A day after Sharon Stone said now-dead producer Robert Evans once encouraged her to sleep with Billy Baldwin, her co-star in the 1993 thriller Sliver, Baldwin took to X to threaten Stone that he could reveal “many, many disturbing, kinky and unprofessional tales about Sharon.”
If you’re wondering why anyone is writing about a three-decade old movie about a Manhattan apartment besieged by secret surveillance, it’s because Stone filled in some detail Monday on a story she first sketched out in her 2021 memoir The Art of Living Twice. In the book, she said a producer she did not name once suggested she have sex with a co-star — whom she also did not name — to improve their chemistry.
What Sharon Stone Said About Billy Baldwin
Appearing on the Louis Theroux Podcast Monday, she finally did name names, saying it was Evans — the former Paramount chief who oversaw The Godfather and Chinatown — who was the producer, and that he was talking about Baldwin, her on-screen paramour in Sliver.
She said of Evans:
“He called me to his office. He had these very low ’70s, ’80s couches, so I’m essentially sitting on the floor, when I should have been on set.
“And he’s running around his office in sunglasses explaining to me that he slept with Ava Gardner and I should sleep with Billy Baldwin, because if I slept with Billy Baldwin, Billy Baldwin’s performance would get better, and we needed Billy to get better in the movie because that was the problem.”
She continued: “The real problem with the movie was me because I was so uptight, and so not like a real actress who could just f–– him and get things back on track… The real problem was I was such a tight a–.”
She also said Michael Douglas, her Basic Instinct co-star, was among actors who would have been better in the Baldwin role.
Also Read: 10 Movie Sex Scenes Someone Should Have Stopped
Baldwin took to X, formerly Twitter, with a lengthy reply in which he alleged Stone had pursued him on the set of Sliver.
“Not sure why Sharon Stone keep talking about me all these years later? Does she still have a crush on me or is she still hurt after all these years because I shunned her advances?” he wrote.
“Did she say to her gal pal Janice Dickinson the day after I screen tested and ran into them on our MGM Grand flight back to New York… ‘I’m gonna make him fall so hard for me, it’s gonna make his head spin.’ ???
“I have so much dirt on her it would make her head spin but I’ve kept quiet.”
He also suggested that he tried to avoid having to kiss Stone at one point.
“The story of the meeting I had with Bob Evans imploring him [to] allow me to choreograph the final sex scene in the photo below so I wouldn’t have to kiss Sharon is absolute legend.”
He ended on a threat: “Wonder if I should write a book and tell the many, many disturbing, kinky and unprofessional tales about Sharon? That might be fun.”
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail said that Dickinson issued a statement saying she did not remember Stone making the “fall for me” comment.
“As I recall, Sharon never said that to me,” the Daily Mail quoted Dickinson as saying. “I am not sure why Billy Baldwin is bringing this up. I adore them both but that never happened.”
Stone and reps for Baldwin did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Sliver, a modest hit directed by Phillip Noyce and written by Joe Eszterhas, was based on the novel by Rosemary’s Baby author Ira Levin.
Though Sliver has been largely forgotten in popular culture — it pales in influence compared to Basic Instinct, which was also a Sharon Stone-Joe Eszterhas collaboration — it received a generous reappraisal in Karina Longworth’s excellent You Must Remember This podcast, which revisited the erotic thrillers of the 1990s.
Here is Baldwin’s tweet:
Main image: A publicity still of Sharon Stone in Sliver. Paramount.
Editor’s Note: Updates with Daily Mail report.