Kyle MacLachlan recalls Elizabeth Taylor 'had to have a gift every day' on “The Flintstones ”set
Kyle MacLachlan says the daily gift was a requirement of her being in the 1994 film.
The Flintstones movie has a weird place in pop culture history. It's not always fondly remembered, but it had a massive cast, from stars like John Goodman and Rosie O'Donnell to big actors in smaller roles, including Elizabeth Taylor.
In a Tuesday appearance on Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Dinner's On Me podcast, Kyle MacLachlan, who was also in the film, said Taylor had a surprising requirement to appear in the Stone Age film. "The cast was crazy. Bruce [Cohen] got Elizabeth Taylor to do that movie. It was amazing," he said. "She had to have a gift every day."
The reveal stopped Ferguson in his tracks. "Wait, wait, wait, stop," he said. "She had to have a gift?"
MacLachlan later admitted he might be telling tales out of school, but continued anyhow. "A gift every day," he said. "And she had to have, in the dressing room trailers, everything was green, she had to have greenery around her."
Ferguson liked the idea for his own rider but wanted examples of the gifts. "Jewelry," MacLachlan responded. "This is secondhand now. Bruce probably told me and said, 'Don't ever tell anybody that.' Too late. It's too late."
The Flintstones was the iconic actress' final feature film. She did, however, make occasional appearances on TV shows for the next handful of years following the 1994 live-action adaptation of the cartoon. Cohen later told the Hollywood Reporter that the actress was given lavish gifts on the first day of shooting for The Flintstones. However, he never mentioned any daily gift and representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
"The moment she said yes, we wanted to make it a special experience for her," Cohen said following Taylor's 2011 death. "Lavender was her favorite color, so we made lavender stairs up to her trailer, and we filled the trailer with lavender flowers for her first day of work. I had also been told it was a tradition that you gave her lavish gifts for the first day of production, so we wanted to do that as well."
He continued: "I’d actually been to her house for a wardrobe fitting two weeks before. She pulled me in very close and whispered into my ear, ‘Darling, you know that I like gifts on the first day of photography.’ I said, ‘Yes, I’ve heard of this tradition.’ And then she whispered, ‘I like Cartier, darling.’ We didn’t have an Elizabeth Taylor gift allotment in the budget, so I went to Mr. [Steven] Spielberg, who was the executive producer, and I said, ‘Steven, I need you to write me a personal check so I can go shopping for Elizabeth Taylor.’ He loved that idea and understood why we couldn’t put it in the budget."
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