Kim Basinger later recalled that an unexpected sexual scene at her audition for 9 1/2 Weeks left her furious and upset. She said she cried on the way home and told her agent it was “the worst experience.” But she also made a crucial distinction: “It wasn’t anything to do with Mickey.” In her account, the distress came from the scene and director Adrian Lyne’s approach—not from Rourke mistreating her during the audition.
What happened at Basinger’s audition?
In a later conversation with Interview Magazine, Basinger said Lyne had already seen many actresses when she was asked to perform a scene with Rourke. She did not know what the scene would involve. She described it as a “weird, sexual kind of scene” and said she left unhappy, furious, and wanting to get away.
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Basinger recalled crying in her car on the drive home and phoning her agent to say, “That was the worst experience.” She was not describing the whole production with that phrase; she was recounting her immediate reaction to the audition.
Did Basinger blame Mickey Rourke?
No. Basinger explicitly said the audition distress “wasn’t anything to do with Mickey; it was just one of the scenes out of the movie.” She said Rourke got into character and did what Lyne wanted him to do. That clarification is essential: her account does not support saying Rourke caused her distress or mistreated her in the audition.
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Basinger also said she understood that Lyne wanted her to react as she had because Elizabeth, the character she was being considered to play, was naive and “not in the game.” The audition was intended to provoke a response tied to the character, as she understood the director’s aim.
Why did she accept the role after such an upsetting audition?
Basinger said that after the audition she learned the production had found Elizabeth. She still had to decide whether to take the part. She recalled going for a walk on the beach before choosing to make the film. Her account describes a difficult audition followed by a separate decision about accepting the role—not an immediate rejection of the project.
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What did Basinger say about the work and the atmosphere?
In the same Interview Magazine conversation, Basinger described the work as emotionally challenging and said Lyne would get performances from actors “no matter where he had to go.” That is her retrospective assessment of the director and the work; it is not, by itself, independent evidence of a particular on-set incident.
A later British GQ account quotes Basinger as saying she required continuous shooting, with no long breaks, and no off-camera relationship with Rourke. She also said, “Despite what the audience may have thought, there was very little chemistry between us at all,” and described the atmosphere around him on set as menacing. Those are later reported comments about the production and her relationship with her co-star; they are distinct from her specific explanation that the audition’s distress was not Rourke’s doing.
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What contemporary reports add about the film’s production
Contemporaneous coverage helps place the film in context, but it does not replace Basinger’s firsthand account of the audition. The Washington Post reported in 1986 that the film adapted a 1978 novella published under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill. The film changed parts of the book, omitted or altered controversial scenes, and gave the story a more upbeat ending than the novella’s darker conclusion. Lyne described the film’s story as a downward spiral from which the woman must escape.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the project passed through four studios and at least 10 screenplay drafts, and that shooting had wrapped by August 1984. It also relayed producer Antony Rufus Isaacs’s account of tension between the stars, including that they avoided sharing an elevator. That is a producer’s reported account, not Basinger’s description of the audition or proof of every detail of their relationship.
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Keep the accounts separate
- The audition: Basinger’s later firsthand recollection was that an unexpected sexual scene upset her and that she cried afterward.
- Rourke’s role in that incident: Basinger said the distress was not anything to do with him and described him as following Lyne’s direction.
- The wider production: Her later remarks about the work and atmosphere, and contemporaneous reporting about cast tension, concern broader aspects of making the film. They should not be collapsed into a claim that Rourke caused the audition experience.
- The fictional story: Lyne’s description of Elizabeth’s downward spiral refers to the film’s plot, not to Basinger’s personal experience.
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