Lifetime sure has taken a liking to making unauthorized movies about our ’90s obsessions.
They’ve already tackled sitcom favorites Full House and Saved by the Bell, which turned out to have more going on offscreen than we could ever have imagined. Now, they’re turning to dramas that were filled with angst, so we can only imagine that the behind-the-scenes turmoil was even juicier than any scripted story line could have ever been.
The channel recently revealed the cast of TheUnauthorized Beverly Hills 90210 Story, and while the actors they chose don’t really look as much like Dylan, Donna, Kelly, Brandon, Brenda and David as we had hoped for, the images still conjure up feelings of hope. Hope that the behind-the-scenes plot is filled with as much soapy goodness as the original 90210 show.
Here are all the dirty-laundry dramas we hope are aired.
1. Shannen Doherty’s beef with Jennie Garth
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There were always rumors that Garth and Doherty were on-set rivals and Garth confirmed it was true to E! in 2014. “It was more of just young girls finding their way and finding their individual voices,” Garth said. “Shannen and I are both Aries women, we’re both very strong, independent women, so we butt heads a lot.”
More: Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth with shirtless Ian Ziering
That’s putting it nicely. We have a feeling Garth was playing down what really happened back in the day, and hope that Lifetime has the real “unauthorized” story.
2. Shannen Doherty’s beef with production
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Though Doherty was a great actress, according to writer-producer Larry Mollin, she was no cakewalk on the set. She was high maintenance, to say the least, and Mollin says that’s why her character was eventually sent overseas. They didn’t want her off the show, but they weren’t quite sure how to keep her on, either. The final straw came when Doherty chopped off her hair without approval around the same time she introduced Tori Spelling to a man who eventually became abusive, causing a rift between Doherty and Tori’s father and the show’s creator, Aaron Spelling.
3. Jennie Garth’s beef with Tiffani Thiessen
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“We had a falling apart and we grew apart,” Thiessen told Howard Stern in 2012. “I was the one who was hurt, let’s just say that. I was the one who was hurt.”
Like Garth with Doherty, Thiessen seems to be taking the high road and glossing over what really happened. We’re counting on Lifetime for some details.
4. Jennie Garth’s struggle with fame
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Garth has been very candid about how becoming a superstar overnight at the age of 19 affected her mental health. She revealed in her 2014 book, Deep Thoughts From a Hollywood Blonde, that the pressure of having fans approach her outside of work gave her extreme anxiety to the point where she didn’t even want to leave her house to run errands. “I began to suffer a level of anxiety that was, at times, nearly paralyzing,” she said. “When the panic attacks started to kick in, I became even more withdrawn.”
This is obviously one of the darker elements of the behind-the-scenes story, but it’s important to talk about, and Garth is obviously open to this part of her life being shared.
5. The crazy partying
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According to Garth, drugs and partying were commonplace on set and the teenage cast had a staff of PAs waiting to fulfill their every need. “They wouldn’t have batted an eye if I asked for a bagel and a bump of coke, come to think of it, but I usually just had coffee,” she said.
6. Donna Martin fornicates
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Remember the scene when Donna almost didn’t graduate from high school and the crowd is chanting, “Donna Martin graduates”? Yeah, that’s not what they were really saying. Apparently, Jason Priestley led the group in yelling, “Donna Martin fornicates,” and the words that aired had to be dubbed in. This undoubtedly had to have ruffled Aaron Spelling’s feathers, considering he was dead set on keeping Donna/Tori’s image squeaky clean.
Will Spelling rip Priestley a new one in the tell-all?
7. Gabrielle Carteris baby drama
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Mollin said in an interview that they “politely” asked Carteris to “hold back” on getting pregnant because they didn’t want to have to deal with a pregnancy in the story line. Carteris did not abide. “She got pregnant and was having the baby and there was nothing we could do,” Mollin said.
Doesn’t sound like production was very sensitive to Carteris’ goals of having a family. That had to be sticky.
8. Hookups galore
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In an interview with Access Hollywood, Priestley basically admits that everyone was hooking up with everyone, and he didn’t confirm or deny that he had even hooked up with his on-screen sister, played by Doherty.
9. The firing of Jamie Walters
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According to Mollin, everyone loved working with Jamie Walters, who played Donna’s boyfriend, Ray Pruit. The writers had planned redemption for Ray after he pushed Donna down the stairs, but Aaron Spelling wasn’t having it. “He goes, ‘You have to get rid of him. Everyone thinks Tori’s stupid,'” said Mollin. “There was no arguing with him. That was all he cared about. So we had to fire him. It was just devastating that I had to tell him that. We had just signed him for a million dollars, but he got to walk away with his money. But it was still devastating for him. We left him as a beater, which stayed with him, unfortunately. People thought that he was a beater. It was terrible.”
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