Kyle MacLachlan came very close to baring it all in an infamous ‘90s box-office bomb.
Looking back on his career in his new memoir, Fictional Selves, the Twin Peaks star opened up about being pushed to do a full-frontal nudity scene in Showgirls.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t remember seeing his pole in that movie,” you’re not wrong, and that’s because MacLachlan refused.
One of the most memorable and talked-about scenes in the movie — a pool sex scene with star Elizabeth Berkley — was almost a whole lot spicier because director Paul Verhoeven wanted to shoot MacLachlan, who plays club boss Zack Carey, completely naked.
In an extract from his memoir shared by Entertainment Weekly, MacLachlan writes that the film shoot entered “absurd territory” multiple times that night, “Including when Paul suggests that I first walk out onto the patio full frontal.”
But when Verhoeven, in his thick Dutch accent, suggested the scene, he didn’t just want total nudity; he wanted the actor to be sporting impressive wood as well. “‘Kyle,’ he says, ‘when you valk across the pool deck and we shoot you here and you have a giant erection and you valk into the pool and we see this…’”
Kyle MacLachlan and Elizabeth Berkley in 'Showgirls'.
Carolco Pictures
McLachlan immediately shut the idea down, writing that he told the director, “I’m sorry, you can’t shoot me from the front.”
The star recounts the interaction, writing, “I stay congenial, despite the insane suggestion. Paul acts confused. ‘Yes, we see it from the front. We see you—’ ‘Ah no,’ I say. ‘I’m not going to do that.’”
Verhoeven seems to have misunderstood McLachlan’s reservations about doing a full-frontal scene, so he made a unique suggestion.
“‘Listen... it’s not a problem if you can’t get an erection; we can matte one in,’ he says, not a trace of irony. ‘We can paint one any size you vant,’” wrote MacLachlan.
He ended up sticking to his guns, but offered a compromise. “‘Sorry, Paul,’ I say, my heart beating quickly at the potential for conflict. ‘You can shoot me from the back walking to the pool.’”
Kyle MacLachlan and Elizabeth Berkley in 'Showgirls'.
Carolco Pictures
In the scene that audiences ended up seeing, McLachlan walks fully nude toward the swimming pool, and while he didn’t do full-frontal, his impressive butt was on full display.
“He shoots me from behind, thank the lord,” he writes. MacLachlan also sets the record straight about whether or not it was his real peach on screen.
“I’ve seen it written that what you see in the movie here is a body double, but I assure you it’s not,” he wrote. “That is my backside. And I make sure that’s all it is. Film is forever.”
In the scene, MacLachlan and Berkley have vigorous pool sex which ends with him flopping her around like a rag doll as they both climax. The unintentional camp in scenes like this, played seriously by the actors, is part of why the film has gained cult status over the years. In his memoir, MacLachlan described this scene as “Elizabeth flops around as if in distress, and I hold on for dear life.”
In a 2018 interview with GQ, MacLachlan admitted that when he read the script, he thought it was “sexy and edgy” but realized how “awful” the movie actually was when he watched it for the first time. Luckily, what made critics pan it at the time, and earned it a controversial NC-17 rating, is exactly why audiences love it today.
When the film came out in 1995, Roger Ebert wrote that the film was “quite unredeemably bad,” lacked eroticism, and called it “a waste of a perfectly good NC-17 rating.”
MacLachlan told GQ, “And now, of course, the movie’s got this great life. [It] lives on in infamy I guess, and it’s sort of a crowd pleaser. But at the time, it was a pretty big embarrassment… My career definitely took a hit on that one.”
