Dana Carvey issued a public apology to Sharon Stone for making her strip down to her underwear in a Saturday Night Live sketch back in 1992.
Carvey made the apology on the Wednesday, March 20, episode of the “Fly On The Wall” podcast he hosts with David Spade.
Stone, now 66, hosted the show in April 1992 and appeared with Carvey, now 68, in the “Airport Security Sketch.” In the segment, she was ordered by three security guards to take off her jacket, stockings, and eventually her blouse, to prove she wasn’t carrying a weapon.
“I want to apologize publicly for the security check sketch where I played an Indian man and we’re convincing Sharon, her character, or whatever—to take her clothes off to go through the security thing,” Carvey said, with Spade, 59, adding that it was “so offensive.”
Carvey noted that the sketch was during a different era, decades before the Me Too Movement brought awareness to exploitation of women in the media.
“The comedy we did with Sharon Stone, we’d literally be arrested now,” he commented. “That was 1992.”
The Wayne’s World star praised Stone for being a “good sport,”and Stone commented that she was not offended by the sketch at the time.
“I know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. And I think that we were all committing misdemeanors [back then] because we didn’t think there was something wrong then,” the Basic Instinct star commented. “We didn’t have this sense. That was funny to me, I didn’t care. I was fine being the butt of the joke.”
“Now we’re in such a weird and precious time,” Stone continued. “People have spent too much time alone. People don’t know how to be funny and intimate and any of these things with each other. Everyone is so afraid and are putting up such barriers around everything that people can’t be normal with each other anymore. It’s lost all sense of reason.”
Stone also recalled her appearance nearly caused a riot from protesters opposing her work as an AIDS activist.
She remembered she was “terrified” during the live taping as several people stormed the stage seconds before her monologue. Six men were eventually arrested due to the incident. Stone said SNL creator Lorne Michaels “personally saved my life.”
“I came out to do the monologue live, which is super scary, and a bunch of people started storming the stage saying they were going to kill me during the opening monologue,” the Emmy winner recalled.
“The security that was in there froze because they never had seen anything like that happen. Lorne started screaming at [security], ‘What are you doing? Watching the f–king show?’ And Lorne started beating them up and pulling them back from the stage. The stage manager looked at me and said, ‘Hold for five.’ So all these people were getting beat up and handcuffed in front of me as we went live.”
Stone added, “If you think the monologue is scary to begin with, try doing it as people are getting handcuffed in front of you.”
