Sharon Stone is all about the element of surprise.
Kaley Cuoco learned this firsthand after casting the actress to play her mother in her HBO Max series, The Flight Attendant. In the series, the two have a fraught relationship, with Kaley telling the Jimmy Kimmel Live audience on April 19 about one particular disagreement they filmed: "It's very emotional and there's a lot of crying and a lot of this and that."
Just before the cameras started rolling, Sharon asked Kaley if she could touch her face and she agreed to a gentle caress—but not what came next. "She whacks me," Kaley exclaimed. "Like, for real."
Kaley remembers the room going silent, saying, "No one moves. No one makes a sound. No one knows, 'Is Kaley happy? Did she tell Sharon to slap her?'"
Sharon turned to Kaley and told her that it wasn't her intention to cause harm, but "it felt right for the scene." And Kaley agreed that it was an "incredible" take.
In fact, even the producers thought it was "unbelievable," but out of an abundance of caution, they asked Kaley, "Should we tell her we got it and we don't need to do another take?"
However, Kaley was 100 percent sure that Sharon wouldn't pull another fast one on her. "I said, 'Listen, I'm going to bet money that this woman isn't going to slap me again,'" she recalled. "Like, we got the money take, that's her Emmy right there."
But Sharon wasn't done hitting on her, eliciting what Kaley described as another "incredibly real" reaction. But after getting slapped for the third time, Kaley said they called it a day and she went home to ice her face.
And while Kaley's skin may have stung, she has no hard feelings toward Sharon. "I say that with love," Kaley said. "It was insane but one of the best stories i've ever had. And the crazy part is that it wasn't written."
It seems like Sharon has good instincts when it comes to acting as Kaley even revealed that the actress cast herself in the role of her on-screen mother. "She was a fan of the show and loved season one," Kaley shared. "She heard we were casting my mom, so she called herself—she literally called casting—and said, 'I'd love to do this.'"
Kaley acknowledged it was out of the norm, saying, "It's nuts," but she couldn't be happier to call Sharon her TV mom.
The Flight Attendant is streaming now on HBO Max.