Gina Gershon reveals reason for turning down ‘Friday the 13th Part 2’ role: “Exploitation 101”
Actor Gina Gershon has revealed the reason she turned down a starring role in Friday the 13th Part 2, saying it would have been “Exploitation 101”.
The Showgirls star opened up about the experience in her new memoir AlphaPussy: How I Survived the Valley and Learned to Love My Boobs, revealing she turned down a role in the 1981 sequel to the horror classic as her part would have involved her being topless.
Writing in the book, Gershon said (via Deadline): “At the time, those kinds of slasher movies always had girls dying with their breasts exposed,” before adding, “My character would be killed by a stake through the heart, blood dripping down her tits. That seemed pretty lame to me: exploitation 101.”
The actor continued: “My dad may have died too soon, but he taught me many valuable lessons in the 19 years I had with him. Mainly, he taught me to trust myself in making my own decisions.”
She also added that decisions like these have consistently informed the course of her life, saying, “This theme of trusting my gut kept showing up in my life.”
Expanding on the experience in an interview with Fox News, Gershon, who also later starred in the Tom Cruise classic Cocktail, said: “I was offered a lead in that movie. And, of course, I was so excited to act in movies, but it definitely felt kind of exploitative to me and a little silly that right before she gets killed, her top has to come off.”
It would have constituted the actor’s first on-screen role, but “When I sat and thought about it, I just thought, ‘I don’t really want to do this.’ I wasn’t comfortable with it. It seemed silly to me,” she added.
“Not that I had anything against nudity — I grew up on European films — but only if it makes sense for the character and the story. But when it just seems silly, I don’t know. It just felt like it was something that wasn’t for me,” Gershon noted.
Despite turning down the role, the actor made her screen debut later in the same year as part of Beatlemania: The Movie. After starring in a slew of other projects, her main breakthrough came in the 1995 erotic cult hit Showgirls.
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