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Michael Douglas reflected on the bizarre way he discovered Kathleen Turner for Romancing the Stone.
The 82-year-old opened up about casting the 1984 adventure film, which he produced, in the October 6 episode of Kelly Ripa‘s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast.
Douglas revealed that Turner earned the leading role only after he was bizarrely bitten by Debra Winger.
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“I was developing the project, and the studio really wanted Debra Winger,” he explained. “They were very high on Debra Winger. She had done An Officer and a Gentleman and was very big, and she was actually in the middle of making Terms of Endearment.”
Naturally, he met with the actress while he and director Robert Zemeckiswere traveling.
“So Bob and I had gone down to Mexico to begin pre-production on the picture, and we were getting a real sense of how difficult this romantic, lightweight kind of comedy was going to be,” Douglas admitted.
“Like the old story, the script says, ‘Rome burns.’ Two words cost millions of dollars. In our case, it was the mudslide, figuring out how to do the mudslide,” he added.
‘She Bites Me in My Thing’
The men met up with Winger in Texas while she was filming to try and persuade her to join their movie, which was proving difficult to cast.
“We were trying to woo her to do the picture,” he recalled. “I had met with her once already in L.A., and we were there in Texas. We pulled up to go woo her, and we had another wet dinner, shall we say? A very wet dinner.”
The dinner took a bizarre turn when Winger’s off-kilter sense of humor reared its head.
“We’re heading on back to the hotel, and the way you might punch somebody in the arm to kind of, ‘Oh, you,’ and punch them in the arm, Debra leans over and she bites me,” he laughed. “She bites me in my thing.”
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Douglas admitted Winger’s bite broke his skin just “a little bit.”
“It was kind of her way, her joking kind of way,” he added, noting that the little joke had kept him from including her in his movie.
“So we get back down. We’re finishing up my location scout in Mexico. We know how difficult the picture is going to be, and I’m having my studio meeting now to hear about Debra Winger and all this,” Douglas continued.
He seemingly revealed his injury as he pleaded with the company to choose any other leading actress.
“I go into the studio meeting, and I break down crying and say, ‘I can’t go to Mexico with Debra,'” he gushed. “I said, ‘Look at this.’ And they go, ‘Calm down, Michael. Calm down.’ They always thought it was a joke.”
‘She Was Fantastic’
Fortunately for Douglas, the studio had another woman in mind.Turner had been by their condos just a few days prior in search of some sugar to borrow.
“She had just done this picture called Body Heat, which was quite something,” Douglas remembered. “So we offered it to her, and she said, ‘Yeah.'”
The dado-of-three ended up taking on the male lead alongside Turner after they failed to find a man who was willing to take a back seat.
“I originally was not planning on playing the part,” he spilled. “A lot of other people we auditioned passed on it because the woman had this major part.”
“She was fantastic,” he raved of Turner. “I really can’t imagine any actress putting up with the kind of stuff, just production-wise. It was such a tough shoot.”
