Sharon Stone Says SNL’s Lorne Michaels Saved Her Life When Protesters Stormed The Stage

In an appearance on Dana Carvey and David Spade’s Fly on the Wall podcast, Sharon Stone thanked longtime Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels for saving her life.

Stone was hosting SNL in 1992 when Michaels’ heroics happened. It was right after the release of Stone’s controversial role in the film Basic Instinct.

“A bunch of people started storming the stage, saying they were going to kill me during the opening monologue,” she said. “The police that are always in there during all of that, and the security that is always in there, froze ’cause they’d never seen anything like that happen. They sort of, they froze. Lorne started screaming, ‘What are you guys doing, watching the f—ing show?’ And Lorne started, himself, beating up and pulling these people back from the stage.”

Eventually, order was restored.

“All these people are getting beat up and handcuffed right in front of me, and we went live,” she said. “I was doing this live monologue while they were beating up and handcuffing people at my feet.”

Six people were arrested. A spokesperson for the protesters said, “We are protesting Hollywood’s homophobia and misogyny as exemplified in the film.”

Stone explained on the podcast, “They were mad because it was the beginning of my work as an AIDS field worker and as an AIDS activist. They didn’t understand, nobody understood at that time, what was really happening, and they didn’t know if AmFAR could be trusted.”

Stone said she was “terrified,” but the show continued.”Honestly, I blacked out for half of the show…For most of the show, I was completely blacked out with terror.”