Actress Melissa Gilbert once broke down in tears after she was allegedly "humiliated" by filmmaker Oliver Stone at an audition for his rock biopic The Doors.
The Little House on the Prairie star recalled the incident on Monday (20Nov17) in an interview on media personality Andy Cohen's SiriusXM channel Radio Andy, during which she revealed she had tried out for the part of Jim Morrison's girlfriend, Pamela Courson, in the 1991 release.
Melissa was initially hesitant to name and shame Stone for the way he reportedly treated her, but she soon relented as she discussed her experiences in Hollywood amid the industry's ongoing sexual misconduct scandal involving the likes of power players Harvey Weinstein, James Tolback, Kevin Spacey, and Brett Ratner.
"There were moments where there were men in more powerful positions," she began. "One in particular, who humiliated me at one point in an audition - and unnecessarily, because I had embarrassed him in a social situation. He got back at me and I ran out of the room crying. I'm actually sitting here telling you this story, afraid to say his name, because I'm worried about backlash."
After reconsidering her stance, she decided to identify the 71-year-old as the man who made her cry by urging her to act out a demeaning scene with a male actor.
"Oh, f**k it," she remarked. "It was Oliver Stone. And it was The Doors movie."
"He had me read a scene," the former child star explained. "I had auditioned, and then he said: 'I've written this special scene with you, I'd like you to do it with the actor. I want to see the chemistry with the two of you.' And the whole scene was just my character on her hands and knees saying, 'Do me, baby.' Really dirty, horrible."
She refused to "stage" the scene for Stone, and fled in tears, but she's convinced he concocted the plan as payback for a tense exchange they had once had in a club.
"There was a bunch of people at a table, and he was talking about how television was crap and he would never do it," Gilbert remembered. "Then all these young girls came running over to meet me because they were watching Little House on the Prairie. Then they left and he was sort of dumbfounded, and I said: 'You see, a-hole, that's television. That's what television does.' I guess he never forgot it."
The role of Courson eventually went to Meg Ryan, with Val Kilmer portraying The Doors' frontman Morrison.
A representative for Stone has declined to comment on Gilbert's story, which emerges weeks after fellow actress Patricia Arquette recounted an uncomfortable exchange she had shared with the director around the 1994 release of his movie Natural Born Killers, following the flood of sexual misconduct complaints made against producer Harvey Weinstein following a New York Times expose in October (17).
Stone initially declined to speak out against Weinstein because he didn't believe the disgraced movie mogul should be condemned by a "vigilante system", only to later insist he was "appalled" by the producer's alleged actions, which have included claims of sexual harassment and even rape. Weinstein has denied all accusations of non-consensual sex.
