Shannen Doherty: ‘I think I rubbed a lot of men in the business the wrong way’
Shannen Doherty is back, arguing she was unfairly typecast as a “b*tch” in the heady days of Beverly Hills 90210 — and, true to form, she’s not going quietly about it.
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Exclusive: Playing good girl turned bad, Brenda Walsh on cult high school series, Beverly Hills 90210 made Shannen Doherty a star.
Playing the star made Doherty one of the biggest TV divas of the 1990s — until she was reportedly fired in 1994, over her bad behaviour and written out of the show.
But as a “revival within a revival” of the classic teen drama — renamed BH 90210 — prepares to air (here on 10), Doherty is back, arguing she was unfairly typecast as a “b*tch” in those heady days — and, true to form, she’s not going quietly about it.
“I was a target [during the original show] because I was ahead of my time,” she tells News Corp, adding with a shrug, “I had an opinion.”
Rather than being a demanding, spoiled brat, whose young fame had brought out the worst in her, Doherty says she “was raised by amazing parents, who taught me not to be walked over by anyone, and I went into everything with that mentality. I think that rubbed a lot of men in the business the wrong way.
“If I had done any of that now with the backdrop of the #metoo movement, I’d be praised for standing up for myself. I wouldn’t be called a b*tch.”
Her co-star and on-screen brother, Jason Priestley might tell you a different story, having scored plenty of mileage by writing up her alleged antics in his creatively-named memoir, Jason Priestley: A Memoir.
Specifically, he claims Doherty pitched a fit during a promotional trip to New York, after she was picked up for the airport transfer in a “town car not a limo”.
He writes: “That was just the beginning. I looked on, becoming more uneasy by the minute as she began bitching about the short notice and the food on board and the temperature in the cabin and everything else.”
Whether it was animosity over those allegations, or as she claims the other personal hurdles she was facing — including an ongoing battle with breast cancer — Doherty was the only key cast member from the original gang — including Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, Brian Austin Green and Gabrielle Carteris — who had refused to sign up for the mockumentary-style reboot.
That was until the death of 90210 favourite, Luke Perry in February.
The James Dean-lookalike, who until his death was starring in Netflix series, Riverdale, suffered a fatal stroke at his Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles home — with his devastated co-stars banding together again.
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In a move which would have made her late super producer father Aaron Spelling proud, Tori would emerge the driving force behind BH 90210 — conceiving the idea of a comeback using fictionalised versions of the cast members with Garth.
“It was a passion project for us,” Garth says. “Tori and I have been working on it for over two years. Tori is my one friend who has been there through the highs, the lows, friendships, marriage, babies, divorce, death, everything. We’ve stayed on the same page since we met.”
Garth adds: “The timing [of Perry’s death] was eerie. During the process of the entire group reconnecting, we were the only ones each other wanted to talk to [about the tragedy], and be with, because we understood what it was like to lose someone that was such a huge part of our life.”
Doherty is anxious to clarify what her early reluctance was all about — lest the gossips make her the villain yet again.
“I want to be really clear: I wasn’t saying no to the show for any reason other than it not being the right time for me. I was going through a lot with the Woolsey Fire [a hugely destructive wildfire in 2018 which levelled hundreds of homes and severely damaged Doherty’s home; prompting a difficult struggle with her insurance company]. And also, health-wise with my cancer. [She has battled breast cancer since 2015, which spread to her lymph nodes but is currently in remission].
“It’s an up and down roller coaster,” she explains.
“It doesn’t matter if you are in remission, you are still getting tested all the time and I’m always hyper aware of it.”
Steeling herself, she adds: “I went through a huge battle. I had so much chemo, so much radiation, and that’s long lasting. Your body is definitely more tired, you get exhausted easier and, for me, it just became one of those questions of like, ‘Am I ready to go back to that daily grind, and do I want to?’”
But there were other elements that didn’t sit right with her, notably, the show’s scripting, which blends fact with fiction.
“Look, I’m not a reality person, I’m an actor,” she says, “and because life is so precious for me now, I really try to do things that I can delve into and leave all of my baggage behind and crawl into the skin of a character.”
Green, Spelling and Garth “graciously came back to me a couple of times,” Doherty says, the last time being after Perry’s passing.
“Well, that altered things for me drastically. I felt it was a way to honour somebody who meant a lot to me personally, a way to sort of tip your hat to the fact that we were all on this show, which was incredibly important back in the 90s, and what it did for all of us and our careers.”
Doherty says: “We could hold hands in unity and say, ‘We are in this together, we lost a very important person and we’re going to go through this journey together’.”
She adds: “In the end, it was fun creating these heightened versions of ourselves, and I still found a way to make her not me.”
* BH 90210 airs 8.30pm, Tuesday, September 24 on 10.