Dana Carvey Apologizes to Sharon Stone for ‘SNL’ Sketch That Made Actress “Take Her Clothes Off”

Carly Thomas
·4 min read
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Dana Carvey is apologizing to Sharon Stone for the “offensive” Saturday Night Live sketch in 1992, which saw her taking her clothes off.

The actress made a recent appearance on the Fly on the Wall With Dana Carvey and David Spade podcast, where she recalled her time hosting the NBC sketch comedy show on April 11, 1992, following the release of her hit movie Basic Instinct.

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During their conversation about some of the skits in that particular episode, Carvey pointed out how Stone “was such a good sport” because of “the comedy we did in 1992 with Sharon Stone, we would be literally arrested now.”

One controversial skit that Carvey brought up was the “Airport Security Sketch,” in which male airport security officers, including Carvey who appeared as an Indian security guard, made Stone remove one item of clothing at a time, claiming they needed to check to see if she was carrying anything dangerous.

“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,” the comedian told the actress as Spade chimed in, saying that it was “so offensive.”

Carvey added, “It’s so 1992, you know, it’s from another era.”

Stone proceeded to share that the sketch actually didn’t bother her. “I know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony,” she said. “And I think that we were all committing misdemeanors [back then] because we didn’t think there was something wrong then. We didn’t have this sense. I had much bigger problems than that, you know what I mean? That was funny to me, I didn’t care. I was fine being the butt of the joke.”

The actress continued, “Now we’re in such a weird and precious time because 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. And everyone is so afraid that they’re putting up such barriers around everything that people can’t be normal with each other anymore. It’s lost all sense of reason.”

Carvey later added, “When I was doing the Indian character…there was no malice in it. It was really me rhythmically trying to get laughs. So I just want to say that watching it — comedy needs a straight person and you were perfect in it. You were completely sincere and you made us funny.”

Elsewhere during the latest Fly on the Wall podcast episode, Stone also opened up about her SNL monologue, which she described as “super scary.”

She recalled the moment protesters rushed to the stage in Studio 8H, just seconds before the show was set to go live. Six people were eventually arrested, but Stone revealed that SNL creator Lorne Michaels “personally saved my life.”

“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,” the actress explained. “The security that’s always in there froze ’cause they’d never seen anything like that happen.”

She continued, “Lorne started screaming [at security], ‘What are you doing? Watching the fucking show?’ And Lorne started beating them up and pulling these people back from the stage. And 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 as we went live…. 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.”

After Carvey and Spade asked what the protesters were “so mad about,” she explained that it happened because “it was the beginning of my work as an AIDS activist…. No one understood at the time what was really happening and they didn’t know if amfAR could be trusted or if we were against gay people, they didn’t really know. And so instead of waiting for an informative, intelligent conversation, they just decided, ‘Well, we’ll just kill her.’ And it was, like, it was very intense

Carvey was an SNL castmember from 1986 to 1993, and Spade was on the sketch comedy series from 1990 to 1996.

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