Gina Gershon has said she was offered the lead role in the cult classic slasher Friday the 13th Part 2, but declined due to the film’s “exploitative” nude scene.
Gershon, 63, made the revelation in her memoir, AlphaPussy: How I Survived the Valley and Learned to Love My Boobs, published earlier this month. “At the time, those kinds of slasher movies always had girls dying with their breasts exposed,” she wrote.
“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 role would have been her onscreen debut. “And of course, I was so excited to act in movies,” she told Fox News in a new interview. However, the character’s death scene in the 1981 film “definitely felt kind of exploitative to me and a little silly that right before she gets killed, her top has to come off,” she said.
The Showgirls star recalled turning to her father for advice. “Listen, I was really lucky that I had a father who really taught me how to believe in my own decisions,” Gershon said.
“It wasn’t like I had to rebel against my family. I remember asking him about it, thinking he was going to say, ‘No daughter of mine is going to do that!’ And he said, ‘It’s your body. If you’re comfortable with it, I’m comfortable with it.’”
Adding in her memoir, Gershon penned: “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.”
Released a year after Sean S. Cunningham’s original Friday the 13th (1980), starring Kevin Bacon, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Jeannine Taylor and Mark Nelson, Part 2 saw Steve Miner direct with returning cast King, Betsy Palmer and Walt Gorney, alongside a new ensemble.
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The iconic horror franchise — about the mass murders at Camp Crystal Lake — has since grown to a total of 12 films, including the 2009 reboot from director Marcus Nispel, featuring Julianna Guill, Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Derek Mears and Amanda Righetti.
In October 2018, NBA star Lebron James was in talks to revive the slasher franchise. The project was later stalled amid a lengthy and contentious copyright dispute between screenwriter Victor Miller and the original producer, Cunningham. A court ultimately sided with Miller, who was awarded the copyright for the script and characters associated with the original Friday the 13th.
