'The Naked Gun' directors reveal how Priscilla Presley replaced Bo Derek in the 1988 comedy

Here's a deep cut from the files of Police Squad! Thirty-five years ago, the era-defining ZAZ comedy team — that would be David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker — behind Airplane! and Top Secret! set about bringing their short-lived parody of TV cop shows to the big screen as The Naked Gun. Leslie Nielsen happily reprised his role as L.A.'s non-finest, Det. Frank Drebin, and the writer/directors initially planned to cast a real 10 as his leading lady — screen siren, Bo Derek.

"She was going to be the hot, sexy woman," David Zucker tells Yahoo Entertainment now about Derek's near-miss with The Naked Gun, which opened in theaters on Dec. 2, 1988. There was just one problem: The actress's husband and regular director, John Derek, apparently didn't have much of a sense of humor. "He didn't let her do the role," Zucker recalls during a joint interview with Abrahams about the recently published oral history, Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!

The hunt was on for a new female star to match comic wits with Nielsen. That's when an unlikely candidate entered the frame: Priscilla Presley. The former Army brat first became a celebrity as a teenager when she met and fell in love with the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley. The couple married in 1967, only to separate after five turbulent years together. Following Elvis's death, in 1977, Priscilla Presley embarked on an acting career, eventually landing a series regular role on the vintage '80s primetime soap Dallas, as Bobby Ewing's first crush, Jenna Wade.

Funnily enough, that's the part that convinced the ZAZ team that Presley's presence in The Naked Gun would be more than just great stunt-casting. "We saw her on Dallas and thought, 'If she plays that character in the film, she'd be great!'" Zucker remembers. He adds that they never even had her audition for the role of Jane Spencer, the knockout assistant of the movie's billionaire villain (played to perfection by Star Trek's greatest bad guy, Ricardo Montalbán) who changes sides after falling for the not-so-dapper Drebin.

Not for nothing, but there was precedent for that kind of casting choice. The filmmakers specifically filled Airplane! with non-comedic actors like Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Nielsen himself and then directed them to be hilarious by ... not being hilarious. And that's precisely the same note they gave to Presley at the first Naked Gun table read.

"She was very nervous," Zucker says. "She said, 'I can't be funny! I don't know how to be funny.' And I told her, 'Don't worry — you don't need to be funny. Just be the actress who's in Dallas and let the lines do the work.' I've said that to actors for years: Don't bother trying to be funny."

With that note in the back of her mind, Presley was off and running — occasionally into walls. Her entrance into The Naked Gun is a textbook example of the ZAZ Method at work. Descending from a staircase dressed to impress, Jane unexpectedly misses a step and tumbles to the bottom of the stairs, before bouncing right back up again. In a split second, she's stepped off the set of Dallas ... and into a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. "She was great," Zucker raves now. "I never had to direct her!"

Let the record also show that Presley participated in one of the movie's most ribald R-rated jokes. Asked by her boss to cozy up to Drebin, Jane visits his apartment one night and boils up a roast just the way he likes it — very hot and awfully wet. The evening inevitably culminates in a trip to the bedroom where the lovers prove their commitment to safe sex by donning full-body condoms before rolling around on the sheets. By the way, if you came of age in the '80s, that scene may have been your first — and funniest — exposure to the concept of condoms outside of extremely awkward middle school health class.

Asked if that's really Presley and Nielsen beneath the latex, Zucker confirms that both stars were game for the gag. "There's no reason for them to have done that," he says, laughing. "It could have been done by two stunt people. Priscilla was very claustrophobic, but she was a trooper and went ahead."

In fact, Zucker reveals that he had more reservations about Nielsen and Presley performing that scene than the actors did. "As a director, I felt it was unnecessary. But I remembered what Howard Koch — our executive producer on Airplane! — taught us. He always said that movies are an illusion business, and if you can make an illusion in the moment, you don't have to spend additional money.

"Still," he adds with a smile, "At the end of the day, we could have dismissed the actors and brought in two stunt people."

Fueled by Nielsen and Presley's potent comic chemistry, The Naked Gun instantly shot to the top of the box office charts, and the duo re-teamed for two sequels, released in 1991 and 1994. The franchise's popularity would seemingly have granted Presley her pick of projects, but she only made sporadic appearances in various movies and TV shows between Naked Gun installments. Her last substantial acting gig was a recurring role on the Michael J. Fox sitcom Spin City in the late '90s.

Recently, though, Presley has returned to the movie business as part of the creative team behind two movies that depict her pre-Naked Gun life: Baz Luhrmann's 2022 musical biopic, Elvis, and Sofia Coppola's just-released, Priscilla, based on her own 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me. And while the retired actress still speaks fondly of her Naked Gun experience, she's made it clear she has no desire to participate in the reboot that's currently being planned with Liam Neeson taking over for Nielsen, who died in 2010.

Zucker says he's not sure if it was Presley's choice not to more seriously pursue movie stardom after The Naked Gun reintroduced her to audiences. "We don't really have those kinds of friendships off the set," he notes. "You have these short periods of time when you live with them for three months and then you don't see them. I mean, we didn't even hang out together with Leslie between movies!"

"Priscilla was the sweetest person you'd want to meet," the director adds. "Especially when you think of what she went through with the whole Elvis thing. She's very much the girl next door — that's the personality I saw on set."

The Naked Gun trilogy is currently streaming on Max.