September 1991 - Shannen Doherty, Luke Perry, Jaqson Priestley and all the "Beverly Hills, 90210" gang at the US magazine.
THE FALL ENTERTAINMENT PREVIEW
For everything, there is an entertainment season. You may want to take it all in or turn, turn, turn it all off, but one thing's for sure, you can't avoid it. So kick back, look at what's in store and take your pick. • The networks' experimental phase seems to be over (for now). Sitcoms are flourishing, with very few hour-long dramas on the schedule. Pfeiffer, Pacino and Moore are all going to be visiting a theater near you. Mariah Carey and Barbra Streisand will try to fill the void left by the lack of the long-awaited Bruce Springsteen album. But what makes entertainment so exciting are the inevitable surprises. After all, who would have picked a rotund guy named Schwarzkopf to be the star of last year's fall season? Only in America.
FAST TIMES AT TEEN ANGST HIGH
Take a handful of beautiful babes and Doherty. After he demands refreshments, extra bedding and hunks, toss in some smart story lines, add a liberal dose of adolescent hor- mones, give it time to simmer and what have you got? TV's coolest prime-time hit: 'Beverly Hills, 90210'.
By Karen Schoemer, Photographs by Timothy White.
BARE-CHESTED AND GRINNING, LUKE PERRY stands on the Beverly Hills, 90210 soundstage, prepping for a scene. Two women from the crew hover over him: One lightly dabs his face with a makeup sponge, and the other fastidiously wraps his lean torso in a cotton bandage to signify the broken ribs Perry's character,
Dylan McKay, has sustained in a surfing accident. Perry holds his arms above his head and chats merrily about his "studly" physique and "the large shadows cast by my chest," before he dons a white T-shirt through which the bandages poke sympathetically. Preparations complete, he takes a quick drag or two from a Marlboro Light and saunters onto the set. Time to go to work. Time for a make-out scene.
Perry lies down on a couch in the Walsh family living room. With his arm draped luxuriously over the sofa's back and his head cushioned by piles of pillows, he suggests nothing so much as a Roman aristocrat waiting for his grapes to be peeled. In fact, this particular episode has the recuperating Dylan being waited on hand and foot by ex-girlfriend Brenda Walsh, played by Shannen reading material, Brenda stands before him and says with more than a hint of sarcasm, "Anything else?" "Just one more thing," whispers Dylan seductively. "You." Brenda falls on top of him, and the two share a passionate reconciliatory smooch.
"We're trying to keep the set clear," says the assistant director with attempted delicacy. The remark would probably be lost on Perry, who isn't the least bit shy about his vocational duties. "It beats other jobs I've had," Perry says later. "Kissing girls for a living is not a bad way to go.'
Perry has every reason to be enjoying life right now: Beverly Hills, 90210, airing Thursday nights on Fox, is one of the hottest shows on television, and its cast - especially Perry, Doherty, and Jason Priestley, who plays the show's leading man, Brandon Walsh have become some of the most talked-about young actors in Hollywood. Set in a ritzy Beverly Hills high school, 90210 looks at such teen issues as pregnancy, drunk driving, peer pressure and AIDS through the eyes of the Walsh kids, two transplanted Minnesotans. Like a pubescent thirtysomething, 90210 truly excels at melodrama; a single hour of the show packs enough teen angst to fill a year's worth of scrawled diary entries.
Also like thirtysomething, 90210 works on a deceptively simple formula: quality writers, quality directors, and a creative team that balances youthful enthusiasm with years of TV experience. The husband-and-wife team of Steve Wasserman and Jessica Klein, the series' story editors, have written for CBS's smart smash, Northern Exposure. Writer and executive producer Charles Rosin produced several made-for-TV movies and was the supervising producer at Northern Exposure last season. Episode directors have included movie folk like Tim Hunter (The River's Edge) and such cuttingedge TV directors as Charles Braverman (The Brotherhood of Justice). Rounding out the team are 30-year-old creator/ writer/supervising producer Darren Star, a newcomer whose 90210 pilot was the first he'd ever written, and TV production legend Aaron Spelling (his long career includes megahits like Dynasty, The Love Boat, The Mod Squad and Charlie's Angels) whose company produces the show.
Not exactly known for his small-screen depictions of teenagers, Spelling came to the show after Star had sold his pilot to Fox. "Fox called and said, 'Would you like to do a high school show?' and I said, 'Not particularly," Spelling recalls. "I said that I don't know how to do Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. They said, 'No, no, we'd like to do a show in Beverly Hills, with strangers from a foreign land like Minnesota coming to it.' I said, 'That's intriguing.' I really got excited." (Later, Spelling's 18-year-old daughter, Tori, auditioned behind her father's back and was cast in a supporting role.)
DESPITE THE STRONG CREATIVE TEAM, Fox obviously didn't know what it had: 90210 debuted in the fall of 1990 with no fanfare, no hype, no colossal marketing schemes and no ratings. Although many of the cast members had worked in television before ─ Priestley in the sitcom Sister Kate, Doherty in the series Our House, Perry in the daytime soap Loving ─ certainly none had much name recognition with the viewing public. By December, the show was slogging along in the bowels of the ratings, while its cast and crew grew increasingly frustrated. "We were so marginal for so long," says Charles Rosin. "We went into the [Fox] network and said, 'Listen, unless you start promoting us, no one's going to know we're here.'
Fox agreed and went into promotional overdrive, with immediate results: The ratings began to rise once teen America got a look at Priestley and his young cohorts. (Incidentally, most of the cast won't reveal their real ages ─ they are rumored to be well into their 20s ─ for fear that it will ruin the illusion of them as high school students.) By the end of February, the show was in the Number Two position behind Cheers for its time slot; by April, Priestley was being hailed as the new teen heartthrob; and by the season's end in May, Perry was being hailed as the newer teen heartthrob, and 90210 was approaching the Nielsen Top 40.
Then Fox unveiled a revolutionary strategy: Instead of the normal three-month hiatus, 90210 would go back to work and prepare seven new episodes to air during the summer, in addition to the standard twenty-three episodes for the regular season. "Thirty shows!" says Spelling. "It's a gamble, but I'll tell you, they've got guts.' (And smarts: The first summer episode rocketed the series into the Top 20.)
Like Fox's previous youth smash, 21 Jump Street, 90210's success could be attributed to its gorgeous cast, hot topics and sympathetic characters. Then again, the most important ingredient may be the series' uncondescending view of the problems of preadulthood. As Darren Star notes, "Teenagers take themselves very seriously and really see their lives in terms of high dramatics, and I think the show represents that very well." Jessica Klein agrees: "The show is very honest, and the characters don't always do the right thing, which is, I think, terrific."
Around the set, happiness make that rampant, untethered giddiness ─ is the primary mode for most of the cast and crew. Call it climbing ratings, but the atmosphere on 90210 is phenomenally joyous. The actors joke and giggle with one another between takes; everybody walks around hugging and kissing each other; and director Braverman never once raises his voice. With the actors' spirits still high at ten o'clock on a Friday night, Braverman quips, "All right, guys, tense up!" as if all this relaxed fun is starting to get to him.
Mixed with the cast members' obvious enthusiasm, however, is a feeling of nervous edginess, an anxiety that the show's massive popularity might interfere with a formula that has worked up until now. "We're at a time that could really make or break the show," says Gabrielle Carteris, who plays school newspaper editor Andrea Zuckerman. "I think everybody thinks that we've made it, because we're in our second season and there's so much response. And it's exciting and it's scary because it's new for all of us."
"When you have a lot of hype around a show, it puts a lot of pressure on," adds James Eckhouse. "I just hope this show will be allowed to have its own life."
Not everyone on the show has such a philosophical outlook. After the first four weeks of shooting, during which the press was present nearly every day, Priestley demanded that the set be cleared while he was working and refused to do any more interviews with other cast members present. Some actors with secondary roles were squabbling over receiving inadequate press coverage. By mid-June, Jennie Garth, who plays Kelly Taylor, was showing signs of stress and, after almost collapsing on the set, was taken to the hospital (and quickly released).
In other words, the cast is being forced to deal with the consequences of their own popularity. And while most of the pressures are external, there does seem to be one internal source of tension on the set.
SHANNEN DOHERTY STANDS AT THE front of a classroom, looking anxious. She wears one of her trademark Brenda Walsh outfits: chocolate-colored stretch top, tan chinos, black boots. Her brown hair lies perfectly across her back as if it were carved out of stone; her round, graceful features look brittle and pinched.
Even though it's a hot June afternoon, school's in session for the cast of 90210, and actors, crew and extras are crowded into an airless room in an abandoned hospital building in Encino. The plot line has several of the characters ─ Brenda (Doherty), Andrea (Carteris), Donna (Tori Spelling) and freshman David Silver (Brian Austin Green) enrolled in a summer drama class, and today's topic is Shakespeare. Sixteenth-century England, it would seem, is a long way from twentieth-century prime time.
"I f---ed up, Chuck," says Doherty slowly, tragically, to Braverman.
She has just fumbled her lines for the fifth time. She walks over to the script supervisor, studies the speech and returns to her mark. She runs through the speech again and sits down.
"Cut," says Braverman, putting his hand to his forehead. This time, Doherty has left off the final line of her speech. "Let's try it again."
But the actress remains seated, her head down. Carteris and Tori Spelling quickly cluster around, as if trying to console her. Abruptly, Doherty gets up and runs out of the room, crying. There is a long, dead silence. Spelling gives a nonplussed shrug. Around the 90210 set, Doherty ─ an acting veteran who's appeared in everything from Little House on the Prairie to the cult teen movie Heathers ─ is usually described as “difficult.” Her mood swings are becoming the stuff of set legend; by the end of this particular afternoon, after returning to the set and completing her scene, she is gamboling through the classroom like a child on her birthday, giggling with costar Spelling, hugging Braverman and sitting in his lap. Between scenes on other days, she shuts the door of her dressing room and blares death-rock at ear-searing volume. Even Aaron Spelling admits, "She does some strange things.'
Braverman, who is jokingly referred to as "Shannen's director," tends to indulge her: He gently coaxes and has huddled one-on-one discussions with the actress. "Shannen and I have become closer and closer on each show," he says. "She's a very strong-willed woman. She used to disagree with me more when I would make a suggestion. Now she listens to me and, more often than not, she'll take it. One of the things I've done with Shannen is try to soften her character and make her more vulnerable. I think it's because I'm really crazy about her, and I don't want her to be the bad girl of 90210."
Doherty pulls up at the studio the following day in great spirits. She climbs out of her black BMW holding a shopping bag. "My house was so cold this morning I live in Malibu," she later explains, flashing a friendly smile. "I bought clothes so I could bundle up."
She steps lightly into the hair and makeup trailer to prepare for that day's scenes. "It was the Shakespeare," she says confidently when asked about the preceding day's difficulties. "I always know my lines, I never ─ I was in front of a crowd performing something I wasn't very familiar with. I've read Shakespeare, but I've never actually performed it before. So it's all very new to me. I got hot in there and I just got very nervous and then I couldn't get it straight. Also, when I screw up I get really mad at myself. So it was like a whole emotional breakdown that happened."
Doherty's makeup girl begins massaging her face with an electronic appliance that makes a sound like a bug zapper. "It takes out all the bacteria that's in your skin," Doherty explains. "Anyway, Chuck is very understanding. When I did start having this breakdown, he didn't really pressure me and was just like, 'Take your time, go slow, don't worry about it.' She moves down to the hair chair, reflecting on the show's growing success. "I just hope that the popularity doesn't change us in any way. Because we all want to be popular, and we all want the show to really take off, because it is a really good show. Give us a couple of years and let us establish our audience, and I think we will easily be in the Top 20. So it's good; it's just you can't let it affect you. In some ways it does change, the popularity does change it, but you can't all of a sudden think you can go out and do anything you want because you're a little bit famous."
The hair stylist holds up a lock of Doherty's eyebrow-length bangs and asks if she can trim them. "No," says Doherty flatly. She scrutinizes her face in the mirror. "I'm flying out to be in a celebrity softball tournament this weekend. A whole bunch of guys ─ a whole bunch of athletes ─ are going to be there."
LUKE PERRY IS CRYING. HE LIES curled up and trembling on a couch in the beach cabana set, located in a dif- ferent wing of the vacant hospital build- ing. A single candle, placed next to an old- fashioned photo cube, flickers light onto his face; around him the crew is frozen motionless, and the room's thick, heavy silence is broken only by Perry's barely audible sobs. The scene being filmed has Dylan returning to the bungalow where he used to spend summers with his family as a child; seeing the place much as he remembered it, he's overcome by difficult memories, and as the camera creeps clos- er to Perry's face, his performance becomes more vulnerable. All his earlier bravado has vanished. "Cut," whispers Braverman, as if reluctant to break the mood. "One more time."
Priestley, on set waiting to shoot the fol- lowing scene, decides to crack a joke. "Luke, can you get this right?" he calls out. "I don't want to be here all day."
Perry walks towards him, wiping his eyes. "You're being so mysterious," teas- es Priestley, affecting a lisp. "It's all so covert and dark."
Obviously in no mood for antics, Perry manages to respond, "Gotta get sensitive when the camera gets in there."
Priestley seems to take nothing seri- ously except the exact moment of execu- tion; when he's on the set, he yuks it up, yet as soon as the camera rolls he's com- pletely focused and seems to get impa- tient if he can't nail his scenes in two or three takes. “With Jason it's very easy and cool almost all the time," says Braverman.
"Jason's been our quarterback, keeping everybody on an even keel," raves Aaron Spelling, who also offers an opinion on his star's popularity. "I think Jason is the date that every girl would like to have. He's very attractive, he's sensitive, and he seems safe. That's why we brought in Luke Perry, because we thought we need- ed a character who was a little more off- center, who has a little James Dean."
The ploy has worked, perhaps too well: In the second season, Dylan seems to be overshadowing Brandon, the show's Richie Cunningham-style nice guy and all-around do-gooder, as the character with the most interesting emotional situ- ations. (Even Priestley seems to recognize certain limitations in the role: "Brandon," he says with something close to a sneer. "What is there to say about Brandon?")
Perry's fan mail is now coming in at a rate of some 500 letters a week, and he's only recently begun to grapple with the reality of his growing popularity. Earlier in the summer, a low-key promotional appearance in a Seattle area mall turned into a riot when some 5,000 screaming fans showed up instead of the expected turnout of a couple hundred. (Perry had to be hustled out in a laundry hamper.)
After he finishes his scene, Perry walks outside into the parking lot and sits down for a cigarette. "This particular scene was about a kid who was neglected by his father," he says. "[In real life] my rela- tionship with my father was very strained, and that kind of gives me a lot to draw on. You can never escape your past as an actor, because you always have to keep churning it up. I find that real dangerous."
Perry takes a look around the lot. "I used to make parking lots," he says suddenly, as if the irony of his situation has just hit him. "We'd pour the asphalt, paint the lines, make the curb, paint the stencils. The only thing I know how to do besides act is phys- ical labor. I was a paver, I was a cook, I drove people around in their Mercedes, I worked in a video store, I sold shoes, I worked in a hotel, made a lot of beds myself." He takes a drag and shakes his head. "When I think of the alternatives... my alternatives are not pleasant."
Priestley emerges from the building and invites himself into the conversation. "We get along because we come from the same school," he says loudly, grabbing Perry's cigarette.
"We're very similar," agrees Perry with an abrupt change of mood. "Know what you're doing, don't let anyone tell you anything different, have fun, and when the time comes, do your job ─”
"The work is very serious, and other than that─”
"Nothing is!" finishes Perry, and the pair lapse into an extended bout of male bond- ing and locker-room humor, all the pres- sures, demands and realities of their fast careers once again banished from their young skulls, at least temporarily.
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