Aaron Sorkin refused to write Nicole Kidman sex scene in Malice

Aaron Sorkin (left) says he refused to write a crude sex scene for Nicole Kidman in the 1993 film Malice. Photos / Getty

The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin has spoken about the time he refused to write a sex scene for Nicole Kidman.

Sorkin told USA Today that director Harold Becker wanted him to write a racy scene for Kidman and co-star Alec Baldwin when they starred together in the 1993 thriller Malice.

"Early on in my career, I wrote a movie that I'm not very proud of at all, it just turned into a mess," he says. "Alec Baldwin and Nicole Kidman were in it. The director, very close to the start of photography, decided that we were missing a sex scene between Alec and Nicole."

He asked Sorkin, his screenwriter, to add a steamy scene.

"I went back to the hotel and I wrote like four pages of banter that ended with them falling into bed and we cut to the next day," Sorkin says. "Harold Becker said, 'No, no, no, you have to write the scene.'

"I hadn't written that much at the time, I'd only written A Few Good Men. And I said, 'Boy, exactly what do you mean?' And he said, 'Look, it's easy, just go back to your hotel and write what you'd like to see Nicole Kidman do."

"I said, 'Are you out of your mind?'" Sorkin said. "First of all, I just did a movie with her husband (Tom Cruise)! And second of all, no, I'm not going to write down what I'd like to see Nicole do and then hand the pages out to the crew and Nicole."

"Without me in attendance, Harold, the director, Alec and Nicole got into a trailer and they decided what they were going to do," Sorkin says. "It got done. It's a terrible scene," he said.

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