Rosie Perez had an awkward moment with Woody Harrelson on the set of White Men Can’t Jump before she shot one of the first sex scenes of her young career.
“One of my first real sex scenes was with Woody Harrelson, and I was so afraid to come out onto the set because I didn’t want him to see me naked,” Perez, 61, recalled to Jenna Bush Hager on the Wednesday, September 24, episode of Today with Jenna & Friends.
“So what did you do?” Bush Hager, 43, asked. “You wore a robe or something, and then you walked out?”
“He goes, ‘Come on out, everybody’s respectful,’” Perez continued. “And I go, ‘OK.’ And I went like this, and he goes, ‘Oh my God, look at your boobs!’ and I go, ‘Oh, Jesus!’”
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Harrelson, 64, starred as Billy alongside Wesley Snipes, who played Sidney, in the 1992 comedy about a pair of street basketball players who team up to hustle the competition. Perez portrayed Gloria, Billy’s girlfriend, in the film.
Perez has told this story before, explaining to Grantland in 2012 that she took Harrelson’s comments in stride.
“I started cracking up. I go, ‘You’re such a pig, Woody,’” she said. “He goes, ‘I’m sorry, they’re huge and you’re so tiny.’”
The moment, Perez said, “took the edge off because he was so goddamn silly and he made it fun.”
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In the years since, Perez has admitted that she had a crush on Harrelson while they were filming.
“[I] definitely had a crush on him, but we kept it professional,” she told E! News in 2022. “Maybe that’s the spark, too, that we never went there.”
Speaking to Bush Hager more than 30 years after the film’s release, Perez joked that there’s much less pressure for her regarding sex today.
“Senior sex is good because you don’t care anymore,” she said.
Bush Hager asked if she was talking about filming sex scenes in her 60s or about sex in real life.
“In real life,” Perez clarified. “Would I do a senior sex scene? I hope not, no. Oh, God. I would offend the viewers.”
While Perez may have had a crush on her White Men Can’t Jump costar in the 90s, she ultimately married filmmaker Seth Zvi Rosenfeld in 1998. They divorced three years later, and she married artist Eric Haze in 2013.
Harrelson has been married to his second wife, Laura Louie, since 2008, and they share three daughters.
