Billy Baldwin, 63, has said that he would never work with Sharon Stone, 68, again.
The actors played love interests in 1993’s erotic thriller Sliver. Despite what Baldwin said was a friendly start on set, things between Baldwin and Stone began to disintegrate. The environment on set was a toxic one, especially for women, Stone wrote in her 2021 memoir The Beauty of Living Twice, detailing inappropriate behavior from producers and a general lack of professionalism.
Baldwin attempted to clap back in a new interview.
“We got along pretty well the first couple weeks,” Baldwin said on the Lisa Guerrero Unleashed podcast. “And then she wouldn’t say ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ to me for the next three months.”
Stone described in her memoir how an unnamed producer she later revealed as Robert Evans called her into his office and “explained to me why I should f--- my costar so that we could have onscreen chemistry,” she wrote. “Now you think if I f--- him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed. I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines.”
Stone and Baldwin didn’t sleep together, but Stone wrote that Baldwin made “a few haphazard passes” at her, likely “spurred on by this genius.”
Baldwin complained that Stone was badmouthing him 30 years after the film’s premiere. He also defended Evans and claimed that, though he believes the exchange happened, Stone misunderstood his tone.
“She said that Bob Evans called her into his office and told her, in an era before Me Too where you could say this and get away with it, especially if you were Bob Evans, he was like, ‘Just f--- him and get it over with.’ Like, ‘Break the ice and let’s get the chemistry going,’” he said, adding that “everyone was miserable on set.”
“And she put in her book something to the effect that I was young, and I was nervous,” he continued. “And I was green, and I kind of didn’t know what I was doing.”
Baldwin also purported that “hair and makeup people in my contract would go into her trailer, and there were like candles and pictures of me, like a shrine to me, in her trailer.” Baldwin said Stone told supermodel Janice Dickinson before filming that “I’m going to make him fall so hard for me, it’s going to make his f---ing head spin,” which Dickinson has denied.
According to Baldwin, things got so bad that he refused to kiss Stone during their final sex scene. He tried to get out of doing the sex scene at all, but producers reminded him of his contract.
“I said, ‘All right, listen,’” he recounted. “‘I can do the scene,’ I said, ‘But I just please, please don’t make me kiss her. Please don’t make me kiss her.’”
Stone wrote in her memoir that refusing to sleep with Balwin made her “difficult” in the eyes of male bigwigs.
“In the good ol’ days, with the good ol’ no-rules, women as superstars were not a darling of the system,” she wrote. “They preferred us to be ornaments. I was supposed to do what I was told.”
