep reading to find out more…While speaking with Business Insider, Sharon claimed that Michael was hesitant to do the movie 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 added before detailing an alleged argument with Michael.
“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,” Sharon recalled. “So I said something and he responded to me, saying, ‘What the f–k do you know?’ It was in regard to a father-child relationship.”
“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, Sharon claimed, “I explained to him what the f–k I knew about this family he was speaking about, and that I was best friends with the children and the parent. 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.
Sharon went on to say that the tense dynamic between herself and Michael “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, noting that “eventually, we became the greatest of friends, to this day.”
“I admire him tremendously,” Sharon added.
In a statement to People, Michael‘s rep said that he’s “very surprised” by Sharon‘s claims that they argued 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,’” the rep continued.
And while Michael “definitely spent time with” Sharon at Cannes, “that was later, when they were promoting Basic Instinct in 1992,” his rep claimed. “And by the time they’d done the movie, they were friends.”
If you missed it, Michael opened up about his acting future.
