Isabella Rossellini Does Not Want You to Have Sex with Animals

Revisiting the weirdest, most uncomfortable and off-the-rails celebrity interview I've ever done.

When I first saw Blue Velvet back in the ‘80s, I felt bad for Isabella Rossellini. Her performance was brilliant, but I always suspected that she was the sole sane person in a cast and crew of perverts and sociopaths. Maybe she didn’t know exactly what she was getting into until it was too late, and being the consummate professional, she didn’t protest when asked to, as the Guardian so eloquently described it in their movie review, submit to “a myriad of indignities.”

Almost three decades later, she created a series of online shorts for the Sundance Channel called Seduce Me. Every episode was about the sexual proclivities of animals. There was something revelatory about watching Rossellini get stabbed in the gut with a penis-knife while muttering with orgasmic enthusiasm, “He ejaculates into my wound!” It was a moment when many of us realized that Blue Velvet might not have been entirely a product of David Lynch’s twisted imagination.

When I got the opportunity to speak with Rossellini for Vanity Fair, I obviously jumped at the opportunity. I met with her during the Savannah Film Festival, which was screening a double feature of Blue Velvet and Seduce Me. Judging by the shrieks of disbelief from the festival audience, there really wasn’t much aesthetic difference between the two films. Whether Rossellini was orally raping Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet or watching dolphin penises float past like a gyro spit in front of a starving fat man in Seduce Me, it really did feel like two cinematic takes on the same theme. And weirdly, I left the theater with more respect for Frank Booth than I did for dolphins.

Then came my chance to speak with Rossellini. It… did not go well.

Listen, I’ve had my fair share of clunkers over the years. I’ve had plenty of awkward interviews with famous people. But this was hands down the most uncomfortable, tension-filled, passive-aggressive conversation I’ve ever had with another human being. Rossellini did not like me or my sense of humor at aaaaaaaaall.

I haven’t looked at this interview in fifteen years, and it’s just as excruciating to read today as it was to experience it in person the first time. And if that’s not incentive enough for you to become a paid subscriber, I don’t know what it is!

Eric Spitznagel: I think the main thing I learned from Seduce Me is that the animal kingdom is almost entirely perverted.

Isabella Rossellini: [Laughs.] Exactly.

ES: Did you have any idea before you started making this series, or were you as surprised as the rest of us?

IR: I was interested in animals since I was a little girl. I’d bird watch and lift rocks and look at bugs. I was that kind of a person. So, I always knew about animal behavior that was interesting to me. But for Seduce Me, I concentrated on their sexual habits, some of which I knew and some of which I had to learn more details so I could make the films.

ES: Most of your partners in this series are cardboard cutouts. Is that challenging as an actress?

IR: [Long pause.] How do you mean?

ES: You’ve done love scenes in movies before. How does Seduce Me compare? Is it more awkward when your partner is one-dimensional?

IR: Well, you know, I wrote the scripts. I designed the basic solution of the cardboard mates. It was meant to be funny. I don’t need to go to the Actor’s Studio to play it.

Two very different sex scenes for Rossellini in Blue Velvet (1986) and Seduce Me (2010)

ES: You’ve worked with a lot of animal penises. Have you ever kept one as a memento?

IR: They are made of paper, so they are hard to keep. We did an exhibit at the Royal Museum in Toronto, which is a museum of natural history. And then they were taken by a new museum called the Lightbox, which is a museum of visual art. It has taken all of our penises, 22 different penises, some of which are six or seven feet tall. They asked us, they wanted it to be kept so we gave it to them.

ES: You didn’t keep even one penis? They’d make a great conversation piece at dinner parties.

IR: [Laughs.] No, no.