Beverly Hills, 90210 was a series with a youth telenovela format broadcast from October 4, 1990 to May 17, 2000 in primetime on FOX in the United States and later on various networks around the world.
The series was about the life of a group of young people who lived in the luxurious and affluent community of Beverly Hills, California and attended the fictional West Beverly Hills High School and then the also fictional California University. The show was created by Darren Star and produced by Aaron Spelling. The «90210» in the title refers to one of the area’s ZIP codes (or ZIP code).
The main characters were originally the Walsh twins, Brandon (played by Jason Priestley) and Brenda (played by Shannen Doherty), who moved in with their parents, Jim and Cindy, from Wayzata, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, to Beverly Hills. However, as time passed, it focused on other aspects of California youth current affairs such as dating rapes, alcoholism, drug abuse, youth suicide and early pregnancy, leaving aside the initial format.
The series gained popularity during the summer of 1991, when FOX aired a special called «summer season,» while most of the series were on their usual summer break. By the beginning of the fall in the United States, the series had become one of the most popular on the FOX network. Followers of the series increased dramatically and cast members, particularly Jason Priestley and Luke Perry, became youth idols, while actresses Shannen Doherty, Jennie Garth, and Tori Spelling became household names on American television.
None of its members were prepared for fame and that resulted in explosive clashes behind the scenes.
Its original name was going to be Class of Beverly Hills , but its creator, Darren Star, decided to leave only the name of the luxurious Los Angeles city and add the zip code to it.
Although today it is considered a cult series, its first season really had a mediocre rating, but everything changed in its last episode, when the characters of Brenda and Dylan had their first time, thus attracting the adolescent public in the United States of the already distant 1990 .
The Fox network cleverly decided to order new episodes to air in the summer, when young people were on vacation … and the madness broke out.
During the last decade of the 20th century it became the most popular program among young people and not only in the United States, in Latin America there was a whole generation marked by the adventures of Brenda, Brandon, Donna, Kelly, Dylan, David, Steve and Andrea . In Spain it also made an epoch with the title of Sensation of Living.
But none of its members – Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, Tori Spelling, Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty, Luke Perry, Brian Austin Green and Gabrielle Carteris – was prepared for such sudden fame.
“In a few weeks we went from being just another generic cast of any primetime drama to being superstars,” Jennie Garth wrote in her 2013 memoir. “I don’t think any of us were prepared for the stardom that was imposed on us this way. ”.
Fame and her youth were only the fuel to ignite legendary fights, the main ones starring Jennie (Kelly) herself and Shannen Doherty (Brenda).
«She really didn’t give a shit,» Priestley (Brandon) wrote in his memoir about the actress who played Brenda, his sister on the small screen. «It was a very good attitude, until it wasn’t.»
Doherty was on the series from 1990 to 1994 and her departure came amid strong accusations about her «diva» behavior.
«His tardiness was appalling, and he had a callous attitude and a nonchalance,» producer Charles Rosin told Entertainment Weekly, which was seconded by Aaron Spelling, the strong man behind the series. «It wasn’t that he ruined the show or something, it just pissed off the cast members tremendously.»
Perhaps it was with Jennie that he had the strongest fights. “I was catapulted into that (fame) as a teenager and not really having an instruction booklet on how to deal with it. We were locked up from 14 to 16 hours a day. There were times when we loved each other and times when we wanted to put our eyes out, ”Garth revealed.
“I don’t know why this is the case, but there is a universal truth that when three teenagers get together, something serious is going to happen. Poor Tori, the youngest of the three was inevitably often caught in the middle and she was always trying to smooth things over, trying to get Shan and me off our shoulders, and get along, but her efforts usually failed. ”, He recounted in his book.
The tension escalated to the point that there could even be closed-fist punches (some say that punches did, in fact, fly) and all because Doherty had pulled up Garth’s skirt while filming a scene. “I broke down and yelled at him, something like, ‘Come. Go ahead bitch! Let’s talk about this outside! ‘
In an interview in August 2019, Shannen commented that it was all a great accumulation of «misunderstandings», but the truth was that, at that time of splendor of the series, Tori Spelling – Aaron’s daughter and in charge of giving life to Donna- went to her father, representing the entire cast, to ask him to fire Doherty.
“I felt like I was part of something, a movement, that cost someone their livelihood,” said a moved Spelling in 2015. “Was she a horrible person? No. She was one of the best friends I’ve ever had, «he acknowledged.
By this time, Shannen had angered the production by her decision to cut her hair in the middle of the season four filming, which posed a challenge for the continuity of the scenes, so the writers decided to remove Brenda from Beverly. Hills and send her to London in search of an acting career.
«It’s not that I went one day and said ‘I’m leaving.’ Leaving the series was a very long process. Aaron got as tired of me as I got of the show, and I think it was because the notoriety was too much. People started hating the character and I couldn’t bear that mistreatment. Nobody separated the actress from the character. I got fed up with people and assumed I was just as spoiled and mean as Brenda. It was all very painful, ”Shannen recalled years later.
Shannen’s replacement was found in Tiffani Amber-Thiesen, who was already famous thanks to the Saved by the Bell series.
But her addition to the show, in the role of the bad girl (with her first scene smoking marijuana), also created some drama.
Her then-boyfriend, Brian Austin Green, didn’t want Tiffani to be a part of Beverly Hills 90210.
When we chose her, Brian was so upset! My God, he felt betrayed! «Said executive producer Larry Mollin. “We were totally shocked and we had no idea. But, of course, we realized why: because other people would be kissing his girlfriend! ”.
A lot of passion
But if the issue of the fights had escaped the protection of privacy in the forum for a long time, what there was little information about, although there was a lot of suspicion, was the episodes of passion within its cast.
And Jason Priestley only confirmed it in his memoirs published in May 2014. «Various combinations of people slept with each other over the years,» he wrote in the book without giving more details about the protagonists of those encounters.
What he did talk about was his five-year romance with Christine Elise – a recurring actress in the cast who did not enjoy the sympathy of the show’s stars – which he defined as a «full-fledged adult relationship.»
Months later, when participating in Celebrity Lie Detector , Tori Spelling revealed a «summer affair» with Jason himself, said that she dated Brian Austin Green for a while and that she once kissed Luke Perry. «I’m not going into this … it’s nobody’s business,» was Priestley’s reply on Twitter.
But the passion did not stop there, after dating Tiffani, Brian Austin-Green began an affair with Vanessa Marcil, with whom he had a son before they separated.
Restrictions
Jessica Alba revealed that the original actors didn’t even want to be looked at in the eye.
Alba participated as a guest actress in 1998, playing a pregnant teenager.
«On the set of 90210 , I couldn’t even make eye contact with any of the cast members, which was really weird when you’re trying to do a scene with them,» he said on the web series Hot Ones . «Yeah, it was like, ‘You can’t make eye contact with any of the cast members or you’ll be kicked off the set.’
Jason Priestley did not know anything about the subject and in an interview for the radio program «The Rox & Mocha Show» he regretted that Alba had gone through such an experience.
“I don’t think I even worked with her. She was in a story that I had nothing to do with, so I don’t know what her experience was on the show, but I’m sorry that happened to her and it seems really incongruous with everything else that happened on our show. «
Ravages of fame
In addition to his explosive fights with Shannen, Garth had to endure his internal battle with anxiety from the age of 19.
«I felt comfortable, almost comforted, with all the workers around me during the day, but after hours, I would get anxious when strangers approached me,» she recalled in her biography. “And such simple tasks, like going to the supermarket or the mall, or getting gas, became overwhelming exercises having to be ‘on’ when my natural inclination was not to interact with anyone. When the panic attacks started to kick in, I became even more withdrawn. «
The actress stopped going out to have fun and preferred to stay home. «I wouldn’t say I ever crossed the line into full-blown agoraphobia, but I would say I was definitely close.»
And, in the case of the more content Ian Ziering, he starred in a moment of fury when he found out that some scenes of him had been cut in an episode where his character was accused of rape. “They edited such powerful things. That was the first time I really had good words to say and I bought them. and I studied. I brought the game, and it didn’t even pass the edit. «
Your reaction? “I broke the dressing rooms. We all worked really hard for our characters and they didn’t even warn us… I’m not a volatile person, I have a very long fuse, but after working so hard on this particular episode, I just didn’t feel like they were with me. «
