When Beverly Hills 90210 premiered in 1990, no one could have known how popular the show - or its stars - would become. For 10 seasons, Beverly Hills 90210 brought drama to the small screen weekly while plenty of it played out behind the scenes as well.
Bad behavior, romances, rabid fans - these all contributed to tensions among the cast members while simultaneously building perpetual bonds and long-lasting friendships. During the 1990s, 90210 was THE show about growing up and finding your path. Here are a few details about the not-so-visible dips and bumps that sprung up in 90210 along the way.
- 1
Christine Elise Was Frozen Out By Her Female Costars
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As Emily Valentine - the girlfriend who slipped do-gooder Brandon Walsh illicit substances - Christine Elise entered 90210 during the second season of the show. From her first day on set, she was told how the other members of the cast would receive her. When a producer indicated, "The guys are really great, I can't make any promises about the girls," he was spot on in his assessment.
Elise found Luke Perry and Jason Priestley to be welcoming and friendly. She, in fact, began dating Priestley for five years. The women in the cast were not so kind.
While Elise dismissed a rivalry with Shannen Doherty, she did say "she just was not friendly...as a guest on a show - you always feel awkward and vulnerable, so someone just not going out of their way to be nice feels hostile."
Agree or disagree? - 2
Tori Spelling Had Crushes On Jason Priestly And Luke Perry
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Sexual tension was high on 90210, and Tori Spelling admitted she had romantic feelings for both Jason Priestley and Luke Perry during the filming of the show. While she and Luke Perry did exchange a kiss, it was her relationship with Priestley that went to the next level.
In 2015, Spelling called her tryst with Priestley, "a summer fling. It was off-set. It was our version of a summer romance. The 90210 version. And that was it, and we stayed great friends for the rest of the run and beyond that, we had that one summer fling." Priestley limited his comments on the matter, tweeting, "I’m not getting into this… It’s nobody’s business… Either way…."
Spelling didn't just have a connection with Priestley and Perry. She also remembered the spark she felt with Brian Austin Green, who played her onscreen love interest, David Silver:
I remember the time I shook his hand. I had, like, [those feelings]. He teased me, he would tease me a lot. He would pull on my peach fuzz and he’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh. You’re like a little lamb chop. You’re like my Chewbacca.'”
The two went on to date and, in hindsight, Spelling called Green, "A little bit of my everything...we grew up together. I think I was always in love with Brian."
Agree or disagree? - 3
Brian Austin Green Didn't Like Having Girlfriend Tiffani Amber Thiessen Join The Cast
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After Shannen Doherty left Beverly Hills 90210 in 1994, Tiffani Amber Thiessen joined the show. The former Saved by the Bell actor went through what Larry Mollin, former writer and producer, called "an exhaustive search." Reportedly, Drew Barrymore, Alicia Silverstone, and Alyssa Milano all turned down the role. When they hired Thiessen, they thought "Oh, this is cute. I think she’s Brian’s girlfriend. He’ll love this!'"
Brian Austin Green didn't love it. He was, according to Mollin, "so upset! Oh my god, he felt betrayed! We were totally shocked and had no idea. But, then, of course, we realized why: because other people would be kissing and feeling up his girlfriend! That’s what the guys do. That’s their free shot."
In the end, Tiffani's character, Valerie Malone, was a character the writers crafted into something completely new for the show. Mollin recalled Malone's debut episode where she was show doing "that one-hand pot-smoking/rolling thing," and how "her character just took off. She was a total two-faced character and we really hadn’t had anyone like that on the show. We brought in the character and it totally helped lift the show up a bit for a while."
Agree or disagree? - 4
Aaron Spelling Felt Uncomfortable About How His Daughter Was Dressed On The Show
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Donna Martin, played by Tori Spelling, became a fashion designer as 90210 progressed, a testament to her affinity for clothes and style. On the show, Spelling was often shown wearing garments that showed a lot of skin - enough to test her father and executive producer Aaron Spelling's comfort level.
Spelling, who was cast on the show after auditioning using a pseudonym, often donned small swimsuits, something her father noted in an interview with Rolling Stone. He said, "They always put her in the smallest bikinis in the world. As a producer, I don’t mind, but as a father, well … the mermaid outfit really freaked me out.”
Agree or disagree? - 5
Shannen Doherty Got In A Fight With Another Actor At An LA Nightclub
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When Shannen Doherty got into a fight with Bonita Money in 1992, it was supposedly in defense of her costar, Brian Austin Green. While partying at the Roxbury in Los Angeles, Green supposedly stepped on Money's boyfriend's foot, which prompted an altercation.
Doherty shoved Money and reportedly took a blow to the face, both later charged with misdemeanor battery.
Green later recalled, "Shannen did nothing and she was the bad girl. The other person totally started it."
The event wasn't Doherty's only encounter with the law. In 1993, her former fiance, Dean Jay Factor, requested a restraining order, claiming Doherty had tried to run over him with her car. He also alleged Doherty, "Threatened to hire a few guys to beat me up and to [attack me] ‘on the front lawn."
While Doherty's father, Tom, insisted Factor was actually abusing his daughter, another of her former boyfriends, Chris Foufas, claimed otherwise. Foufas stated that he, "Could have predicted this before it happened...things move along smoothly for a while, and then something snaps and she goes into another drive: rage."
Agree or disagree? - 6
A Pregnancy Storyline Had To Be Written Into The Show When Gabrielle Carteris Got Pregnant In Real Life
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When Gabrielle Carteris became pregnant during the fifth season of Beverly Hills 90210, she was concerned about how the executive producer Aaron Spelling would react. Carteris had approached Spelling about what would happen should she be pregnant and recalled that he was supportive. In Carteris' telling, "He was great...When I came to him and said I wanted to get pregnant, would you write it in, he said, 'Absolutely.'"
Her character, Andrea, became pregnant when Carteris did, but according to Larry Mollin, writer and producer on the show from 1993 to 1997, there was resistance to the pregnancy from other show executives. Mollin said, "We asked her politely...if she could just hold back" because they "didn't want to do a baby."
In the end, it did become a storyline, one that Mollin used to express some of his own personal history. He explained, "I actually used my whole personal story for it. Her premature baby and all that came out of my life. We gave it a good shot."
Mollin wasn't a fan of Mark D. Espinoza, however. In his opinion, Espinoza, who played Jesse Vasquez, and Carteris, "Just didn’t really click. It didn’t really add to us. It took away a lot of the fun, to have to be in this grown-up stuff. We eventually just didn’t think it was going to work, and I don’t know who made the decision; I guess it was the old man. She was done. She was gone. We sent her off to Yale."
Agree or disagree? - 7
Fans Were So Intense That The Cast Sometimes Had To Be Smuggled Out Of Venues In Laundry Hampers
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Beverly Hills 90210 made Luke Perry a heartthrob. Fans were so taken with him that they fainted and made it unsafe for him to make public appearances. In an interview Perry gave to Rolling Stone in 1992, he recalled, "I had a girl in Denver, she just wasn’t breathing,” he says. “She fainted right in front of me. And I was going, ‘Hey, hey, breathe, hey, hey.’"
On another occasion, he had to sneak out of a mall in Seattle in a laundry hamper. As a result, he decided that photo-ops and the like weren't worth it anymore and he was "through with the laundry mass-transit system."
The fans went to great lengths for the show, but it didn't just stop with ambushing Perry. Mark D. Espinoza, who played character Andrea Zuckerman's husband, Jesse Vasquez, on the show, remembered the day he told his sister he'd be on the show:
I called my sister the day I found out I got the job, and she said, "Oh my gosh! I can't believe this'".... She flipped out. For them, it was the biggest thing in the world. They were far more excited than I was. Then my sister tells me, `You know, we named Gabrielle [their daughter] after Gabrielle Carteris." She and her husband had been watching the show since it began. He is still a rabid fan of Gabrielle Carteris.
Agree or disagree? - 8
Jamie Walters Was Fired From The Show Because Fans Hated His Character So Much
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Ray Pruitt - Donna Martin's boyfriend - was played by Jamie Walters starting in Season 5 of 90210. The guitar-playing singer was shown pushing Donna (Tori Spelling) down a flight of stairs at the end of the season, something that bought him no favor from viewers. Larry Mollin explained, "We had this whole plan. He was going to go to rehab because he was an abused child. We were going to redeem him because we liked him. He was a wonderful kid."
Unfortunately for Walters, they couldn't save him in time. Mollin revealed that fans wrote to Aaron Spelling, complaining about the character of Ray and the whole plot surrounding his relationship with Donna:
There was a lot of mail to the old man–“How can Donna be so stupid and be with this guy?”–so we came in to start the new season, which was right after since we only had like a week or two off because we were doing 32, and he goes “You have to get rid of him.” And we go, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You have to get rid of him. Everyone thinks Tori’s stupid.” There was no arguing with him. That was all he cared about. So we had to fire him.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly after his exit, Walters said, "It’s fun to play a bad guy, I won’t lie to you.... I just had people coming up to me all the time. I couldn’t go to the grocery store without little old ladies smacking me over the head with their purses and telling me to start being nicer to that nice little blonde girl on TV."
Agree or disagree? - 9
Luke Perry And Jason Priestley Consulted With Tom Jones On How To Handle Their Sudden Fame
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Luke Perry and Jason Priestley were both taken aback by their fame and heartthrob statuses, so they turned to singer and idol in his own right, Tom Jones, for help. According to Perry, “Jason and I went out with Tom Jones, had some drinks and dinner...you know, basically getting advice on ‘Look, Tom, this sh*t is happening to us really quickly, and how do we deal with it?’"
Perry didn't elaborate on what guidance Jones gave him or Priestley, but apparently, the 90210 costars ended up singing with the international star before the night came to an end. Priestley recalled, “It was unbelievable, man...I mean, what right did we have to be sitting there at a table with Tom Jones?”
Tom Jones, in his telling of his friendship with Perry and Priestley, indicated he, "Told them to just enjoy it. As long as you're doing what you enjoy and not performing just because it's commercial. Do it while you're young because a lot of people have thrown it away. And don't believe your own publicity.''
Agree or disagree? - 10
Douglas Emerson Gave Up Acting After Being Written Off The Show
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Douglas Emerson played Scott Scanlon on Beverly Hills 90210 during the show's first two seasons. As the best friend of David Silver (portrayed by Brian Austin Green), Scanlon was a bit nerdy and represented the antithesis to what Silver wanted most - popularity. Emerson, described by Gabrielle Carteris as a "very nice guy with wide-eyed excitement," fit in on set, but his character was written off during the second season.
According to Emerson, he was saddened once he was "no longer really a part of" 90210, but other reports indicate he wanted to leave. Either way, Emerson gave up acting, enrolled in junior college, and continued on to Pepperdine University. He dropped out and joined the Air Force in 1996, something his brother, Toby, said was in Emerson family blood.
Agree or disagree? - 11
Security Had To Stop Jennie Garth And Shannen Doherty From Throwing Fists
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Jennie Garth, who played Kelly Taylor on the show, wasn't the first choice for the role. Garth indicated in her memoir, Deep Thought From a Hollywood Blonde, that she was a novice and producers were looking for "seasoned actors." Garth managed to get some face-time with Aaron Spelling, however, and soon found herself opposite one of those seasoned actors - Shannen Doherty.
Garth and Doherty were at odds while filming 90210, even coming to blows on occasion. According to Garth:
I don't know why it is, but there is a universal truth that when you put three teenage girls together, some serious sh*t is going to go down.... Poor Tori, the youngest of the three of us was, inevitably, often caught in the middle and she was always trying to smooth things over, trying to get Shan and me off each other's backs and get along, but her efforts usually failed.
Tori Spelling's efforts to mediate the tension between Garth and Doherty did indeed fail, especially when the two came to blows on one occasion. Garth remembered that they "took it outside" but that they never actually fought because "the [security] guys...held us back."
Spelling hid in her dressing room as the scene unfolded, later shedding light on the cause of the argument. Spelling recalled, “You guys were teasing each other and she, like, pulled your skirt up.”
Agree or disagree? - 12
Shannen Doherty Was Fired After She Got A Haircut Mid-Episode
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Stories about Shannen Doherty's behavior on the set of 90210 and behind the scenes earned her a "bad girl" reputation during the 1990s. According to Larry Mollin, a producer and writer on 90210 from 1993 to 1997, "the writers loved Shannen...[but] she's tough on set." Mollin continued:
She just kind of pissed everyone off eventually and she pissed off the most important person, which was, you know, Tori [Spelling, Donna]. And not only that, she introduced Tori to a man who beat her. So that pretty much put the death card on her. So that was pretty much that.
Doherty was reportedly late (she claims that has been overstated) and, in Jason Priestley's words, "truly did not give a sh*t."
The drama and tension surrounding Doherty finally reached its breaking point when she showed up on set one day having cut her hair. Again, Mollin explained:
In the middle of a show, she cut her hair and totally screwed us up for continuity so everyone was pissed off at her. Like I said, not the writers so much, but the producer people. And the other kids were out to get her head, because she had pissed everybody off, and they basically went to the old man [Aaron Spelling] and said she had to go.
Aaron Spelling did fire Doherty, later hiring her on Charmed, and replaced her with Tiffany Amber Theissen on 90210. He later said Doherty "thought it was time to go. And the cast did too."
For her part, Tori Spelling later admitted she'd played a large role in getting Doherty fired. "[I was] a part of something, a movement, that cost someone their livelihood.... Was she a horrible person? No. She was one of the best friends I ever had.”
Agree or disagree?
