It Was Much Too Quiet on ‘Malcolm X’ Set for Kate Vernon

Kate Vernon is a fan of Spike Lee’s films.

“They stimulate people,” said the Canadian-born actress, who appeared in “Pretty in Pink” and the TV series “Falcon Crest.”

“I think he is helping people wake up to their own prejudices. I think that’s important,” she said.

But Vernon found working with Lee to be a different matter.

In Lee’s “Malcolm X,” Vernon plays Sophia, Malcolm’s white girlfriend during his hustler days in Boston in the 1940s.

During a recent interview, Vernon, the daughter of John Vernon (“National Lampoon’s Animal House”), recalled her excitement when she was asked to come to New York to audition for Lee with Denzel Washington, who stars as Malcolm. Vernon said she knew going into the audition about the highly publicized stories regarding actress Annabella Sciorra’s disagreements with Lee over her character during the production of last year’s “Jungle Fever.”

(Spike Lee and Warner Bros., the studio releasing “Malcolm X,” declined comment for this article.)

“But I had a very open mind about meeting Spike and not bringing any preconceived ideas about what I heard about him to the set,” Vernon said.

The week prior to her audition, Lee talked with Vernon frequently over the phone. “He was very kind of supportive and inquisitive,” she said. “He was asking me questions about myself and what I felt about (“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”) and his movies and him. I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is great.’ ”

The audition with Washington went well, and after she finished her scene with him, Lee told her she had the part.

But according to Vernon, working with Lee from then on was difficult. She said his attitude changed as soon as rehearsals began. “It was as if he was very aloof, very disinterested,” she said. “Spike’s way of working with me, I mean in polite terms, I could say he was very quiet. He didn’t pay much attention to me.”

Vernon said she and Washington ended up working out their scenes during the rehearsals. “Spike was in the corner sort of going through the script watching,” she said. “I found that to be very uncomfortable because I felt like I couldn’t go to Spike. I am speaking about my experience with him, not everyone’s experience. I never felt part of the process. In that way it was terribly uncomfortable. I can’t figure out the psychology of Spike and I tried to.”

Vernon said she discussed her difficulties with several of the African-American male and female actors. She found a sympathetic ear. But, she added, “it was like we were all afraid to say, ‘Did you have problems with Spike?’ It was almost like people were afraid to say, ‘You too?’ ”

She recalled one particularly heated argument with Lee. “In my contract, we agreed no nudity,” Vernon said. “The family of Malcolm X didn’t want any nudity.”

But then came the time to shoot Malcolm and Sophia’s love scene in the back seat of a Cadillac. Vernon said she was supposed to remove her shirt, but only her shoulders would be exposed in the scene. But Lee, she said, told her the scene would only work if she showed her breasts. “This argument broke out between Spike and I,” she said. “I am trapped in this car and I am fighting with Spike to honor my contract. What resulted is that he cut the scene in half.”

Vernon said she was hurt when she learned she would not be included in the recent “Malcolm X” press junket. Nor is there a photo of her in the press kit. “I am opposite Denzel and I do play his love interest in the first third of the film,” she said. Lee, Vernon said, told her he didn’t want to risk “any pre-publicity controversy that I am a white woman and Malcolm’s love interest. People know about Sophia. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Oddly enough, Vernon said, months after she completed “Malcolm X” she was in Rome filming a comedy, “Jackpot.” One morning, she heard a loud knock at her trailer door. It was Lee. “He said, ‘How you doing?,’ which was really great. He was lecturing at a filmmaking school and thought he would stop by and say, ‘Hi.’ I thought it was really sweet.”

Still, she says, she doesn’t hope to work with the director again. “I feel like I have worked with him, I know what it is like.”