The NSFW Starship Troopers Scene That Denise Richards Refused To Do
Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film "Starship Troopers," based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein, takes place in the 23rd century when Earth is embroiled in a bloody, violent, generations-long war with giant intelligent insects from a distant planet. Earth has devolved into a perpetual war machine. The film follows a new generation of sexy young recruits whose entire lives — their school and their media — are all constructed specifically to sell them on the positive qualities of war and their inevitable duty to become soldiers in the conflict. The characters are all bright and attractive and swallow the propaganda without a wisp of awareness. Verhoeven's film is a broad, acidic satire about the nature of propaganda and a warning against Orwellian notions of perpetual conflict.
Denise Richards played a character named Carmen Ibanez, an aspiring pilot who would like to fly the titular starships to conflict sites. Early in the movie, she's dating Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), but they drift apart when he becomes a ground soldier and she enters the space force.
Verhoeven has rarely shied away from sex and violence in his movies (Verhoeven directed the superviolent "RoboCop" and the breast-encrusted "Showgirls"), so it would be kind of inevitable that "Starship Troopers" would contain a lot of blood and nudity. To show camaraderie between soldiers, Verhoeven staged a co-ed shower scene wherein men and women paraded around nude in front of each other.
In a 2018 interview with the Guardian, Richard talked about making "Starship Troopers," and how much she like playing Carmen. She also revealed that Verhoeven had written an extra scene for her wherein she would have had to remove her shirt. She refused; it felt a little too gratuitous to her.
Denise Richard didn't see the point of the nude scene Paul Verhoeven wrote for her
Despite all the military fascism, "Starship Troopers" at least takes place in a world of gender equality. Young men and young women are equally capable of becoming war heroes and being slaughtered by razor-clawed space monsters. Carmen, like most of the characters in "Starship Troopers," is presented as an empty vessel, filled only with clunky patriotic slogans programmed into her brain by the state. Outside of that, however, she is a capable pilot and has her own romantic agency. Richards appreciated that about the character. She said:
"I love my character, and the fans seem to appreciate she's a strong woman. If there were negative audience reactions to her swapping between two men, I didn't hear about it. At some point or other, everyone gets dumped and does the dumping ... That's young love! But for the most part I think she's a badass, a great role model."
But then she recalled the nude scene that Verhoeven had written, and how she outwardly rejected the idea. From the sound of it, Verhoeven didn't insist. It's unclear as to why he added a nude scene, other than simple reasons of prurience. Richards said:
"Paul added a topless scene that wasn't in the original script but I refused to do it — I didn't see the point of it."
Richards gives no additional context for the scene in question. When was it supposed to have taken place in the story? From the sound of it, the scene didn't have any bearing on the story whatsoever. Richards held no animosity toward her director, though, and even praised his ability to wrangle an effects-heavy film like "Starship Troopers."
Acting in front of a green screen
1997 was before most effects-based blockbusters were filmed almost exclusively indoors against green screens. That wouldn't begin in earnest until George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequels, the first of which was released in 1999. Richards, then, was among the first generation of young actors who had to learn to act in front of green screens for extended periods. She had to learn to imagine the killer alien bugs that would be added in post-production. Instead, she got to act opposite Verhoeven with a broom. As she described it:
"I had to learn how to act in front of green screens, and Paul was a great teacher. We only had an idea of what the bugs might look like from pictures and animatronic clips. He would be there jumping up and down with a broom in the air so we would have a sense of how big they were. If we weren't giving enough, he would do even more."
It's an amusing image, Verhoeven menacing his cast with a broom, pretending to be an extraterrestrial hell beast.
"Starship Troopers" was a very expensive film to make — it cost over $100 million in 1997 — and only earned back about $120 million worldwide, which makes it a flop in the eyes of Hollywood. It has been reevaluated, however, and many now can accept its brazen satire with more awareness than audiences did in 1997.
Richards would go on to star in the gloriously lascivious potboiler "Wild Things" in 1998, and in both "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and the James Bond movie "The World is Not Enough," both in 1999. Richards has been working steadily ever since, appearing on multiple TV shows and low-budget movies every year, including 188 episodes of "The Bold and the Beautiful."