Part of what makes Saturday Night Live so much fun is the live element and the potential for anything to happen when all of the guest hosts and cast members take the stage. This can lead to amusing moments when somebody can’t stop laughing during a sketch, or if there’s a wardrobe malfunction (or, in JLo’s case, a hair malfunction). However, in 1992, guest host Sharon Stone had a much bigger problem, when audience members apparently stormed the stage, threatening to kill her just before she went live from 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Sharon Stone and Pearl Jam were Saturday Night Live’s guests on April 11, 1992, and the Basic Instinct star recently spoke to David Spade and Dana Carvey about the wild experience she had. After executive producer Lorne Michaels was mentioned, Stone shared with the SNL icons on the Fly on the Wall podcast why she thinks “Lorne is a wonderful person,” revealing it’s in no small part because “he personally saved my life.” The actress said:
I came to do Saturday Night Live with you guys, which I was so excited to do — and scared, really scared — and I came out to do the monologue live, which is always super scary, and a bunch of people started storming the stage saying they were going to kill me during the opening monologue. And the police that are always in there during all that and the security that's always in there froze because they'd never seen anything like that happen, and they froze, and Lorne started screaming, ‘What are you guys doing? Watching the fucking show?” And Lorne started, himself, beating up and pulling these people back from the stage.
Now I’ve heard of bosses being hands-on, but it’s certainly not every day that you hear about one springing into action to protect their talent from an actual attack. It sounds like things got pretty physical, too, with Sharon Stone estimating that there were between three and five people who Lorne Michaels was “physically trying to contain.”
That must have been quite a thing to witness as the cameras began to roll, because as they say, the show must go on. The actress continued:
The stage manager looked at me and went, ‘Hold for five,’ and I thought he meant five minutes and he meant five seconds. So all these people were getting beat up and handcuffed right in front of me and we went live, and I was doing this live monologue while they were handcuffing and beating up people at my feet. And if you think the monologue is scary to start with, try doing it while people are saying they're going to kill you and they're handcuffing them while you're doing the monologue.
It’s possible that the home viewers were none the wiser to any of the drama that was occuring in the studio, as footage of that monologue doesn’t show any kind of fracas happening off-camera. You can see Sharon Stone’s opener for yourself below:
Sharon Stone said on Fly on the Wall that she’d just started working as an AIDS activist in 1992, and at the time there was a lot of uncertainty and mistrust in the amfAR organization and what their goals were, which was apparently why the SNL audience members targeted her. She said she remained “terrified” throughout her appearance, because she had to run through the audience several times during the show. Stone said:
Every time we were making a change and you're really physically changing your clothes while you're running through the audience, I was just terrified. I honestly blacked out for half of the show. … For most of the show, I was completely blacked out with terror. I didn’t even know where I was.
Hosting Saturday Night Live has got to be a pretty daunting experience, and I can’t imagine what it must have been like to do that while knowing there were people there who wished her harm. That show ended up being Sharon Stone’s only appearance on SNL, but it’s no wonder she maintains a high opinion of Lorne Michaels.
Up next on the iconic sketch show, Ramy Youssef will host with Travis Scott appearing as the musical guest. Tune in at 11:30 p.m. ET Saturday, March 30, on NBC, and be sure to see what premieres are coming soon with our 2024 TV schedule.
