Sharon Stone on Jon Jon Briones as ‘the Brando of our time’

Sharon Stone is Lenore Osgood in “Ratched” –PHOTOS BY NETFLIX

I don’t always catch myself getting dumbstruck in the presence of celebrities. But I admit I was momentarily tongue-tied the first time I saw Sharon Stone on Zoom for this exclusive, one-on-one interview about “Ratched,” which launches its first season on Netflix in 190 countries this Friday.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” greeted the 62-year-old actress, who still looked every inch like her similarly iconic character Catherine Tramell 28 years after “Basic Instinct” was first released. In lieu of Catherine’s calculated and ice-cold demeanor was a warm and welcoming smile that seemed to reassure me of the absence of any danger ahead. Sharon plays a revenge-seeking heiress in “Ratched.”

The eight-episode series is Ryan Murphy’s wildly imaginative origin story of Nurse Mildred Ratched, limned to Oscar-caliber perfection by Louise Fletcher in Milos Forman’s 1975 film classic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and portrayed with a lot of pluck by Sarah Paulson as a younger woman rising above abuse and misogyny in the Netflix show.

Sarah Paulson as Nurse Mildred Ratched

As a true-blue movie star, Sharon rarely appears in TV shows (like “Mosaic,” in which she was singled out by critics for her ‘masterful turn’ and ‘effortless charisma’). Asked what drove her to accept the part in the Ryan Murphy vehicle, she explained, “First of all, I think the good parts are in television these days. I don’t think people are making movies that are real ‘movies’ anymore.

“What Hollywood is making are these action tentpole productions, which are great, but they’re not character-driven. So people are not really going to the movies for ‘movies.’ These days, we see movies at home [in the form of] limited series, so that we can really binge-watch them. We see a six-hour or nine-hour movie. “For actors, that’s very exciting because then we get a lot more time with our characters. And there are a lot more elements involved. I think that’s a good thing, because it’s not easy to find roles that have depth and power.”

Set in 1947 in a Northern California town called Lucia in Monterey County, the star-studded “Ratched” champions women and explores the nature of power in a society that doesn’t grant them any, especially at the time the story is set immediately following World War II.

But the show isn’t only about women’s rights, mental illness or the ravages of war, explained executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall: “It’s about finding your voice, figuring out how to be heard and doing the right thing. It’s also about marginalized groups and how we can better help these communities early on. What happens to our youth when they are from broken homes with no stable influences, or when they have to define their moral code for themselves?”

“Ratched” brings to the screen a tale that explores how the asylum nurse became the unforgettable villainess that viewers of the film version were thrilled by after she gets herself hired in an increasingly cash-strapped psychiatric facility called Lucia State Hospital.

“Cutting-edge” but unsettling experimental procedures are being tested out in this asylum, run by Dr. Richard Hanover (Jon Jon Briones) and his irrepressible head nurse Betsy Bucket (Judy Davis), to treat a string of mental illnesses like schizophrenia and psychosis, as well as unconventional behavior that were deemed “aberrant” in the field of psychiatry in the “backward” 1940s, like homosexuality and lesbianism.

Sophie Okonedo (left) and Jon Jon Briones

It is in the midst of this organized chaos where Mildred utilizes the power of manipulation to her advantage as she crosses paths with notorious murderer-cum-star inmate Edmund Tolleson (Finn Wittrock); mental health advocate Governor George Wilburn (Vincent D’Onofrio) and his press secretary Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon); hospital orderly Huck Finnegan (Charlie Carver); Dolly (Alice Englert), a staff nurse with a taste for the macabre; and Charlotte Wells (Sophie Okonedo), an emotionally fragile patient with multiple personality disorder.

It doesn’t take long before Mildred also gets to interact with faded and fidgety former flapper-turned-Sealight Inn motel manager Louise (Amanda Plummer), Child Protective Service case worker Annie (Rosanna Arquette) and bounty-hunting private eye Charles Wainwright (Corey Stoll), who is hot on the heels of Dr. Hanover, whom he describes as a “dirty Pinoy doctor” from the beaches of Ormoc Bay in the Philippines. Just listing down the thespic wattage of this stellar dramatis personae makes my movie-loving, trivia-seeking nose bleed!

Then, there’s Stone herself, cast as vengeful mother Lenore Osgood seeking redress of grievances against the overly enthusiastic, but overreaching mental-health care practitioner responsible for the desperate plight of her deeply troubled psychotic son, Henry (Brandon Flynn).

Stone (left) and Brandon Flynn

Before she found stardom, Sharon herself had to buck the notion that there’s nothing much under the surface of an aspiring actress’ pretty face. So, the former beauty queen and model had to break through glass ceilings, winning an Emmy (“The Practice”) and a Golden Globe (for Martin Scorsese’s “Casino”) as well as earning an Oscar nomination along the way, to demonstrate to the public that inside those blonde-and-blue-eyed killer looks is a brain with an IQ of 154!

Yes, this lovely and luscious actress is one smart cookie, literally—which makes her a snug fit for the role of Lenore, one of the many characters that makes “Ratched” never less than compelling to follow.

Sharon’s magnetic presence alone adds elegance and a measure of danger to the series’ narrative proceedings—the very same elements that make her most popular roles on the big screen hard to forget. What did she find appealing and challenging about this persistent mother character?

“Wow. She’s elegant and dangerous all right, but she’s also not great at being either thing,” the actress pointed out. “She’s kind of pretending to be elegant and struggling to be dangerous—and that’s what I like about her! I like that she’s trying extra hard to be elegant and dangerous, and you see that she goes at it, even if she’s not really great at any of it.”

Is it more satisfying to create or shape a character over a span of, say, eight episodes, compared to building a character in a film?

“It’s less different when you go to work for Ryan than in some other scenarios—because his projects look very cinematic,” she answered. “The sets are fabulous, and the costumes are amazing. In ‘Ratched,’ the costume department is incredible! Here, the hair and makeup team provides actors with perfect human-hair wigs.

“Ryan’s productions operate very much like a gigantic film that moves at the pace of how movies were made back in the olden days (she snaps her fingers repeatedly), when studios were churning them out in 30 or 40 days.

“It’s moving constantly (snaps even more) because the sets are being made all the time, and he’s got 10 other productions going, and you see people moving back and forth. It’s a machine, you know—and it’s a beautiful one.”

Remembering that I mentioned which country I was from and that I wrote for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sharon made sure not to end our chat without talking about one coactor she was very pleased to work with on the set of “Ratched”: Jon Jon Briones.

“Before we go, I just want to say that working with Jon Jon was really great,” she said, looking like she knew what my next question would be. “And I did want to say that Ryan calls him ‘the Brando of our time.’ Working with him is incredible! He’s really a humble, good man. [And what he does in the show] is extraordinary—he’s very succinct and so present in his work.”

That’s high praise from an actress who isn’t known to mince words. Sharon further added, “We feel really lucky to have him in this business. Jon Jon is a star!”