In an interview on the “Table for Two” podcast, Stone claimed judicial bias unfolded during her 2004 divorce case when the presiding judge asked her then-4-year-old son, Roan, if he knew his mother was engaging in “sex.” movie.”
“I lost custody of my child,” Stone told host Bruce Bozzi on Tuesday. “The judge asked my child, my little boy: ‘Do you know your mother makes sex films?'”
Stone, 64, said the scene became a “weapon against her” during divorce proceedings with ex-husband Phil Bronstein, who filed for divorce in 2003. The case focused on custody of Roan, now 22, whom the couple had adopted in 2000. Years later, when Stone tried to change custody of Roan after he had been in his father’s primary care, ABC News and other outlets reported how San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ruled against the actress over concerns about how Stone might “overreact” to the child’s health and questions about whether it was right to move the son out of his “consistent home”.
Still, the actress raged against the 2004 court president, whom she did not name, and the effect it had on her. She claimed this week that it contributed to her heart problems that forced her to be hospitalized later that year.
“People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now, and you saw maybe a 16th of a second of possible nudity of me — and I lost custody of my child,” she said on the podcast. “Are you kidding?”
She added: “It broke my heart. It literally broke my heart.”
It is unclear who the judge was in the 2004 case and where in California the case took place. Massullo took office in 2006 and oversaw a separate custody hearing involving Stone and Bronstein in 2008, records show. A spokesperson for the actress did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday.
Stone went from a relatively unknown actress best known for her role in “Total Recall” to Hollywood’s A-list after she was cast in “Basic Instinct” as Catherine Tramell, a beautiful and brilliant crime writer who also happens to be a serial killer . While the film received mixed reviews, Stone was praised by critics in a film that Rolling Stone hailed as “a cinematic wet dream” and was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama at the 1993 Golden Globe Awards. The Washington Post celebrated Stone’s “unforgettable ” performance in his review of the film, calling her “the coolest blonde since Kim Novak.”
Despite her success stemming from the film, Stone said she was “humiliated” when some of those in attendance at the Golden Globes laughed at her when the nominees were announced at the ceremony. That was partly due to the film’s most infamous scene, which has been talked about for years.
In her 2021 autobiography, “The Beauty of Living Twice,” Stone wrote that “Basic Instinct” director Paul Verhoeven and the crew asked her to remove her underwear during filming because “the white reflects the light.” She wrote that she was told how those who watched the film “can’t see anything”, which she later found out wasn’t exactly the case.
“This is how I saw my vagina shot for the first time,” she wrote, according to the Guardian. Stone admitted that she ultimately decided that the scene showing her genitalia “was right for the movie and for the character.”
Verhoeven has long denied Stone’s claim that she didn’t know about the brief nudity, telling Variety in 2021 that Stone “knew exactly what we were doing.”
However, the leg-crossing scene would later affect her personal life more than 20 years later in a way she could not have imagined, Stone said. She told Bozzi that the judge asking her son if he knew she was making “sex movies” reflected “this kind of abuse from the system — that I was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie.”
After the judge in the 2004 divorce case ruled that Bronstein has primary custody of Roan, Stone tried to change the terms of custody years later so her son could move from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where she lived. But Massullo rejected Stone’s proposal for several reasons, including how the actress allegedly “suggested that Roan get Botox injections in his feet to address a problem he had with foot odor,” according to a San Francisco County Superior Court filing. Stone’s lawyers denied she ever made the statement, telling ABC in 2008 it was “a complete fabrication.”
Despite the custody dispute, Stone said on the podcast this week that she has maintained a relationship with Roan. Since the first lawsuit in 2004, Stone, who last year revealed on Instagram that she had lost nine children to miscarriages, has since adopted two sons – Laird Vonne in 2005 and Quinn Kelly Stone.