Nearly 13 years after the comedy legend’s death, Sharon Stone hopes to make a biopic about her late friend Phyllis Diller.
The Oscar nominee recently admitted she’s “desperate to play” Diller, who died at age 95 on Aug. 20, 2012, reflecting on her time with the comedian and how Diller prepared her to lead a potential biopic, which stone is “trying” to make happen.
“I do want to play Phyllis Diller very, very badly,” she told Business Insider. “She and I were very close friends. Phyllis made little paintings for all my kids. She cooked me dinner a lot of times — that woman could cook. I told her I wanted to play her, and she sat down and taught me her laugh. She made me practice her laugh!”
Stone added, “You know, she didn’t hit it big until she was 49. She lived in a trailer park with five kids and her schizophrenic husband, and practiced her act on women at the laundromat. It’s unbelievable. I think there are great actors who could play Bob Hope, Red Buttons, Johnny Carson. Sam Rockwell could play Johnny in his sleep. We were tight. Yes, I’m desperate to play her.”
A trailblazing stand-up comic who found fame on the screen with Bob Hope in the late ’60s, Diller was an eccentric performer known for her self-deprecating humor, inspiring fellow women in comedy like Joan Rivers, Lily Tomlin and Margaret Cho.
If Stone’s passion project comes to fruition, perhaps she’ll throw her hat in the ring to direct as well, as she mentioned in the same interview that she “wanted to be a director” earlier in her career, “but the pesky vagina has stood in my way. Because how could you possibly have a brain and a vagina? It seems to have confounded so many.”
