by Jennie Garth
After a couple of years putting up with this, I began to covet the corner cubicle, but it was occupied by someone higher up the call list . . . my nemesis! Of course, this “dressing room” (if you can call it that) had been given to Shannen because she was the one of us who had landed at 90210 already a star. Her space seemed to be the only one that was out of the fray, and it was definitely roomier than mine. It was a space, an oasis, I longed for, and year after year I’d gaze down the hall and dream.
And then one day, without warning, she was gone. There was no good-bye, no nothing. One day she just wasn’t on the call sheet. The set was so oddly quiet, and now the much-desired dressing room was beckoning to me. I wrapped my boom box in a blanket and scurried down the hall, checking over my shoulder to make sure no one saw me take possession of this vacant nook. By then I was out there in Van Nuys, on this soundstage (which, by the way, also happened to house a porn production company) from sunup to sundown, five days a week. It was time for me to leave my burgundy den behind. This time I was going to do my space up right!
I had my then-assistant Adele get a giant white parachute at a nearby army surplus store. I anchored this over the hideous fluorescent light fixtures that dangled from the ceiling, then tacked up the rest at the four corners of the room. Now, instead of gazing up into a dull, depressing warehouselike ceiling, I was looking at what I thought of as my billowy nylon cloud. I think this was just before my twenty-first birthday, and I was, being the late bloomer that I was, finally beginning to get a little edgier and was no longer just all about “Switzerland” at this time in my life, so I had the set designers paint the walls a glossy black. Then I disconnected the lighting. (Good-bye, ugly fluorescent glow—may I never, ever see you again!) I had created, much to the awe and jealousy of my castmates (or so I thought) a true cave. My dressing room was now the farthest from the action; it was dark and windowless and cold, and I could hide out in there and thereby bypass all the workplace drama that was going on around me twenty-four/seven. I needed this kind of isolation so that I could gather myself enough to come out of my cave, brave the world, and do my “job.”
This is what a typical day looked like for me when I was working on 90210. I would be up and out of my house by six a.m., driving the still-dark streets of the San Fernando Valley, where I lived, dressed in sweats, my hair wet. I’d be behind the wheel of my big-ass Suburban with the tinted, bulletproof windows, navigating the LA freeways long before rush hour started. I’d pull into the lot in Van Nuys and make a beeline for the makeup trailer, which was a crazy hive of activity—even at six in the morning you had to yell to be heard over the din of hair dryers and music. While you were in your makeup chair, a PA would bring you breakfast, if you wanted it. Actually, you could probably get anything you wanted delivered to you. They wouldn’t have batted an eye if I’d asked for a bagel and a bump of coke, come to think of it, but I usually just had coffee. Even though the makeup trailer was always buzzing with tons of adrenaline, I was usually so tired that I’d just slump down in my chair while whoever was assigned to work on me would spackle and polish me up for the day. Once this was done, I had to go over to the hair end of the trailer to have my hair blown out.
It’s important to mention how bonded an actor tends to become with his or her makeup and hair people. Speaking personally, one of my best friends to this day was my hairdresser from the original 90210 days, my Michael. He knows exactly when to make me laugh (actually, no one makes me laugh harder on this planet) and when to just chill, not to mention he always just wants to make me look my best! Who doesn’t want a best friend like that?
Then it was off to wardrobe, and I’d be handed a couple of hangers with my outfits for that day’s shoot. And then, with only a lunch break and a bathroom break or two, we’d get to work. Those days were long and hard, but that soundstage became my sanctuary, the only place where I could just relax and be myself.
When I took over Shannen’s old dressing room I’d been with the show for six years, and by then I could no longer keep track of the string of guest actresses who were brought in to service the story line du jour and placate the male stars, too, who, I’m sure, were tired of looking at me and Shan and Tori all day, every day. The male actors who were brought in to do the same for us girls had become a blur of familiar haircuts (why did they all look like Luke or Jason?) and blazingly white teeth. I knew this was, for them, their big break, but I was so burned-out by then—and didn’t even know it—that I’m certain I came across as a bitch, someone who thought she was too good for it all, but who, in fact, was just too tired for it all.
So whenever I was not on set, I would withdraw into my cave and violate all kinds of fire-safety laws and light candles under my parachute and listen to Portishead on my enormous boom box, and I’d close myself off and just . . . brood.
I was a bit of a loner. A worrier. When I think back on it, I believe it’s because I was way more burned-out and overwhelmed by it all than I knew. I mean, how does a fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-, even twenty-year-old girl who has been working nonstop for the past five years have any concept of what the real world is like: how to have fun, goof off, or just do nothing? I was tired, yet I was also supremely grateful that I was making a living and was able to support myself and help my family. The truth is I had no reference point, no playbook to help me figure out the proper balance. All I had was the good counsel of my loving family (who were all now at least one state away, and though they loved me like mad, they really had zero concept of what my life was turning into) and the levelheaded, excellent professional guidance of Mr. Showbiz.
When I compare what I must have been like at age fifteen with what my eldest daughter is like now at the same age, I’m filled with a sense of deep compassion and even a bit of sadness for my young self and my young costars. I mean, there we were—just kids, but we weren’t enrolled in Beverly Hills High or any other high school for that matter. We were isolated out in Van Nuys, on a skanky soundstage, working our asses off. I’d finish a long day, wipe off the layers of caked-on makeup, climb into my car, and go home. Then I’d get up and do it all over again.
At work, I was all about business. I always knew my lines; I always knew where I was supposed to stand; I always, without too much complaint, wore whatever the wardrobe people gave me. I adored the crew: the camera guys, the grips, the glam squad, the prop team. These people were my new family, and I wanted them to know that I took their jobs as seriously as I took mine. All of the crew was there at least fourteen hours a day, too, giving up their time in the real world as much as we were, but they weren’t getting any of the perks, the accolades, or especially the ridiculous paychecks we actors were getting. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had been the one holding them up by bitching about what I had to wear or complaining about how shitty I thought my hair looked. I was not going to be the one who blew the schedule because I had gotten too wasted in the “it” club of the moment the night before. It just wouldn’t have been right.
So I made a decision. I made a decision about which team I was going to play for, and I chose production. I became known as a “trouper” by the producers, a professional. This choice put me at odds with some of my fellow cast members, and even felt kind of like drawing a line in the sand sometimes, and this made me seem uncool and even more uptight, in their eyes. But you know what? That was something I could live with.
Don’t get me wrong: I loved my fellow castmates then, and I still love them to this day. There’s not one of them whom I wouldn’t drop everything for in a heartbeat. There is not one among them I wouldn’t be happy to see (well, maybe there is just one, if I’m being honest)—and I do see many of them, even the ones who are supposed to be my sworn enemies.
And I like all of them, each and every one, much, much better now that we’re adults, because back in the day, when we were interacting as a group, there was just always way too much fucking teenage drama. I was by no means an innocent bystander when it
came to all this drama among the cast members, either. Being in that competitive, narcissistic world brought out each of our personal heavy-duty self-esteem issues, and when that happens, well, that’s when drama and angst seem to thrive.
I remember one infamous “red dress” incident that exemplifies this kind of petty selfishness. We were gearing up for the seasonal promotional photo shoot, and all of us leading ladies wanted to be the one to wear the red dress that was chosen for the shoot. After all, this would be the photo that would be seen around the world for the rest of the year, and since red is a pretty eye-catching color, especially on blondes, we were each determined to wear that damn dress. Well, I put my little foot down and bitched and moaned and . . . so, in the end, there were two special stars wearing red that day. And one, not by accident, was dressed in black. Little did I know that, thanks to social media, I’d be able to see that photograph for the rest of my life, to revisit one of the brattiest, most inane days of my life. All I have to do is find that photograph and zoom in on our fresh young faces to see how pissed off Tori and I are and how completely over us the boys are. And then there’s the girl in black. It’s no fun to see that photo and be reminded of my petty, completely self-absorbed, younger self, but what are you going to do? I, unfortunately, was a teenager once, too.
So there were times when I added my own spice to that drama stew, but I tried to keep it to a minimum on set, because . . . let’s just say I had all the drama I could handle just trying to stay afloat on my own in Hollywood.
THE RULE OF THREE
I don’t know why it is, but there is a universal truth that when you put three teenage girls together, some serious shit is going to go down. I have no idea why this is true, but it is.
At least, this was true for the dynamic that played out between me, Shannen, and Tori on the set of Beverly Hills, 90210.
When we began the show, Shannen was the one with the most acting experience. She came to the show on the heels of reaching teen stardom in the hit movie Heathers, and so she strode onto that set with a level of confidence and intensity that I had never seen in anyone before, let alone a girl my age.
To say that she was strong is an understatement. A fellow Aries sister . . . she had some set of horns! She had opinions about a lot of things, including the writing, the wardrobe, you name it. And she wasn’t afraid to share them, even if it meant sounding like a complete and utter bitch. She didn’t care about that; she just wanted to be heard. For her, it was all about being what she saw as professional, and she could bring a ferocious kind of energy to the set that could, at times, come across as just being difficult. I didn’t understand this then, but I do now, and that’s probably why Shannen and I have become so close as we’ve gotten older. I was fresh off the bus, just tiptoeing into Hollywood, after all. And she was seasoned, and had already dealt with an absurd amount of pressure and speculation and all the judgments that come with being a strong, confident, independent young lady. I never wanted to piss anyone off, while she seemed, from my very naive perspective, to live for pissing people off. Looking back now, I recognize how challenging it can be for an actress to be taken seriously, and I understand where she was coming from. I have a lot of compassion for young Shannen. I mean, the truth is, I have a lot of compassion for just about any girl trying to stand up and be heard out there in this big, scary world.
So yes, I found her to be intimidating, but I also loved her to death, in that way that fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls love their best girlfriends: They’re either as thick as thieves, sharing everything, or they’re driving each other nuts and trying to gouge each other’s eyes out.
Poor Tori, the youngest of the three of us, was, inevitably, often caught in the middle, and she was always trying to smooth things over, trying to get Shan and me off each other’s backs and get along, but her efforts usually failed. She was a peacemaker, desperate for everyone to get along—and she’s still like that today. Tori is such a sweet soul.
I remember toward the end of season six, shortly after Shannen had left the show, I decided to chop all of my hair off, because I just couldn’t take having to go through a blowout five days a week (it felt like there were big brush-size bruises on my wrecked little scalp), and I thought that maybe if my hair didn’t need so much time, I might be able to nap for fifteen minutes before we started shooting. And actually, I needed a change! I was tired of looking at that same reflection in the mirror every morning at six a.m. For about five minutes I felt liberated, but pretty quickly I realized that haircut wasn’t the greatest decision.
The first day I came to set with my “new look,” I ran into Tori, and I watched as she tried her hardest to compliment me. She stood there and struggled until she finally just blurted out that she hated it and it made me look “matronly.” She tried to back off of this rare indiscretion by telling me that what she meant to say was that she thought it made me look forty, which it did. But back then, in my early twenties, telling me I looked forty was like telling me I looked ninety. I couldn’t really be pissed at her, because I knew how much she loved me, and I loved it that she didn’t want to just lie to me, like so many others obviously had by not telling me it was a god-awful haircut. Then she stepped toward me and tried to mess my hair up, and when she was finished, she stepped back and said, “There. That’s a little edgier.” I looked in the mirror and I felt like Carol Brady was staring back at me. She was right; it was not a good look. And for a long time after that, I was always ducking whenever Tori would come at me with those hands, wanting to mess me up, God bless her.
Back in the day, Tori and I spent a lot of time together, even though at first it was kind of weird, her being the boss’s daughter and all. I didn’t want to cross any professional boundaries, so I held back a little, defaulting into my usual pretty shy self. But we warmed up to each other, Tori and I, and we’d hang out in her dressing room because, like me, she didn’t like to venture out of her cocoon too much, either. We became sisters of sorts. Still, to this day, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do for her if she needed me. We were close—except when she was hanging out with Shannen.
Ah, the rule of three.
Where Tori was easygoing, Shannen could be intense. But you know what? I could match her intensity with my stubbornness, my self-righteousness, and so while Shannen would be freaking out I’d be standing there nose-to-nose with her, my nostrils flaring, eyes glaring. Like I said, we were both card-carrying Aries women, so . . . Tori would look from one to the other of us nervously, not at all sure how to make peace, given that either one of us could blow up at any moment.
So there we were. Sometimes I’d feel like Shannen was my best friend in the world. And often she was, and still is. I mean, how could she not be? She was one of a small handful of people whom I spent most of my time with. But there was an aspect to our closeness (for all of us, at various times, I’m sure) that was more like Stockholm syndrome than friendship, because we were holed up by contract—and not by personal choice—for years upon years upon years with one another. We didn’t have the benefit of having several hundred girls our same age swirling around us on a bright, sunny high school campus, pulling us in and out of various dramas. It was just us, shut up on that dark, drab soundstage. There was no buffer for us, no way to step out of one another’s sight lines long enough to cool off and grow up for a second. We were girls. We were well-meaning, often overextended, in-over-our-heads girls. And like all girls, of course, we were sweet and thoughtful and all that, but also, we could be . . . mean. I mean really eye-gougingly vicious—you don’t want any piece of this mean.
One of the great 90210 legends is that Shannen and I actually came to blows one time. I will tell you that this never happened—although we did come very, very close.
If I remember correctly—and I probably don’t, given the rocky terrain that is my memory—we were shooting a scene and Shannen kept grabbing at the hem of my skirt, trying to slap me on the leg—anything to get me to react and break chara
cter. Finally, when she’d pulled up my skirt, and my bare ass was exposed for everyone on the set to see, I did snap and I yelled at her, something to the effect of, “Come on, bitch! We’re taking this outside!” I strode off the set and out into the dingy, crappy parking lot. Shannen was right behind me, and behind her were the rest of the cast and a lot of the crew.
We were on fire! We were both throwing “f”-bombs and insults at each other like it was World War III. It was crazy! I mean really absurd. Before we could kill each other, Luke and Jason dived into the middle of it and pulled us apart, Luke backing away, holding me tight, while I clawed and punched at the air in front of me, while Jason pushed Shannen to the other side of the parking lot.
It was ridiculous.
So we didn’t actually come to blows, but that doesn’t mean that, during the years that we worked so closely together, we didn’t want to rip each other’s heads off. What was so unbelievably strange was how this personal tension somehow bled into the relationship between our characters, and by the time Shannen left the show, there was very little love lost between us or our characters. Those of you who know the show know that Brenda and Kelly began as best friends but turned into bitter rivals, and Shannen and I did, too, at least for a time while we were working together.