The monkey was part of the pitch. At first Sharon Stone protested: a monkey, sitting on her shoulder, climbing on top of her head? Why not a leopard, something big and sort of dangerous, sinewy, sexy? Leopards were good scene partners; they could hold their own. Monkeys caused trouble. But Ryan Murphy insisted. He was writing a role for her, a strange, fabulously wealthy villain, in his new Netflix series Ratched, and the character needed a monkey. “I was like, ‘No, Ryan, no, I can’t have a monkey,’” Stone tells me one August afternoon, recalling their initial meeting. “I’m like, ‘I worked with leopards in Africa. I’m comfortable with leopards.’” She pauses here, impersonating her director’s sternness: “‘No. Has to be a monkey for Christ’s sake.’” They were at an…