Gina Gershon stands her ground.
In her new memoir, AlphaPussy, the sultry actress tells how she grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley in the ’70s and ’80s, how she “survived” “in the midst of the porn explosion,” and then found her way to success in Hollywood.
Gershon, whose credits include “Face/Off,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Riverdale” and “Rescue Me,” writes about fending off molesters as a young man on the streets and at the Playboy Mansion, then standing up for himself in the entertainment industry, even if it meant refusing to work with Prince and getting into arguments with famous directors.
“It’s kind of a collection of my personal stories about overcoming toxic situations and difficult people and maintaining sovereignty,” she told Page Six in an exclusive interview.
Not everyone was uncomfortable. Gershon remembers brief but positive encounters with various big stars, including Bruce Willis, who was a bartender at the cafe where he worked in college. Bob Dylan used to box with me at the gym. Sharon Stone advised her to lie about her age.
But filming with Paul Verhoeven, director of 1995’s Showgirls (which was a huge flop at the time, but has since become a beloved camp classic), was extremely difficult.
Gershon, who played stripper Crystal in the film, wrote, “It was a constant psychological tug of war between Paul,[co-star]Elizabeth[Berkeley]and I…Paul was notorious for fighting with his stars, and I think I was lucky that he chose me as a sparring partner on Showgirls.”
One day, the director wandered into her trailer. “I think it’s better to show a vagina in today’s scene,” he declared, noting that Berkeley would do the same and that Sharon Stone did so in an infamous scene in her previous film, Basic Instinct.
Gershon wasn’t going to fight, but she wasn’t going to bare everything, and it wasn’t in her contract to do so. She took a moment to formulate a plan and then discussed it with Verhoeven.
“I know exactly what you want to do with this shot, but to tell you the truth, we’ve seen it. As you already pointed out, we’ve seen Sharon’s vagina, and we’re going to see Elizabeth’s vagina, too,” she diplomatically told him, as she recalls in the book. “So I thought, well, imagine it. It’s dark. We don’t know where we are. It’s cloudy. And it’s pink. And it’s kind of blurry. Next thing you know, we’re in Krystal’s dressing room… But wait. How did we get here? That’s when we realized we were inside Crystal’s vagina! Don’t just show me your vagina like Sharon and Elizabeth, but let’s take a photo of it from inside…you can also use a microscope probe lens. This is great. ”
Verhoeven was surprised and said he wasn’t sure he could make a shot like that. He looked at Gershon like he was “crazy” and walked away, telling him that he could just play the scene as originally written and that no crotch shots were needed. (A representative for Mr. Verhoeven said he was unavailable for comment.)
“He never mentioned my vagina again,” she wrote.
When she was 15 years old, she dodged another spooky bullet while going to a party at the Playboy Mansion with friends.
Another guest came up with her and gave her a tour of the mansion, which included the infamous cave.
When asked if he wanted to take a dip, Gershon slammed on the brakes.
“I remember looking at him and just laughing and saying, ‘Am I only 15? This could be so hard,'” she told Page Six.
Thankfully, he snuck away.
By contrast, Gershon wrote that Tom Cruise, his co-star in 1988’s “Cocktail,” was “an eternal gentleman.”
She was filming her first love scene with him, and the script called for them frolicking naked around a hot tub and kissing, but “that just seemed unnecessary and lame.”
Gershon suggested something more subtle under the covers in bed, but Cruise was game.
“I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive, communicative, and reliable partner,” she wrote. “He suggested I turn my back to him so my breasts wouldn’t be visible on camera and just face him.”
This beauty didn’t have a very positive experience with Prince when she was a theater student at New York University.
One day, she received a phone call from an old friend who had worked with the deceased musician, who told Ms. Gershon, “Prince wants to meet you. He’s making a movie, and the leading lady has to be able to sing, dance, and act. I told him about you.”
Naturally, Gershon was overjoyed and hopped on a plane to Minnesota, where he was met by a purple stretch limousine carrying Prince.
He asked her to listen to the title song of the upcoming movie “Purple Rain.” She was shocked and the two went somewhere to talk, drink and dance.
The musician then turned to her and said, “I think I’ll call you Gina (hard G sound).”
“Gina?” she answered, trying not to laugh. “Like Gina Gershon?”
“No,” he answered seriously. “Just Gina.”
It was too much for her. She informed Prince that she did not want the role, even though it would have been her big break.
“I don’t want to be called ‘Gina’ for the rest of my life,” she told Page Six. “It was more than that…I’ve never had anyone look at me like that. It felt like he was rearranging my molecules…I felt so uncomfortable.”
In the book, she admits, “I regretted many times not working with Prince. I would have risked my life to make music with that genius. But I didn’t like being controlled…For better or worse, I listened to my instincts.”
Gershon also trusted her instincts when she was asked to read a new script, “Bound,” after filming “Showgirls.”
The noir thriller was about a romance between two women, but Gershon’s agent at the time refused her role because she had just played a bisexual character in Showgirls. They feared that another sapphic romance on screen would ruin her career.
Reluctantly, Ms. Gershon fired her agent and appeared in “Bound” opposite Jennifer Tilly.
She is proud to have been a part of the film, which was one of the first mainstream films to feature lesbian relationships and love scenes.
“It really embraced the lesbian community because it had never been represented that way before,” she said. “It was a big deal and I’m really proud of it. People come up and say, ‘You really helped me. That movie helped me. It helped me realize things.'” It was awesome. ”
More recently, Gershon was introduced to a new audience last year when she played Bowen Yang’s clingy girlfriend in the “Saturday Night Live” skit “Bowen’s Straight.”
“I’m in love with him,” she said of the “Wicked” star. “I just adore him. He’s a great guy.”
While she insists that AlphaPussy is not a self-help book, she hopes it will be “empowering in a way,” teaching women to be open and stand up for themselves.
“There are a lot of toxic people in the world, and they want to tell you what to do and what to think,” she said.
