Denise Richards Recalls Losing Out on Raunchy Showgirls Role Early in Her Career: 'Probably a Blessing'

Denise Richards isn't heartbroken over not being cast in Showgirls.

During a panel at New York Comic Con on Thursday, Oct. 17, which reunited her with her cast mates from the 1997 cult classic Starship Troopers, Richards, 53, recalled auditioning for 1995's Showgirls before later landing the role of Carmen Ibanez in the sci-fi adventure film. Both projects were directed by RoboCop filmmaker Paul Verhoeven.

Spurred by an audience question asking the cast — Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Seth Gilliam, Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside joined Richards for the panel — what other film of Verhoeven's they wished they had starred in, Richards remembered, "I auditioned for Showgirls and didn't get it."

She quickly quipped, "Which is probably a blessing," referring to Verhoeven's badly reviewed NC-17–rated shocker that starred Elizabeth Berkley as a woman with a mysterious past who arrives in Las Vegas with a dream of becoming a top showgirl on the Strip.

"I think that's why he brought me in to audition for Starship," Richards continued. "It was right before."

When Showgirls came out in the '90s, the explicit thriller and Berkley's performance faced criticism, which contributed to disappointing box office numbers. 

"Of course, it was disappointing that it didn't do well, but there was so much cruelty around it," she recalled to PEOPLE in 2020. "I was bullied. And I didn't understand why I was being blamed. The job as an actor is to fulfill the vision of the director. And I did everything I was supposed to do."

Disappointingly for the young Berkley, "no one associated with the film spoke up on my behalf to protect me," she claimed. "I was left out in the cold and I was a pariah in the industry I had worked so hard for."

Two years after Showgirl's release, Verhoeven returned to theaters with Starship Troopers, which also featured nudity via the film's infamous co-ed shower sequence, on top of a lot of R-rated bug-squashing violence.

Richards portrayed Carmen Ibanez, a high school student who over the course of the film becomes a spaceship captain when Earth goes to war against a race of giant alien insects.

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The film was critically more well-received than Showgirls but failed to connect with moviegoers in a big way at the time, making only $55 million at the domestic box office after costing more than $100 million to produce.

Asked for the "first thing that comes to mind" when looking back on the making of Starship Troopers, Richards' former costar Brown quickly replied, "Just how great it was ... and what a lousy reception it got."

"I had a bet with a guy that worked for [Independence Day director] Roland Emmerich and he said, 'Your movie's not going to make $60 million.' I said, 'Are you kidding me? Of course it is! It's Paul Verhoeven. It's got great special effects and all that' — and, sure enough, he won. Nobody remembers the movie that we were betting would make more. Everybody remembers this movie."