Ability over Appearance: Molly was written as a chubby white girl in the script, but the slim Gina Ravera was given the part. In fact, the actress had been up for the role of Cristal, but knew she was unlikely to get it, and so asked to read for Molly instead; knowing she'd have a better chance at getting the Token Black Friend.
Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Nomi never actually says the line, "I'm not a whore! I'm a dancer!" in the film. She does say "I'm a dancer" and "I'm not a whore" in scenes roughly an hour apart. The combined line is actually from a sketch in a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Mariel Hemingway.
Box Office Bomb: Despite having a $45 million budget (approximately $77.2 million in 2021 dollars) and a $20 million gross (approximately $34.3 million in 2021 dollars), it's still the highest grossing NC-17 film of all time. However, the film has since earned well over $100 million in home video sales.
Virtually everyone was revolted by the final product, although Paul Verhoeven claimed that critics missed the satire. A few of the cast and crew do poke fun at the movie these days, see below for Elizabeth Berkley.
While he didn't walk out of the premiere as reported, Kyle MacLachlan was embarrassed about the film:
I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, “This is horrible. Horrible!” And it’s a very slow, sinking feeling when you’re watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a really bad scene.” But you say, “Well, that’s okay, the next one’ll be better.” And you somehow try to convince yourself that it’s going to get better… and it just gets worse. And I was like, “Wow. That was crazy.” I mean, I really didn’t see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, “satire” isn’t the right word. But it’s inadvertently funny. So it’s found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.
In 1997, Joe Eszterhas said:
Clearly we made mistakes. Clearly it was one of the biggest failures of our time. It failed commercially, critically, it failed on videotape, it failed internationally....In retrospect, part of it was that Paul and I were coming off of Basic, which defied the critics and was a huge success. Maybe there was a certain hubris involved: "We can do what we want to do, go as far out there as we want." That rape scene was a god-awful mistake. In retrospect, a terrible mistake. And musically it was eminently forgettable. And in casting mistakes were made.
Gina Gershon to one aspect in particular - the Texas accent she put on. She felt the accent fit Cristal, but Paul Verhoeven "was suspicious of all accents", so she just spoke in it all day to make it seem like it was her real voice. And now, whenever she watches it, she ends up wishing she could have ADR'd her accent to fix it.
Gina Ravera hasn't watched the movie since its premiere because the scene of Molly getting raped was traumatic for her, taking nine hours to film, and she can't bring herself to watch it again. She also wasn't happy with the last time the character is seen being in the hospital bed, and that her story has no resolution; focusing more on Nomi's feelings. She's turned down offers to attend screenings or events dedicated to the film because of it.
Director Paul Verhoeven's career recovered somewhat from this nadir, culminating in Starship Troopers (usually considered to be his return to form), before leaving America entirely to return to Europe. It does help that he proved he was a good sport by actually showing up at theRazzies, calling it more entertaining than reading the reviews.
Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, formerly the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, also had Jade bomb both critically and commercially that same year; both movies got called out by Gene Siskel at the end of the year. He took what little cachet he had left and made An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, which finished off both his career and the tradition of using Alan Smithee as a stand-in name for disowned works. That film ALSO won a Worst Picture Razzie, by the way.
Two of the film's studios, Carolco Pictures and Chargeurs, went out of business soon afterwards. Carolco, which sold the film off to Chargeurs, went bankrupt and was bought by StudioCanal, while Chargeurs spun off its library as Pathé.
Creator's Apathy: Gina Gershon claims she realised three days into filming that the film wouldn't be the gritty drama she'd thought it would when she signed on, so she started playing Cristal as "a character that drag queens would want to perform", maintaining that it was "the only way to get through it".
Feelies: The 2004 "V.I.P. Edition" includes pasties, shot glasses, playing cards, movie cards, and a poster.
Genre-Killer: Its instant reputation as a trashy mess rapidly killed off any chance of the NC-17 rating succeeding in its goal of allowing non-porn films with harder-than-R content to get distribution into mainstream cinemas. Sadly, Showgirls got the widest release of any NC-17 film ever.
Hostility on the Set: There was considerable competition between Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon off-screen, which was subtly encouraged by Paul Verhoeven to help them portray their on-screen feud better.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The film was re-released as a "VIP Edition" which included, among other things: Shotglasses, playing cards, a "pin the pasties on the topless Elizabeth Berkeley" game, drinking game rules, a commentary track by a creepy superfan of the movie, and a short lapdancing tutorial from two girls of Scores. It's all part of the publisher's attempt to re-market the movie as a camp classic.
Mid-Development Genre Shift: The film in its earliest incarnation was a musical, throwing back to the MGM musicals of the 1950s.
Never Work with Children or Animals: The only time actresses complained that they felt uncomfortable was during the scenes with the monkeys, who constantly stared at their bare breasts.
On-Set Injury: William Shockley actually punched Gina Ravera on camera during the rape scene, and she had problems with her jaw for years because of it. She was also "covered in bruises" because of how brutally the scene was shot.
Poor Elizabeth Berkley. She did make a bit of a comeback in 2013, appearing on Dancing with the Stars and performing a dance inspired by her infamous scene from Saved by the Bell. She also seems to have embraced her Showgirls fame, by poking fun at herself and interacting with fans on Twitter.
We also started to see much less of Kyle MacLachlan on film following this movie, although he's since had a healthy TV career and provided his voice in the Pixar film Inside Out 20 years later. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, he found success as a character actor in live-action films such as The House With a Clock in Its Walls and Confess, Fletch, in addition to receiving the best reviews of his career for Twin Peaks: The Return.
Stillborn Franchise: A sequel was envisioned while the movie was in production, this one with Nomi going to Hollywood and taking on the film industry (hence why the ending includes a sign for the Los Angeles freeway). Needless to say, the disaster of the film put a kibosh on those plans. That said, a No BudgetDirect to Video sequel (spinoff really) focused on Rena Riffel's minor character Penny called Penny's from Heaven came out in 2011.
Throw It In!: Elizabeth Berkley suggested Nomi mispronouncing 'Versace'. She also ad-libbed licking the pole.
Vindicated by Video: Showgirls bombed at the box office, but it became one of MGM/UA's biggest sellers on home video, even if it was out of Bile Fascination.
Wag the Director: Molly was supposed to have topless scenes as well, but Gina Ravera declined.
"“I think I said, ‘What do you need my tits for? You’ve got everyone else’s!’”
Drew Barrymore was the original choice for Nomi and Madonna was the original choice for Crystal. Drew turned the part down, uncomfortable with the amount of nudity in the script. There was also the slight problem that she couldn't dance.
Write What You Know: The rape scene, and the subsequent refusal of the Las Vegas big shots to punish those responsible, is based on a real incident that Joe Eszterhas learned of while he worked for Rolling Stone.
in a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Mariel Hemingway.