Eventually all the auditioning I was doing paid off. I did a movie with Shelley Long called Troop Beverly Hills, had a guest appearance on a show called The Wizard, and I appeared on the sitcom Saved by the Bell. When I auditioned for the part of Violet Bickerstaff on Saved by the Bell, I pretty much did my Roger Spielonger character, snorting when I laughed, and got the part. The producers of Saved by the Bell were happy enough with my performance that they kept bringing back my character. I even had my first kiss on that show. It was with Screech. It’s true. My first kiss wasn’t with the cool surfer/ chef eleven years my senior. It was with Screech, the biggest dork on national television. My dad had nothing to do with any of these jobs, and I was really proud of that. (I know, Saved by the Bell isn’t Citizen Kane, but it was a well-earned paycheck.)
Then I made an interesting discovery while rooting through my father’s briefcase. I liked to read his scripts and make casting suggestions, but this time I picked up a script for a pilot—the first episode of a TV show—called Class of Beverly Hills. As I started reading it, I realized that every single part called for someone my age. I was blown away—it was the first script I’d ever seen of his that had all teenage characters. At the time there weren’t any hour-long dramas that had an all-teenage cast. I didn’t really want to ask my father for a part—I was doing pretty well on my own. But I called my agent and told her about it. She said, “Do you want me to get you an audition?” I told her that I was embarrassed to go in as the boss’s daughter. If I got the part, I wanted it to be because I deserved it. I said, “Can’t you just tell them a fake name?” I’m sure she thought that was adorable. Here I was, a tenth grader, a kid actor trying to make it. No question she was going to drop my father’s name. But she humored me, saying, “Okay, what fake name would you like me to give them?” I wanted to keep Tori—I knew if they called “Susan” or “Marie” up to the stage, I’d forget my alias and blow the whole audition. I’d just seen a TV movie of my dad’s called Rich Men, Single Women in which Heather Locklear played a character named Tori Mitchell, so I just went with that. Subtle, huh? Next thing I knew, I had an audition set up with the director and casting director. There’s not a shot in hell that they didn’t know it was me.
I read for the part of a character called Kelly in Class of Beverly Hills. I didn’t get Kelly, but they offered me the consolation part of Donna, a small character who had all of three lines in the pilot. Clearly, my dad had said, “Just give my daughter some small role.” But I was happy to accept any part. Eventually it was all over the press that I’d auditioned for the role with a fake name but that everyone had known it was me. How exactly did that story get out? Oh, my father thought it was so cute that he told it all over town. And why did he have so many opportunities to tell it? Because Class of Beverly Hills, which was renamed Beverly Hills, 90210, would become a hit.
CHAPTER FOUR
They Hated Me at Hello
We shot the pilot for Beverly Hills, 90210 when I was in tenth grade, and by the time eleventh grade started, the show was up and running. On the first day of work I arrived at the set an hour early, parked a block away, and sat there waiting—for an hour in my car—until the time I was scheduled to show up on set. The cast and crew knew I was the producer’s daughter. Undoubtedly, they assumed that was why I had the job, and they weren’t wrong. I had everything to prove. I was terrified, but I was used to being scared. Maybe it was growing up with the Madame Alexander dolls. Regardless, I was there early the first day; I planned to be early every day thereafter; and I was determined to say every line perfectly so nobody could find anything bad to say about me. I didn’t expect they’d pay much attention to me anyway—I was just a bit player.
I was intrigued by my costars, but for a long time I was too shy to be myself around them. From the moment we met while filming the pilot, I had an insta-crush on Brian Austin Green, and there was always a little spark between us, through all the years of the show (more on that later). I thought Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty seemed cool, but I barely spoke to them until a week into shooting the pilot, when we were almost done. There was a party scene with me, Jennie (who played Kelly), Shannen (who played Brenda), and a guest cast girl. The shoot went late, until midnight, and I started acting goofy and self-deprecating. Jennie said, “You’re funny! You seemed so shy.” It doesn’t seem like much, but that was a turning point. From then on Shannen, Jennie, and I were friends. Ian Ziering (Steve) and Jason Priestley (Brandon) somehow seemed much older than I was, and we really only became friends years later. And as for Luke Perry (Dylan), when I first started, he was just the cool, inaccessible older guy. He was always flirtatious. He called me “Camel” because he said I had long eyelashes like a camel. Trust me, Luke Perry can call you “Camel” and make it sound sexy. When you were with him, he made you feel like you were the only other person in the world. But either because he was a guy or because of the age difference, it was tough for me to have a true heart-to-heart with him. Only later would I realize what a loyal friend he really was.
When the show first started, I had a really small part. Donna had about two lines per episode, and those lines were mostly complex dramatic encounters wherein I had to say something as deep and meaningful as “Hi, Brenda” or “See ya later, Kelly.” Sort of the sixteen-year-old version of “Hi, Uncle Dan.” Thank God for all those acting lessons.
So few lines, and yet in response to my delivery of them, the press had a field day. Maybe I should have known they’d target me because of my father, but it was my first real taste of negative press, and it was brutal: I couldn’t act, and I was unattractive to boot. At first I was hurt, then a little annoyed. I mean: “Hi, Brenda.” How could they possibly hear me say two words and conclude that I was a lousy actress? Seriously, anyone who could speak could do the lines I was doing. They were against me because of who I was. They hated me at hello. My dad advised me to stop reading the tabloids, but it was easier said than done. I was young and the criticism felt very public. But it also motivated me.
Having so few lines meant I had lots of time to think about what I could do to grow my part. 90210 was a drama, but I’d always been more of a clown. So I tried to find ways to stand out in the crowd. When Donna was in a group, I’d give her a funny reaction—rolling my eyes or grimacing or pursing my lips. The writers and producers noticed that I was something of a ham. They asked if I liked comedy, and when I said I did, it gave them a direction for Donna. They decided to make her ditzy, giving her plenty of physical comedy stuff. Stuff like Donna on Halloween: Everyone is going to a costume party and Donna is dressed like a mermaid and can’t walk. Or Donna at the school formal: She comes in a Gone with the Wind dress and can’t get out of the limo. All this was old hat to me—my Marie Antoinette costume and the other Halloween getups of my youth had given me plenty of practice with wardrobe-inflicted catastrophes.
Fitting in on the set didn’t come quite so easily. Brian Green, who played David—my on-screen on-again, off-again, on-again boyfriend—and I were the youngest cast members. When the show started, they told us we’d have to have a tutor on the set to meet Screen Actors Guild standards. Great. Might as well wear a T-shirt saying DON’T BOTHER TALKING TO ME—I HAVEN’T GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL. Then I found out that if I took the GED, I wouldn’t have to have a schoolteacher on set. Bingo. I took and passed the GED. Now I no longer needed a tutor. No chaperone. Unfortunately, it also meant that there were no legal limits to how many hours I could work at one stretch. Sometimes our workdays were seventeen hours long. On top of that I was trying to keep up with my classes at Westlake because I wanted a degree from there. I’d spend all day on the set, get home at midnight, and have to do my schoolwork. But that was okay with me. I just wanted to be treated like everyone else, to hang with the older kids. And not to be seen as the producer’s daughter. Whatever it took to fit in.
Little by little Donna became a bigger part of the show. The press could say whatever they wanted about how my father go
t me the part. I knew that Donna’s character grew because I worked on her. The truth about my father was that he was perfectly content with me having a token role with two lines an episode. In fact, I was low-balled money-wise because he was embarrassed about the nepotism. Even during the second year on the show, when I was one of the leads, I still got paid the Screen Actors Guild minimum for a series regular—far below the escalating salaries of my costars.
90210 wasn’t an instant hit. But during the second season, just as I was graduating from high school and getting more mileage as Donna, it started to take off. As soon as we were big, the press followed. The whole cast did a photo shoot for YM magazine, and I was on the cover of Sassy and Teen magazines. I had just finished high school—it hadn’t been long since I’d been reading these magazines, and now there I was in them. In fact, when my dad was casting 90210, I grabbed my teen magazines and recommended Jason Priestley (whom I’d seen in the sitcom Sister Kate) and Shannen Doherty (whom I knew from Heathers and Our House). When my dad saw the photo of Jason, he said, “He’s really good-looking.” Next thing I knew, he was cast as Brandon.
Not only was the show doing well, but it seemed like as soon as I finished high school, the cast started accepting me. I could tell because they’d talk about my dad as a producer in front of me without being afraid that I’d go tattle. They were comfortable and knew we were all in it together. Oh, but of course it wasn’t always that simple. I was on 90210 for ten years, from when I was sixteen to when I was twenty-six, so for better and for worse I grew up on the show.
My life was on the set, which meant I had a full-time job while everyone I knew was starting college. It kind of sucked that I didn’t get to go to college. Instead of walking into a dorm room, meeting my roommate, and signing up for classes, I got to hear about it from my friends and then act it out on TV. At least I didn’t have to gain the freshman fifteen, puke up grain punch every night, or write papers. But the flip side was that all my flirtations and friendships were on the job. There I was, trying to grow my character, develop as an actor, and generally conduct myself in a professional manner, and at the same time I was completely caught up in the drama of who was flirting with whom and who was sleeping with whom.
And there was plenty of drama. In fact, sometimes instead of going to college, it felt as if I was reliving high school. And not just because of the topic of the show. The whole cast was young: Brian and I were the same age. Jennie was a year older than we were, Shannen three years older, Jason four years older, Luke and Ian ten years older, and Gabrielle Carteris (who played Andrea) was twelve years older. For a while these people were my whole social world. When someone knocked on my dressing room door, there was always a flutter of Who’s it going to be—Luke Perry or Brian Green? Or Jason would pop into my dressing room to say hi and I’d be psyched.
The split center of this high school clique was definitely Shannen and Jennie. The press about Shannen was harsh. She’d been famous since she was young, starring in Little House on the Prairie, Our House, and the movie Heathers. Shannen had everything, but she could be arrogant and carefree. Meanwhile, Jennie worked hard. She started at the bottom and appreciated what she had. And Jennie was outspoken when she thought Shannen was out of line. Shannen didn’t appreciate that. She liked to be in control. Sometimes they got along, but there were explosions. Once, walking back to their cars, they actually got into a fistfight. Ian and Brian had to break it up.
I always felt like I was in the middle. If I wanted to have lunch with Jennie, I’d sneak into her dressing room so Shannen didn’t come looking for me. And there were times Shannen would say, “Let’s ignore Jennie. When she talks to us, pretend you don’t hear her.” Then other days Shannen would say, “Let’s do something nice. Let’s go out for drinks and invite Jennie.” When Shannen reached out, Jennie always responded—who wants that kind of friction?—but Shannen, for no apparent reason, might change her tune again the next day. It was all so unnecessary.
Shannen took me under her wing, and because I didn’t know any better, I gratefully accepted my new perch. A night with Shannen meant going to the hottest club and drinking until the early hours. I knew she was a “bad influence,” but I liked her anyway. She made the rules, and I never said no. She’d say, “We’re having lunch in my dressing room today,” and we would. I just followed her around obediently, but we had fun together. I heard later that Shannen used me to get her way on set. If Wardrobe gave her a dress she didn’t want to wear, she’d say, “Tori said it doesn’t look good, and she’s going to tell her dad if you don’t change it.” The producers, wardrobe, makeup, and hair people believed her. Only later, when they knew me better, did they realize that I didn’t pull that stuff. I didn’t go all diva for myself, so why in the world would I do it for her?
There were different cliques at different times, but for the most part the cast and crew functioned as a close, hardworking family. We saw people get married and divorced. Friends left the show, came back, and left again. We took trips together—to Big Bear and Palm Springs—and in the course of the ten years the show was on the air, everyone in the cast pretty much slept with everyone else, and no serious relationships ever developed. We all would laugh about it years later. At the end of the day we were always together and always there for one another.
During my time on 90210, I had my first serious boyfriend and my worst serious boyfriend. I met Ryan right before we both graduated from high school. I was just turning eighteen. He was friends with four of my best friends: Jenny, Mehran, Jennifer, and Kevin—lifelong friends I’d met a couple years earlier, just before I started on 90210, when they were all still in high school together in the Valley. Ryan had a summer job working at his dad’s tire shop, but he’d take me out to dinner, which none of my high school boyfriends ever did (unless you count our chef, but cooking for my whole family isn’t exactly “going out”). On our first date he took me to Benihana in the Valley. And as the summer went on, Ryan would pick me up and take me to Islands for burgers and fries. It was my first real relationship—the kind where you see each other or talk on the phone every day. One afternoon, after his cousin’s bar mitzvah, we ended up in his room, and I had sex for the first time. It’s funny, the details you remember about the important moments in your life. I remember that I was wearing a Betsey Johnson tank dress. It was stretchy black cotton with peach flowers. It was an unplanned milestone—it just happened. Then I went home and got in bed and cried. I was eighteen—I definitely thought I loved him. But I’d done something irreversible. I’d shut the door on my childhood. If that doesn’t deserve a good cry, I don’t know what does.
After Ryan and I shared a romantic summer together, he went away to college for his freshman year. The next year he transferred to USC to be close to me. But suddenly I was busy, working on 90210, going to parties and clubs—my life was changing rapidly.
The MTV Video Music Awards, a hip awards ceremony, was really my first big event. Ryan wanted to go with me as my date. I admit that this is a reasonable notion for a boyfriend to have. I didn’t want to say no, but I didn’t want to hang out with him at the show. I wanted to flit around and try out my new stardom. So I told him he couldn’t go with me, but I did get him and my brother tickets to the show. That’s right, I set him up with my fourteen-year-old brother.
That year Shannen was presenting an award. It was also the year that Howard Stern did his famous—or rather infamous—“Fartman” bit onstage with Luke Perry. That’s how hot 90210 was. My hair was in an updo, my makeup was professionally done, and I was wearing a short, tight, cream Vivienne Westwood bustier dress. Shannen was in black, with big red lips. When she saw me, Shannen said, “I’m so glad you’re finally here.” Then she kissed me right on the middle of my cheek, leaving a mark with her red lips as if to say, You look good. Remember who’s boss. I’d been tagged. When I tried to wipe off that lipstick, along came half of my painstakingly applied makeup. (Also, for the record, my bra was completely stuffed
with toilet paper. Now they have real contraptions for that. For years I just used toilet paper. I was so lucky it never fell out.)
Aside from the lipstick smudge on my cheek, I was feeling glamorous and important at the afterparty. I said a quick hi to Ryan and my brother, then left with my friends. Nice, huh? So much for stardom not changing a person. We went out for two years, but the relationship had lost its footing. 90210 was my career and my social life. Meanwhile, Ryan would stay at my parents’ house and just hang out with my little brother when I was busy. It seemed pathetic, and I lost respect for him. In retrospect I know that wasn’t totally fair. I’d gotten swept up in my brand-new world of success and fame. Um, can I get away with “It happens to the best of us”?
I had a thing for bad boys, and Ryan was a good boy, so of course I ended up cheating on him and leaving him. Just to be completely unoriginal, I cheated on Ryan by hooking up with my costar Brian for the first time. It was a no-brainer. Brian was the only guy on the show my age. We were having the experience of becoming famous together—in a way we were the only people who understood what the other was going through. Plus, I’d had my eyes on him from the moment we did the pilot.
Stori Telling Page 4