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Actress Sharon Stone, famous for her roles in Casino, Basic Instinct, The Muse and the The Mighty, is returning to the screens in upcoming HBO drama Mosaic.
Sharon‘s return comes after a 17-year-long hiatus from acting following her stroke in 2001.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Mosaic is a dark, murder mystery series that focuses on a successful children’s author and illustrator named Olivia (Sharon Stone) whose rural idealism gets submerged by an avalanche of lies, corruption and murder.
Sharon discusses her exciting new role as Olivia after her lengthy hiatus from acting.
What was it about this show and this role, this project that made you think this would be a good re-entry into acting?
SS: Well, since we’re being honest, if Steven Soderbergh [series director] had asked me to come and read the phone book I’d probably do it. But I feel really, really lucky he asked me to do something that was so personal and so raw and so revealing because frankly I’ve been through hell and I had a lot to bring. It was really great to be able to bring all of that compassion and insecurity to the screen.
Acting, like writing, is like a muscle, isn’t it? If you don’t use it for a while, you can’t remember how. Were you nervous about that?
SS: Well, I lost my memory. I lost my short- and long-term memory when I had the stroke, and it took me a long time to recover because I had a photographic memory before and I had to learn to learn. Then as my brain started getting it back together, I started to get it back, but I didn’t have my old acting process. I mean, I was such a hot shot. I was just like, ‘Let’s go.’ And then, now, I was like, ‘I don’t have a plan, I don’t have a process, and I don’t know what I’m doing.’ It was just a whole different thing, and it was fantastic to bring all of that and to play a character in which I didn’t have to hide any of it.
Garrett Hedlund and Sharon Stone in a scene from Mosaic.
Olivia is amazing. She’s so messy and complicated and vulnerable and needy and narcissistic.
SS: Ed [Solomon, writer] wrote those incredible dialogues for me, that she can just say all this crazy stuff and it seems like it could be so mean, but her intention just isn’t mean.
Olivia’s had all this success in the past and is obviously brilliant and talented and powerful and rich but is unfocused now.
SS: I think she’s frozen. She’s really like that environment she’s in, that frigid environment. I think that’s like a reflection of her internal space. She’s a little bit in that weird pristine frozen space. She’s just stuck. She’s frozen in that place and sort of disintegrating – almost watching her own life.
Sharon Stone as Olivia Lake.
Did you relate to that?
SS: Well, [accomplished writer/director] Rob Reiner said something great to me one time. He said, ‘You don’t have to be in pain to be an actor, but you have to have been in pain.’ Going through all the stuff I went through, I certainly hope it has informed my work. Having three kids certainly will change your reality. I think growing up changes your reality and informs your work, and I think not trying to be a girl and just allowing yourself to be a grown-up woman is very informative for your work too.
Olivia, as well as being a mess, is really interesting, because she’s not married and she’s childless, but we don’t really talk about that which I really liked.
SS: Or if she was married before, or what her other life could have been or anything about it. No, we just kind of pick her up mid-stream.
Yes, which I thought was really refreshing. There’s no harping on about what she doesn’t have.
SS: Which is what we always have to do with women. We just let her be, yes.
Was that appealing to you in this?
SS: Oh Jesus. The whole thing where she was just the way she was at home, as a person, in her normal clothes, in her normal look, with her normal friends, talking the way a normal person could. It was extraordinarily wonderful just to play a person. I don’t get to play a lot of people. It was so refreshing to get to play someone where I didn’t have to completely vanish myself to play it. In Lovelace I really had to vanish. In Alpha Dog I had to vanish. So not to have to vanish to play a real person was thrilling. Ed [Solomon] put my humanity in it.
Paul Reubens and Sharon Stone during a scene in Mosaic.
Ed [Solomon] seems like an incredibly good human himself…
SS: Oh my God, he’s just wonderful. In the middle of making the show, he called me up and he said, ‘I’m getting my minister’s licence because I’m going to marry this guy who’s on our show – his boyfriend’s coming out and I’m going to perform the wedding and everything.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, you know, I’m a minister.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, you are? Will you help me with this?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ So we ended up doing this wedding ceremony of this guy on our show and his boyfriend, and the families came in and everything. That made us all even closer still. We had this really interesting whole other part of our relationship that happened and that was really beautiful.
Mosaic is coming to NEON on May 17.
