Bittersweet Infamy - #105 - I Hate Brenda

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Taylor tells Josie and guest host Mitchell Collins about '90s nighttime soap queen and tabloid bad girl Shannen Doherty. Plus: a closer listen to hit em, the new musical genre that came to its creator in a dream.

Hi, I'm Tabitha Soren with MTV News. Actor Shannon Doherty, who plays Brenda Walsh on Beverly Hills 90210, says in the new issue of Us Magazine that people seem to be confusing her with her hateful character. This would apparently explain why she was booed at the Billboard Magazine Awards show last fall, and why she got into a fight with another woman at a Los Angeles nightclub around the same time. But what about the I Hate Brenda newsletter, a Doherty-bashing publication that according to People People magazine has sold 7,000 copies of its premiere issue. Doherty says she's never read it, but adds that she hates her Brenda character too. Welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy.

I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet.

How you been, Taylor? I've been pretty well. I've been excited slash a little scared for today's episode because I was right and right up to the deadline this time around I dragged my feet You know, but I'm excited because we have Mitchell here today Mitchell is stopped in to join us Sometimes sometimes out of pity. He says oh you're still doing that show. Why don't I you stop that? I'm a loyal listener I just listened to mine all mine, which I just realized wasn't just a reference to Mitsuki. It's a mine. I didn't realize it was about a mine. That is a really clever title.

We wondered about how accessible that title was. I was just like, oh, I love that Mitsuki song. And now I'm like, oh, I recommend if you're listening, listen to Mine All Mine. Well, we've got a few recommendations for you to go back and listen because some events that we've covered in the show in the past have recently become newsworthy. I'll start with the bad news first, then we can graduate to the good news because totally these are two very different stories. The bad news is that we still haven't gotten over the policing of gender at major sporting

events. Haven't learned our lesson. God no, if anything we've gotten worse. There was a big internet furor around Algerian boxer Imane Khalif, who was incorrectly pegged by the internet as being transgender despite her being a born as and identifying as a cisgender woman.

There was all of the talk around intersex traits and tests and mysterious tests that you sometimes hear. All this to say, if you want to hear an example of us talking about a similar, but different in its specifics, situation around gender testing in women's track and field. Episode 39, Caster Semenya, deals with a similar story. Maybe worth a listen. Topical. Totally. Also, Umani's fight for the gold as of this recording is tomorrow night. Oh, that's true. I've heard before. What a fuck you to JK Rowling and Logan Paul specifically, that would be. Yeah, she got sent home to the girls. That's nice, that feels good.

I would like to see her humble those people, those Twitter people, those ex people. Ex people in that they're on ex and in that they were formerly people before they became this. I heard a really good joke that I didn't come up with, that I wish I did. If Elon Musk can continue to misgender his daughter, we can keep calling it Twitter. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. I also feel like the clinging to Twitter is like some sort of statement of allegiance, and I want it known that I thought Twitter was like bad.

Yeah, it's so bad. And in fact, if you go back, there's a lot of audio evidence on this podcast. There is. There truly is. It's one of those things of indicative of bad times when people are missing the bad thing that we used to have. Right, because it's so much worse. I miss that disingenuous bird. Yeah.

Yeah. But then the good news is, I mean, good is debatable, because this is also some shitty news. Ahhhhh! It is the 20th anniversary, on the day that we're recording this, August 8th, 2024, you'll be hearing it later, but on the day we're recording this August 8th, it is the 20th anniversary of the Dave Matthews Chicago poo bus incident. Amazing.

Amazing. What a time in our heritage, in our history. 20 years. I saw that your sister was on that Chicago architecture cruise, by the way. The same one. My sister? Dina was on the Chicago architecture cruise. No, she wasn't.

Yes, she was. I commented on the photo as bittersweet infamy. I said, watch out when you go under the bridge. Okay, not 20 years ago when the Dave Matthews tour of us dumped shit all over. No, no, no. You would have heard about that. You would have surely she would have mentioned it at some point in your knowing her. Around 2004 you would have been like, sis you reek.

What is this? True enough. Your hair smells like shit. You got that from Chicago, it just smells real bad. This is the saga of the Dave Matthews band tour bus going over top of a great bridge and dumping 800 pounds of human waste on a sightseeing boat. We covered it back in episode 68, The Cult of the Clitoris, great,

like kind of a legendary episode, honestly. It's true, guest storyteller, Lucia Mish. It's uh, mwah. Fantastic. It's really good. Fantastic. And you learn everything you want to know about Fran Drescher and Jerry Brown to you, it's got everything that episode. That's infamous in its own right, really. We recommend you go back and listen to episode 68, The Cult of the Clitoris. We should have Lucia back sometime. I know we should. I miss her. But we're stuck with Mitchell instead.

Mitchell, how you doing? Hey guys, I'm back. How you been? How you been, buddy? I'm good, I'm doing great. I'm enjoying this summer. I'm just pretending to enjoy. I'm not a summer guy.

I'm a fall guy, winter guy, spring guy. Well, I mean, it's all blackouts in Houston, isn't it? Really? Yeah, that's true. Those rolling blackouts, they roll. They keep like, like when biscuit, they keep on rolling. So I brought you guys a little story, a morsel and Amuse-Bouche. Josie, do you know what he's doing?

I do. No, no, I told her about this casually over dinner and then she was like, oh, wow. And she liked it. So it was her suggestion that I come on. Bring it to the shark tank and pitch it to the sharks. She's like do you have any more pictures of the Spider-Man? But that's the thing I haven't seen all the photos of Spider-Man so I don't like

I know the general outline. We got some photos of him battling Doc Ock that are gonna blow your mind. Thank you I'm ready I am ready. For the Memphis today I'm gonna take y'all back way back to a little bit over a week ago. Oh damn let's get in the time machine. Yeah July 29th to be exact a man named Drew Daniel was in California visiting family for his mother's 80th birthday. Oh wow happy birthday. Not getting older, just getting bolder. Yeah, happy birthday, Drew's mom. So yeah, they're celebrating

and he's tired from a long day of hanging with family and, you know, celebrating his mom and stuff. And he's going to bed. Next thing he knows, he finds himself at a rave. Doesn't know how he got there. Oh, getting there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He has no memory of leaving the house.

He's like, why am I at a rave? What happened? So he's lost and he's disoriented and he's looking for basically someone he knows that can sort of explain something to him. But instead he meets this strange girl who he has never met and she excitedly is telling him about a new genre of dance music that's called HITM. And she tells him all these specific things about the genre. The most notable thing being that it has super crunched out sounds. And then next thing he knows,

his entire body is covered in slime. And then he looks down and he's looking at his own grave. Yeah. And then he woke up because he was dreaming. Yeah. Mm. And. It was all a dream.

Yeah, it was all a dream. I always do this when I come off. The best ending to any story. Yeah, and the end. No, so he's sort of remembering this dream and he's like, what was that? And it's all sort of foggy, fading away, but what sticks with him is the very specific details

of this music, this dance music, this girl tells him about. Him. And so he wants to share with people. So he goes on Twitter or whatever you want to call it, some mean name. In debate. How about, how about, oh God, what's the meanest name? Something that you don't like. Steve Martin. Steve Martin.

It's Steve Martin. He goes on Steve Martin and he tweets this. He posts this. He said, I had a dream. I was at a rave talking to a girl and she told me about a genre called Hidem that is in five, four time at 212 BPM with super crunched out sounds. Thank you, Dream Girl. And so he posts this and he goes back to sleep for a while and then he wakes up and he discovers that it really gained traction fast. HITM lives. Yeah, HITM lives. She was right. People are curious, people love it. It was in a dream that this came about and people are

really curious about what this is going to sound like. So you know the internet does what it does and all these music producers start trying to make this music. Okay wait I have a question. Yeah. I'm gonna interject. Okay sure. So when you say those words like super crunched out I understand. Yeah like the five four time. Five four time, oh, here's a perfect little break. I meant to say this earlier. I have a fun fact for you, Taylor. Just a little interlude. Fun fact. Sure. A tidbit that you can share at parties,

like how you like to share the tidbit about Torn is a cover. Yes, I do. I also like to inform people that the Black Eyed Peas are all the same age as well. Yes. That's shocking. I'm shocked. Yeah. I feel really upset by that information. Welcome. So I have a new one for you. The song, Who Let the Dogs Yeah. I feel really upset by that information. Welcome. So I have a new one for you, the song Who Let the Dogs Out.

You know that? Oh yeah. Who, who, who, who. Yeah? That is a movie tie-in song. You know like everything I do. Snow Dogs. Not Snow Dogs, baby.

No. No? Beverly Hills Chihuahua? It was Rugrats in Paris. I can't even say it with this is such a great place. So interlude over. Interlude not over because I have something important to add. Do you know what the French title of Rugrats in Paris was?

No. Rugratatouille. Oh my gosh. Get this guy out of here. Alright, now interlude over. Okay, interlude over. Yes. Okay.

So, who let the dogs out goes like this. Who let the dogs out? One, two, three, four. Who? It's in four, four time. And most songs on the radio are in four, four. Most pop songs are, yeah. Everything's divided into fours. And like the reason why things are waltzes, you know, waltz, a waltz is no no. They're divided into three. Into three. One, two, three, one, two.

And that's three, four, five. So, five, four time is one, two, three, four, five. In this case, 212 beats per minute is another part, which is insanely fast. That's very fast. A typical Britney Spears song is around 120. 120 is the most common. Twice as fast as the average song and then this divided by 5 thing. So it's very unusual and people are excited about this. So people start making this music and it sounds like this. I feel like there's probably a lot of like neon netting happening and like and braids like big white girl braids, you know?

This is just one of Bjork's Arca-produced tracks, honestly. It's so funny you say that, Taylor. Um, is it? It's so funny you mention Bjork because the man who had the dream, Drew Daniel is first of all an English professor at Johns Hopkins, which I think you'd think is kind of cute. Drew Daniel represents one half of the experimental music duo Matmos with his creative and romantic partner Martin Schmidt, and they produced two of Bjork's albums. But this also makes sense why he would Steve Martin something out and everybody would be like, oh, what are you doing?

Instead of just like something in the guy, this is a pretty well established Yeah. And also like he's established for like, they have a lot of albums together, him and his partner that are like prompt based, like they have the one that's all based up early electronic sounds, like early, like, you know, samples of like way early electronics. So they have a whole album of that. These sort of prompts like fuel things. They sample things in their in their music, like the freshly cut hair, surgical surgical sounds the amplified neural activity of crayfish like this is exactly the kind of person that would dream a new genre of music yes in interviews and stuff he credits the dream girl for inventing it that's great yeah that's very cool yeah so here's another track number two this is just to illustrate how wildly different some of these sounds are. This producer, her name is Petal Supply, and she was brave enough to play her interpretation at the club. Laser tag. Yeah, in like a frozen castle.

Oh hell yeah. I kind of, this one felt to me like, kind of Mortal Kombat for some reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you ever want to listen genuinely, if you ever want to listen to a fantastic electronic album, listen to the Immortals soundtrack slash concept album for the first Mortal Kombat movie. Oh, I love that album. It's all original, like electronica.

It's really, really good. I second that recommendation. That's tight. So yeah, so describing what he's heard of people's interpretation, Drew Daniels said, it's got a strange frantic quality because it's so fast, but there's also something kind of wonky about that weirdness of the five four.

It always seems to be coalescing and falling apart at the same time is what he says. It always feels like it's about to build to something and then it doesn't. It's a little too fast. It's too fast for itself. And I assume that's like the time signature plus the BPM working together kind of thing.

It feels like it's always like getting ahead of itself and then trying to stop and catch up. Yeah, absolutely. There's something kind of like skippy about it, which makes you want to dance but then you're like you don't know what you don't know what to do next. I don't know. It's like should I dance or have a heart attack? I don't know. When I see the really like shredded shirtless German raver dudes on my Instagram for you this is the kind of

shit they look like they're dancing to. Exactly. This is one of the favorites of Drew Daniel it's by a producer named Erom and he posted this track with the caption the hit em track is up to four minutes long now everything is hit em I walk in 5-4 my pulse raises at 212 BPM my day feels 25% longer hit em his life Wow he's been hitting him. He's been hitting him all. Hit him! I was just about to get into that and then it still was weird. This is when you like take an Adderall and smoke a bunch of weed and forget to eat while you work. That's it.

Yeah. That's what that sound is. Yeah. I got Bouncy Castle. That was... Y2K memories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That one felt like a little bit of a

sugar rush, huh? Yeah. So as of this recording, Hidem has begun to develop a life of its own with interpretations inspiring new interpretations and variations on those variations, riffs on variations, just as nature intended. Why do people like get into real estate? You know what I mean? This is what's interesting about humanity. Yeah. And I mean that. Yeah, I love this, like people getting into micro genres and playing with them and inspired by each other.

It's just so sweet to me. I don't know. I just love like when people are just, there's no real like money goal behind this. There's no prize at the end. It's just sort of like, what if we made some weird shit? There will always be, if there's money to be made of any kind in HITM, trust and believe

that the Wendy's Steve Martin account will be Steve Martin in it. Oh, we love HITM too, you know what I mean? That's true, Wendy's is on it. What I'm curious is like how big this thing can get. Maybe it'll inspire people to have dreams. Like maybe Steve Martin will invent a type of music in his dreams.

Also important to close this out, Drew Daniel, he has started making his own hit of music now and he's working alongside another producer named Machine Drum to put together a compilation of some of all of these hit of tracks. It's pronounced Machine Gun Kelly. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's okay. I'm so sorry.

It's okay. Yeah. One of Bjork's collaborators. Yeah, Bjork and MGK go way back. Yeah. Yeah, but there's apparently a compilation coming soon, so keep an eye out for that, you guys. Can't wait, can't wait! And before we move on, I thought I would add my own modest contribution to this. Yay!

I made my own hit-em track. And it's called, I named it, Death Blowing Bubbles. Fun! Let's play. But they are... are naked. Naturally, it's much too dangerous to jump through with a fire with clothes. Hey, sweethearts! Taylor Poppin' in here from the Editing Suite. First of all, give it up for Mitchell Collins if you want to listen to the full-length version of that track, Death Blowing Bubbles, become a monthly subscriber over at Ko-fi. That's ko-fi.com slash bittersweetinfamy. Second, you may notice that just as the main story starts for this episode,

there's a slight shift in the audio of my microphone. I don't know what happened there, but it shouldn't compromise the listening experience of the episode. Just pretend that I'm calling in long distance from Beverly Hills, California. On with the show. The rumors, my friends, are true. We will be watching Cats 2019 for the next episode of the Bitter Sweet Film Club, and in fact, we haven't discussed it yet, but we have all already watched it. We sure did. We sure watched it. We sure had that experience. Without giving anything away, do you have opinions? Yes. Oh, we have opinions.

Yes, we do. We have a unique proposition here, because I think that I'm pretty good at polishing a turd, to be quite frank. I think I'm real good at looking into the thing that's bad and explaining to you that no, it's actually good. Mitchell, we have here as a musical expert. Josie, I like to think of you as something of an authority on cats. I also think that you are a... What?

Okay. Well, not to toot your horn. I also think of you as something of a moderate in that I am always way far on the left telling you that everything bad is good and I think I can talk Mitchell into it. But if you think that something sucks, you will tell it straight.

So I think it's gonna be an interesting conversation. But hold on, in this, like, you're giving us all like superpowers or strengths and I just wanna be clear, your strength in this situation is turd polishing? Garbage. I'm as good a person as you've ever met at watching something that seems like

an enormous waste of time and explaining to you in a charming way why it was actually fun and good that you did that. That's so beautiful. That's true. That's true. That was the Honeymoon Killers. Know thyself, dog.

You won the movie. Know thyself. Honeymoon Killers was a good damn movie. So yeah, if you want to join us for our discussion of cats, which is sure to be a, that's a, a corker, as they say, in the, in the West End of London where we find ourselves in cats. We were like halfway through and Miku was like, oh, this takes place in London. What about the, what about the opening scene where they're all surrounded with cats?

We can't do this now, we can't do this now. I was going to say something really funny, but I'm going to save it for the show. Save it for the recording, save it for the recording. Save it for the show. Save it for the recording! Save it for the recording! Save it for the show! Save it for the paying customers, babe. Okay, yeah, yeah. Awesome, and you can be one of those paying customers. Join us over at KO-FI.com slash Bitter C and we will talk all about cats.

I think you picked a good episode to join us, Mitchell. I'll be the judge of that. How about this? I'll leave it to you to be the judge and at the end I'll loop back. I'll ask you was it worth it, but I'm confident that you answered. No, it was not worth it but I'm confident that you answered. Josie Mitchell, I'd like you to join me in the deconstruction of a celebrity archetype. Okay, yeah. One we claim to judge but one we can't live without. The tabloid bad girl. Oh. Josie, I'll start with you because you're the baddest girl I know.

What connotations does that label with all of its baggage carry for you? I guess it's kind of the Latin the Madonna kind of thing, I guess, which just leans heavy on the... Do you want to impact that?...on the slutty side? Yeah, that like women in the public eye will say, even though it happens like every day, but in the kind of archetypes, if that's where we're chatting. We are. They either fall into two camps, and one is like the virginal Madonna, the like holier than thou, halo above the head, like always doing good things. Maybe another iteration is like the girl next door kind of vibe.

She's, you know, sweet and nice and pretty, but not too pretty. And you know, not threatening. Yeah, yeah. She'll be nice to you. If she's pretty, she might be having sex. And if she might be having sex, then she might know how to have sex better than you.

And you're a man that can't be right. So. And then I guess the phrase is Madonna and the whore. You said slut. We're going Madonna and the slut. It's all good. Madonna and the slut. Okay. Madonna and Steve Martin, we know what's up. Yeah. So then the slut is kind of the opposite of that. A woman who's very beautiful but tainted because she's quote unquote dirty. Yeah. Use goods. Viewpoints. Use goods. Yeah. Yeah. And usually she's quote-unquote dirty. Her viewpoints. Yeah, use goods. Use goods, yeah, yeah.

And usually she's very sexualized, but it can kind of fall into all these other things that society wants to lay judgment at. Like she does drugs or she drinks or... She parties too much. She parties too much or she doesn't hold the moral values of being a woman. So she doesn't have children. She's not married. Yeah't she's not married or children she doesn't have yeah she's not married yeah and even though like this person took her picture unflatteringly and she didn't ask for that this unflattering picture

is used to judge her now you know yeah yeah that's a good point i think a lot about like that time period when we were in high school i just read the woman in me the britney spears book and it's very potent in that time period. That paparazzi. I think a lot about Lindsay Lohan, Paris, Britney, especially Lindsay Lohan because it's like, I don't even remember at what point Lindsay Lohan did something wrong. It's just like, she's the first one that came to mind. It's just like, you know, I think about Lindsay Lohan just because like, I don't even know

if it was the drugs that started. I think it was even before drugs. People were just decided she was worthy of scorn. Yeah. Yeah. Um, having too much fun. I don't know what it is, but The building of the Madonna to create into the horror almost. We need these pure virginal young girls in order to like, in order to watch them be corrupted so that we can judge them and and we like we push them up and we raise them up and we watch them succeed so that we can watch them fall. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes that's part of it too is like financial success can be deemed as kind of dirty too. Especially if you're a woman because you're not supposed to have acquired money by your own means. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that kind of infiltrates it. I know especially it's like

Lindsay Lohan sticks out to me too because she she was such a, at that time when she was a party girl, she was such an uncontested success, like as an actress and like box office wise, like, she was just like killing it and yet we were like all dogging on her. I don't know, you know, where that comes from. And then when she stopped being a box office success, we were like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We all saw that coming, right? You know, she's been going off the rails for a while, you know. Yeah, exactly. Whether she's stumbling out of nightclubs or no-showing her concerts, dating this oil tycoon or that tattooed rock star, alienating and upstaging her co-stars or completing her mandatory 30 hours of community service, we love and love to hate the tabloid bad girl. From Paris to Lindsay, Madonna to Britney, each generation has its upstart. And in the 1990s, one of the great tabloid bad girls was child actor turned evening soap icon Shannon Doherty OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

A memorial episode for Shannon A memorial episode for the recently departed Shannon Doherty passed away just last month, July 2024 R.I.P. What do you two, each of you, we'll go to Mitchell this time first because I went to Josie last time first What do you know of Shannon Doherty? You know the truth is I know so little. I know as little about her as I would about anybody. Like I don't know Shannon Doherty.

I know she's from 90210 and I know she was sort of a bad girl, like you say. That's where it stops for me. I don't know much about her. Well, you're about to find out. Josie, what do you know? Yeah, I don't know too much more, to be honest. I learned some more after her passing. The negative press around her being like a bad girl and part of that too was like the way that

she was seen professionally. She was seen as like not very caring or considerate on set, but always kind of late and that you know like demanding like a diva of vibe, but not deserving of diva status, you know, one of those things. Mm-hmm. I think that affected her career quite a bit. It did. Whether it was her behavior or the perception of her as a woman carrying out this behavior, it did affect her career. Yeah. Are either of you familiar with any of her big roles? I know her from 90210, and then that's kind of it. And the impression I have, I've never watched that show, but I get that she's sort of the

most fun character maybe? Like she's the bad girl that everyone like loves to hate, right? Sort of. She's the coolest character, but also the one who's like the most unhinged maybe? I've never watched. No, it's interesting. You would think that her character would be that from the Reputation that both she and the character had at the height of let's say the public antagonism

Towards her slash them because Shannon and Brenda her character Brenda Walsh on I know to know really do get Transmorphed in the public mind Like kind of will become an important factor in the hate that kind of crops up toward her. In my experience, having watched Beverly Hills 90210, Brenda is a much more tame character than you would expect based on that. She can be definitely kind of whiny, dramatic,

self-absorbed, et cetera, but she's one of our two leads. She's sort of depicted as someone who's like ruled by her heart to her own detriment and interestingly as the public reception towards Shannon and Brenda becomes worse and the reception in the cast of 90210 to Shannon becomes worse. You sort of see the Brenda character on the show start to become on an island. You'll see these storylines where the story is that everyone is pissed off at Brenda for some reason, much at the same time that everyone was pissed off at Shannon for some reason. Even if the Brenda character's actions, you sort of watch and you're like,

actually I see those as more neutral actions. I maybe wouldn't have done that, but I kind of see where she was coming from. It sort of got received as though she was this mega bitch because people were really, really over Shannon Doherty. Interesting, interesting. So like her public life was bleeding over into the show where the characters are almost judging her character for things that the real Shannon Doherty did. Yes, exactly. That's a great way to put it. That's fascinating. Fascinating.

I do know one other fact. Later in life after 90210, she had her own podcast. Let's be clear. It's called Let's Be Clear. Yeah, to set the record straight on a lot of this stuff, it sounds like to distinguish herself from Brenda. Well to distinguish herself from her reputation. So Shannon is in...

She had other roles than Brenda and I don't just say that to be like well She wasn't just Brenda. I say that and that she had other infamous roles than Brenda So in terms of her acting you might know Shannon Doherty from her roles in Heathers. All right, that's right Yeah, Beverly Hills 902 and oh, she's the main love interest in mall rats. Oh, oh and charmed She was also in Charmed. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like looking up on her IMDB. She's also in this really sick Gregorocky movie, Nowhere. She's like has a small role in Nowhere.

Great. I just remembered. Any friend of Gregorocky's is a friend of mine's CF Parker Posey. Hahaha. Aww. You might also know Shannon from her turbulent personal life, including a number of bitter celebrity feuds, high profile breakups, and a very public battle with cancer that just took her life this past month, July 2024.

In terms of infamy, perhaps her crowning accomplishment was pissing off the casts of two consecutive Aaron Spelling night time soaps so much that they effectively voted her off of those shows even though she was a lead actor in both. Damn. Impressive. Yes, very impressive. Very impressive work. During that time, the media, her celebrity frenemies, and random pilers on loved to depict

Shannon as abrasive and tyrannical, pretentious and self-centered, and totally out of control of her vices. At the height of the anti-Shannon sentiment, a zine dedicated to hating her 90210 character and implicitly her racked up thousands of readers. What? A zine? A zine! The I hate Brenda zine and I'll tell you all about it.

And now that Shannon Doherty has died a saintly death of cancer, and now that we're in our phase of admitting that all the famous teenage girls we've culturally bullied into the dirt probably didn't deserve to have their lives ruined for having personality flaws, substance abuse issues, or just being teenage girls, we're having a moment of reappraisal. Who was Shannon Doherty, really? Were we wrong about her all along? Yes. Don't answer yet! We've got like, we've got at least like 60 all along? Yes. Don't answer yet. We got like 60 minutes to go here. Don't answer yet

The truth as it seems to lies between the two poles the bitter in the sweet It's even more predictable ending than us having been wrong the whole time is that, kinda. Over the course of this episode, I promise, our heroine is gonna throw some sidewinders out there that you genteel listener may not agree with. You may find her to be self-absorbed or unprofessional or even a bad girl. You don't get to be a bad girl without being a little bit bad, but in addition to being a bad girl, Shannon had a reputation as a difficult woman and as we know by now 105 episodes in cases of difficult women are sometimes just cases of people having difficulty with women this is the

story of Shannon Doherty yes yes yes one disclaimer I guess I should give in terms of the framing of this story. And it's not a disclaimer actually, it's like a congratulations, here's a feature I built into the story, you're welcome. The way that I structured this and my primary interest was Shannon Doherty

as interpreted through the lens of a tabloid figure. So like someone whose behavior is scandalized, who is willfully misunderstood to sell magazines, who is a young vixen and attemptress, etc. That was sort of the take on her that I was most interested in because it's sort of the rap that she fought against for most of her life. I've paid special attention to what the tabloids and the people magazine type of magazines were saying about her and I've subdivided the episode into four sections each named with a tabloid headline from her past. So we have chapters!

We have chapters! I did a little structure. I did a little structural note. I'm so into it. The second thing that I should say, and this isn't a disclaimer as much as it is something that doesn't have anywhere to fit into the story proper, but it is something that really interests me about Shannon Doherty, so I'm just gonna get it out of the way before we get into the actual important stuff about her life. Now, Shannon Doherty, very beautiful woman, she's got this kind of like Joan Crawford-esque, eyebrows pale skin it's kind of like dark coloring do you either of you know what is specifically interesting slash unique about Shannon Doherty's face

Is it like perfectly symmetrical? That's what I was gonna guess too. It's the opposite one of her eyes is significantly and obviously lower than the other. Really? Oh! Dude, it's a subject of interest because like me I was like, there's something interesting about Shannon Doherty's face but I don't quite know and then I saw someone say that like her eyes, one of her eyes is like a millimeter or something lower than the other and it really does give her a piece of interest to her face. It gives her a very 90s pose. Maybe like people were posing like this to look like her,

but it's like that raising one eyebrow thing. She has this kind of like permanent smirk. I think, no, for sure. And I think that she would often like kind of tilt her head to offset it, which gave her a very like come hither body language. Yes. It's interesting, right?

It makes you like, you're like, there's something about her face, what is it? And then you kind of look into it more. I think it's like a cool effect. Yeah, it's not like extra beautiful or ugly. It's neither of those. It's just kind of... It's intriguing.

Yeah. It pulls you in. All right. So now that we've gotten the eyes and that out of the way, we can get in. Section one, the God it all girl. I wish I could think of like little like mice babe songs to sing as you do the chapters. Chapter two! Shannon Doherty was born April 12th, 1971 in Memphis, Tennessee.

She was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother Rosa and grew up a fairly conservative traditional girl. Although she notes that living in the South, I saw how women were treated and I wasn't going to be treated like that. When Shannon was six, the family moved to Palos Verdes in Los Angeles. Her father, Tom, had purchased a trucking company but it all fell apart within a few years. Says Tom, the father, Shannon has seen both sides of the coin. We lived in a prestigious area with an ocean view, then we had the rug pulled out from under us.

There was a time when the doorbell would ring and it might be the utility man there to cut off the power. Shannon took to acting at a young age, first in church, where she played Sneezy in a production of Snow White. Nice, cute. Apparently she really chewed the scenery in that one. Shortly after that, she landed a Pepsi commercial and then a voice role in the animated movie The Secret of Nim. That's The Mice, I think. The Mice! Yeah! I really like The Mice. Didn't know Shana was in that one. Wow. She's keeping the secret. She's the secret. Shannon Doherty has The Secret of Nim. She got a role in the TV show Father Murphy created and produced by Michael Landon. Landon took a shine to her and later that year in 1982, he opened the door for 11 year old Shannon Doherty to get a recurring role as Jenny Wilder

on Little House on the Prairie. Oh, that's right. That was a pretty big show. She was in Little House on the Prairie. I feel like all the millennial girls I know who liked like the Secret Garden and shit, they watched Little House on the Prairie. My feel like all the millennial girls I know who liked like the Secret Garden and shit, they watch Little House on the Prairie. My sister Alyssa is one of those, she's a Secret Garden Little House girl.

She's still waiting for the Secret Garden to open up. No dude, like there's too many Secret Garden movie adaptations, Alyssa is done. She's like put that shit away. Wait, did they oversaturate the secret? Because I haven't been paying attention to the Secret Garden IP. Did they tire the fanbase out? haven't been paying attention to the secret garden IP. Did they tire the fan base out? They've been going back to the power.

It's not a secret anymore. Everyone knows. They need to keep it a secret. We need more exclusivity in the secret. We need to set up a red velvet rope and start keeping out the riff-raff. And just anybody can get in these days. I know. I know. It's so sad. Said Shannon Doherty of her role on Little House on the Prairie, that show changed my life.

Michael Landon was the one who said to me, always stick up for yourself. Never let anybody walk all over you. Be a strong woman. Learn that on the prairie. She learned that when she was out milking cows and that's when she heard it. She heard someone know, she overheard someone talking about it out front. Amen. When the bandits came around. What happened on that show? Isn't that a Canadian show? She was out milking cows and that's when she heard it. She heard someone know she overheard did someone talking about it out front

When the bandits came around what happened on that show? Isn't that a Canadian show? No, you're thinking Anna Green Gables. Oh, thank you. Thank you for correcting as a heterosexual man. They're interchangeable to me as well I'm not a heterosexual man shit. What happened? Damn it. I lost my way either way Forgot I'm gay, fuck. I had a specific, let me walk it back. When I was in high school, I was almost not graduated because they alleged that I stole a copy of Anne of Green Gables from the library and I remember very much being like- Why have I never heard this?

This is insane. Dude, it's true. It's true. Well, literally all it took was me going into the library and very honestly being like I wouldn't fucking like because again because because I'm a dumbass boy to me I'm like that's girl shit why would I do that? And so I was like I that's basically what I went in and said I was like I've never fucking read that book I'm not interested in that book it's a five dollar book what you're this is a five dollar do you think I stole this shit I've never even fucking seen this book yeah ask me any characters name in animals other than and it'll be like I don't fucking gable I don't fucking know

a Canadian classic Taylor you shout all over well I have a grudge I have a I have baggage for some dog millionaire baggage from my past you see okay okay I see maybe it was a test that's the only way you can graduate high school is if you can successfully claim that you haven't stolen. That was my Atticus Finch moment I was I was standing up there and holding forth in the name of justice. Poor Jenny Wilder let's talk a little bit about poor Jenny Wilder this is Shannon's role on La Havasana Prairie. I tell this the story was that she fell in love I think with someone who died and then she tried to like drown herself in the pond to like be with him in heaven and then she was kidnapped by a madman. I tuned out

of the Wikipedia article about a madman that's not my verbiage that's littlehouse.wikia.com or whatever that is. She was kidnapped by a madman. So it seems like Jenny Wilder really went through it and in this process, Shannon Doherty made a name for herself as an up and coming child actor. Got it. Yeah, yeah. Pretty young too. Yeah, she was like 11 and best of all she was rubbing elbows with her idol, Melissa Gilbert.

Hey. According to Melissa Gilbert herself in her book, which is titled, and if you were Melissa Gilbert who had starred on Little House on the Prairie, what would you call Melissa Gilbert who had starred on Little House on the Prairie What would you call your book? It's a little house on the prairie pun. Little life on the prairie? Little... That's not bad. Big life. Little memoir? Big life on the prairie. We were looking for prairie tale a memoir. That's not very clever. Oh, I couldn't agree less. I couldn't agree less. I think it's very clever. I think it's very clever. Oh, pray. Pray, right? It's a pun on pray thee tell. I think it's very clever. I think it's very clear. Oh pray pray it, right

It's a pun on pray thee tell no it's a pun on fairy tale This is too high level for you all this is no I In any case Melissa Gilbert asserted that Shannon Doherty copied her like a shadow quote she wanted to know no no no Copy her like you know I'm about to murder you yeah, maybe Quote she wanted to be like me when she grew up That came to be the case later in life when Melissa Gilbert was on a trial separation from her husband Bo Brinkman during which time Bo moved into the same Burbank apartment complex as Shannon.

Later, as they tried to reconcile, Bo would confess that he had hooked up with Shannon during the time that he and Melissa were newly separated. They did end up reconciling Melissa in the sky. Imagine the awkwardness crackling in the air when, according to Gilbert, the two of them ran into each other backstage at the Emmys during a tribute to Michael Landon. Melissa said

that she rejected Shannon's attempt at a hug, saying, I don't think so. I know what you did I grow up, I wanted to be just like you. Oh wow, that's a little scary actually. That's creepy. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's some Joan Crawford indeed. Gilbert describes the response as, Two single white female for my tastes.

A little bit. Yeah, scary, spooky. Cause it's one thing to be like, Sorry dude, I don't make your husband's life. But it's another thing to like, she owns it. But she was just like, I wanted that little dick on the prairie, whatever it was, right? Yeah. Yeah.

In conclusion, Gilbert wrote in her 2010 book that if she saw Doherty in the street, quote, I wouldn't say anything, I'd just punch her in the nose. But that's all in the distant future. Back in the 1980s, Shannon went back to her Baptist school where she had one of her first instances of rubbing power the wrong way, quoting Shannon. I hated that school. It was very repressed. They thought the dancing was evil and I disagreed. I organized a big dance and the principal called me in. He wasn't pleased. This is the plot of Footloose. It's Footloose. She was in an odd dancing town, which was apparently LA. Um, he wasn't pleased. He had his Bible out there on his desk and he

told me how God would punish me. I flipped through his Bible and I found references to people dancing and rejoicing. I said to him, it clearly shows they dance and rejoice. Just what the fuck is wrong with you? Direct quote. Direct quote. Direct quote Just what the fuck is wrong with you? Direct quote. Direct quote. Direct quote. That bomb, direct quote. What the fuck is wrong with you? She finished her schooling at the Licee Francaise, a private school in LA,

her family by then having recovered from their patch of rocky financial weather. Meanwhile, Shannon parlayed her TV success into further exitos in 1985. She appeared in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun alongside Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt. Oh okay. We've never seen that one, never seen that one. I think it's literally a movie version of the song Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper. I think she might like cameo in it. It's not supposed to be very good but it's supposed to be like if you like a

good cheesy 80s flick watch that kind of thing. The only thing I know about it is that it's like it has really amazing outfits. Sarah Jessica Parker, like, it's the epitome of like, doing a lot with the 80s style. Say what you will about SJP, but she's not gonna show up in a burlap sack, is she? No, she ain't, she ain't. That's so true. From 1986 to 1988, Shannon was a series regular on two seasons of Our House, a forgotten Wilford Brimley vehicle.

This is your textbook like, I'm a grandpa and I have to adopt my grandchildren and we have to bridge the generational divide and you know. Totally. My kid knows someone who has AIDS but my kid can't have AIDS because they're a series regular. Like I don't know if that's the actual storyline but that's the gist. And then in 1989 Shannon would take on her most iconic role yet as Heather Duke in the 1989 black comedy Heathers. That's the cops coming because there's so many fucking murders in that movie. The Heather Siren. You guys have watched Heathers, yes no? Oh yeah, I love Heathers. Yeah. What were your impressions on it? I'm interested

because it's very much a movie, like not exclusively because there's lots of asshole male characters in it, too But it's somewhat a movie about like it's it's a much more caustic and vicious Mean girls, it's mean girls if they were trying to fucking kill each other instead of just sabotage each other What was yeah as a girl who went to high school? What was your take? You're our woman correspondent Jos Josie, for this podcast. Yes, yes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for reminding me.

I remember my mom really wanted me to watch it because I also went to a high school that had uniforms and they have uniforms in Heathers. That was the draw analysis mind, huh? Yeah, so I watched it and I remember really liking it. I did like it. Yeah and the like the turned up like dark comedy of it. Very very stylized kind of turn up. Weird movie, weird tone, starts off very talk heavy and then it turns into this weird like

almost silent drama where she's trying to like fight Christian Slater to disarm a bomb. I don't like Christian Slater. I think that's part of why I don't like Heather's like as much as I should. But it's a good role. It's notably a first villain role for Shannon. It sort of breaks the kind of squeaky clean thing she's built for herself on Little House on the Prairie because now she's swearing and saying like, Veronica, why are you pulling my dick? And things like that. And it was also in the set of Heathers that Shannon had a public confrontation

with a married crew member who was having an affair with an extra, said Shannon. It was the first time I actually saw somebody take advantage of the extras. He knew I disliked him, and he was the first person to call me a bitch. Oh. Oh. I love that that's documented, that she was like, he was the first person to call me a bitch. Oh,

I love that that's documented that she was like, I've never been called a bitch before. This is the moment. Yeah. Well, at some point in her life, I think she was going to be like, well, I've spent my whole life in the public eye being called a bitch. Where did that start? You know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think journaling.

Yeah. Section two, TV's hottest teen Fortunately for Shannon a most unlikely guardian angel was watching her career with great interest Tori Spelling was the daughter of TV producer Aaron Spelling and to dub him a mere TV producers Underselling it noted as the most prolific producer in television history, Papa Spelling has 218 classic TV credits to his name, which at the time we join him in this story already included the Mod Squad, Charlie's Angels, and Dynasty. Okay, that's a lot.

That's big. That's diverse as well. Wow. Daughter Tori was slowly building her acting portfolio with roles in The Love Boat, TJ Hooker, Hotel, Fantasy Island, Vegas, and Saved by the Bell, a studded roster of Aaron's Spelling Productions. And in 1990, she was cast in what would go on to be her signature role as Donna Martin on her daddy's latest project, a teen soap opera for the Fox Network set in the lavish

suburbs of Beverly Hills, California. 90210. Beverly Hills 90210. It's the zip code, by the way. So the story of how Tori's spelling gets cast to 90210 is kind of legendary in its own right, and everyone including me seems to take it as a fib, but there's a possibility that it's true. So I want you to go into this story giving our girl Tori Spelling the benefit of the doubt that maybe her version of this is true, but it's dodgy. So!

Okay. The way that Tori Spelling tells it is that she... This wasn't a nepotism hire, we didn't have nepo babies back then, that's a word that we just came up with. Okay. Tory spelling auditioned under an alias. I'm sure that's how it happened. So her father, the man who gave her life. Aaron, Papa Aaron, Papa Aaron.

Papa Aaron wouldn't recognize her? Well, it's not like he was sitting in the, he wasn't on like, it was, it was, he sent Simon, Randy and Paula at that point, I guess, to go and do his bidding. And- I feel like, can I say something? By all means.

We didn't have the term Neppo Babies back then because Neppo Babies told stories like this and we believed them. We didn't believe, nobody has ever, I've never heard Mitchell, if I may, I've never heard a soul say, you know what, she might have a point on this one, but let's just humor it.

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's humor it. The way that she tells it is she auditioned under an alias, and specifically the alias was Tori Mitchell, so she's one of ours in this telling. Oh, shit! She's a family member. She's La Familia, right? La Mitchell Familia. Wow, yeah, it's all about family, yeah.

You might be hinting. Si, claro. Fast and Furious. I got that. I wanted to address those both at the same time, and I just landed on Spanish first, but I saw the Vindicis, but I'll keep... It's all about family. You might be hinting. Si, claro. Fast and Furious. I got that. I wanted to address those both at the same time and I just landed on Spanish first but

I saw the Vindices but I'll do it. Okay, good. The story is that Tori auditions under the name of Tori Mitchell and eventually at some point someone I guess discovers that she's Tori spelling. In my head I like to imagine that she kind of like comes in dressed as a peasant woman and then she like throws off her cloak and she's like it was me, Tory Spelling! They're like Tory? You delivered that amazing breathtaking performance? I'm imagining like the Mulholland Drive audition where everyone's crying.

It's literally that where everyone's like this is the most profound thing I've ever watched in my whole life. And it's funny because like Tory Spellinglling is, she's a particular looking woman and I don't say that as a knock, I'm not saying she's ugly at all. I just mean to say she looks like Tori Spelling, like you're not mistaken for anyone else. Yeah, you're gonna recognize her. But either way, one of the perks of being the boss's daughter

is that your recommendations hold sway. And so when Tori expressed to her father that there was this cool actor, Shannon Doherty, in this movie, Heather's, and more importantly importantly this Wilfred Brimley show Our House and You really should give her a look daddy One thing leads to another and soon Shannon was cast on Beverly Hills 90210 in the lead role of Brenda Walsh So really quick Brandon and Brenda Walsh, played by Jason Priestley and Shannon Doherty, are the lead characters of 90210.

Their parents, Jim and Cindy, have just come into some... They've either come into some money or Jim's been transferred in his company or something. They come over to Beverly Hills from Minnesota, so it's this fish out of water story of these two kids from the Midwest who have been transplanted to this land of Ferraris and veneers and boutique shopping experiences and to have to find their way in this new social milieu. Okay, so they're kind of our proxies, more or less. Yes, sort of, if you accept the fact that one of them would come to be so hated that they wrote a zine about her. Gotcha. The first season of 90210 was not especially well rated or notable, but then someone got the

bright idea to commission a special summer season of the show. In the summer of 1991, while most of the other TV shows were in reruns. And all the kids were out of school. And all the kids were out of school with nothing to do and all kinds of desire to invest in new young hotties to plaster our Locker doors with photos of right? Yeah the Kids of Beverly Hills Brendan the gang were going to the Beverly Hills Beach Club

So they were doing so they were on summer vacay to just like the kids in real life And then when the kids went back to school in September well so with the characters on the show so they just continued the season into the school year okay that's pretty smart yeah it's smart I haven't actually heard of anything like that before although I haven't been looking but it was very much part of the inscrutable something in addition to Shannon Doherty having an eye slightly lower than the other. Yes, that's exactly it. That kind of like programming of the timing of it all really gets into like the psyche of the high school rhythm. It does. It understands the kids, which is what you're seeking to do to some degree

when you're Aaron Spelling, who is this million-year-old TV producer, well, that echoes what the kids want pretty well. And it captures the youth audience, and at that point Beverly Hills 90210 became a bona fide pop cultural sensation, with the zip code 90210 becoming shorthand for anything expensive and chic. So Shannon played the role of Brenda Walsh for four seasons till 1994, during which time there would be bountiful reports that things were not so peachy at the Peach Pit. That's the diner from 90210 if you haven't watched it.

Why? Because Shannon was allegedly disrespectful to her co-stars, drinking and partying until all hours and keeping everyone waiting on set until as Josie indicated, she arrived late, dropping diva demands like limousines to the set, going to posh boutiques and racking up six figure debts she couldn't pay, getting in fights outside nightclubs, throwing bottles at cars, and worst of all,

worst of any of the above, attempting to exercise creative control on the show and being outspoken in interviews despite being, yuck, a girl. Eww. God forbid. In 1993 she maintained that what was mistaken for bitchiness was actually perfectionism quote. I'm not saying I don't have my moments of bitchiness because I know everybody has them, but it's never for no reason.

I've always been a ballsy kid. I know it pisses some people off, but isn't the end result much better? That's, yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm like with it. Imagine a 19 year old girl who's late every day saying that to you. Yeah, the lateness. Well the lateness is not what bothers me. The lateness doesn't bother me as much as like the perfectionist comment bothers me

because sometimes in my life I've encountered people that are huge dicks that are like, sorry I'm just a perfectionist and what I'm thinking is you have horrible taste and you're wrong and the thing that you're being a Dick about is in fact so misguided and you're just being a dick about I'm a I'm a perfectionist in that my ideas are perfect and yours are not. Yeah, it's like Yeah, I would love it if she had these like brilliant visions and people aren't listening to them But what if she's being a quote-unquote perfectionist and like she's demanding things that are like gonna make the show worse You know, we don't know what it was she was asking for but then it's like it's that slippery slope of any ism, right?

it's like do you not like the idea because of taste or is it because she's a woman or because of Race or what I'm saying Yeah, we don't know what it was but like I just whatever people say like I I'm a perfectionist, I'm like, that's a red flag, you know? I will say this, as someone who watched all ten seasons of 902. I should come clean on that. I watched all of this movie, and these are 32 episodes. Fuck, these are long seasons. Fuck my life. All summer long. These are long, oh my god, but an era of my life. Ten of these 292 episodes, and fuck me, this is a show that could have been like- Thank you for your service, Taylor. of these 292 episodes and and fuck me this is a show that could have been like you're welcome this could have been 50 episodes this could have been an email this show but it couldn't have it

was too early in the in the time frame but what i will say is that i personally found shannon dourdy to be noticeably the best of the young actors of her cohort on the show okay she was she was always a really good actor and the praise for her, specifically from the writing department, apparently production and cast would get really fed up with her, but the praise for her from the writing department was it didn't matter how late or hungover she rolled in, she would look at the script one time and then bang you out like a really good take. That's fantastic. So the writers loved her because she kind of did what they put on

the page and did it well but everyone else was just sick of her shit. That's interesting. That kind of makes her sound good to me. So she's perhaps, she's just an excellent, who's to say, who's to say? Either way, that kind of boldness may have influenced Shannon's infamously touchy relationship with co-star Jenny Garth, who played the Betty to Shannon's Veronica, her blonde love rival Kelly Taylor People reports on an incident where a day shoot had run past midnight and Shannon took it upon herself to announce that everyone could go home

She had producers permission She told people but it may have rubbed some people the wrong way namely quote I don't think Jenny was very happy She said of her co-worker of three years in an article that co-worker would have been very able to read with her own eyes. We haven't really talked about what happened, but Jenny is a great girl and this is something that can be worked on. It was easy for the media to pit the two against each other, especially as the Kelly character became entangled in an affair with Brenda's on-screen boyfriend Dylan, but the animosity

between the two became very real. There were stories of fights about who got to wear a red dress in this photo shoot, who got to have a dressing room, why did Shannon get to do the rolling stone cover and I didn't? Oh, okay, okay. That makes sense that she would be hated on for like being popular and better at her job than other people too. So this is now we've now we flipped over because Shannon's our protagonist we flipped over to their jealous and that's what this is Right Entirely

It does feel that way now they feel jealous Yeah The animosity peaked with an incident where Shannon flipped Jenny's skirt up on set and so the story behind this apparently is that According so here's Shannon tell it here's Shannon Doherty it. What had happened was that Jenny had been going around to various like male cast Not cast, I don't know if they were cast members or staff or what But she was going like boxer check and pantsing people and so Shannon was like well I'm gonna, wouldn't she like a taste of her own medicine? So according to Shannon She was like boxer check and fucking flipped up Jenny's skirt

Saca-vo fucking flipped up Jenny's skirt. Sock a whore. According to Jenny Garth, many years later, we filmed the scene and Shannon pulled my dress and tried to hit me with her leg. She did everything to make me go out of focus. Eventually, she pulled the dress up and expose my butt so everyone could see it. I broke down and yelled at her something like come on bitch we're taking it outside. This just made me remember the 90s were hard. The 90s were so hard. There was a lot of shit like that. You didn't even have gay people then, it was terrible. No cell phones, no gay people.

Yes, it was worse. These were adults, these are all technically adult or teenagers. By the worst point of their relationship, let's say by the time Brenda leaves the show, Shannon's in her like early 20s, 22, 23. Yeah, but like when I was a kid this happened all the time and like middle school there's always bullshit like that like binder check, boxers checks, like just all kinds of like Oh let me tap your nuts! Tapping nuts like people it's just like when someone like you're holding your binder in the hallway and someone like rips it out and like usually it's like open all your shit goes there but it's not like you're being bullied by the bully you're holding your binder in the hallway and someone like rips it out. And like usually it's like open and all your shit goes up. But it's not like you're being bullied by the bully.

You're being bullied by potentially anyone. I would also do it because it was part of the same reason Shannon did the... Yeah. It's like it's just the entire culture of everyone's just being mean. And you're like getting your fucking aggression out of your system and what you perceive to be a pro-social way, but you don't know what any of that means or whatever it is, right? You're all just participating in the new, like, horrible thing that's hurting each

other. Also, surprise, you're famous and rich now and everyone in malls is like running after you and telling you that you're amazing and hot. Yeah, fuck. And you're getting pantsed. Yeah. Shannon's on-set behavior was influenced by her chaotic off-screen life. She was 19 years old when the show started and her personal life already showed signs of the turmoil

that would come to make it infamous. For example, against her parents' wishes, she moved out of her home at 18 and moved in with a 31-year-old boyfriend who had told her he was 28. Oh, gross. Ew, what? That's gross. Yeah, quoting Shannon,

"'I wanted so much to be on my own. I wanted to prove I could do things myself. I tried drugs and drinking every single night. I was out clubbing and drinking. It was a bad scene. Six months later, Shannon's boyfriend slapped her across the face. And that was that.

Nope, that's the money maker. Well, that's what she said. That's it. She moved back in with her parents. One and done. Good for her, damn. That's a lot of strength for someone that young, huh? Yeah, yeah, totally.

Tumultuous relationships of this kind studded Shannon's young life as a celebrity. In 1991, she got engaged and split from real estate manager Chris Foufous, who described her as a dictator and commented on her rage issues. Oh, oh, Oh. In 1993, she got engaged to Dean Factor, scion of the Max Factor haircare empire. That's a name apparently, not just like a combination of 80s words. Like Shacuzzi. I thought like Max Factor was like maximum factor for your hair. Yeah. This, this engagement actually ended up not being such a great thing.

The brief romance was marred by mutual allegations of abuse. She and others in her life accused him of giving her a black eye because he was jealous about her relationship with her coworker, Judd Nelson. And then on the flip side, quoting Dean's court petition, quote, I locked myself in our bathroom. She threatened to shoot me and said I'm gonna drop you I knew she had a loaded 9 millimeter automatic I heard the chamber pulled back at that point I hastily exit that's the cops coming for Shannon I Hastily exited the house through a back door connected to the bathroom and escaped Also so crazy the 90s where you could do whatever He also alleges that Shannon tried to run him over with a car and threw a log through

his window. A log? A log. She was trying to get in. I'm skeptical of these stories. It's his word versus hers, right? But he did file this with a card. And also, like, to me, a mutually abusive relationship between two volatile people doesn't sound

so very crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it- because you escalate each other, you know? Like, it's just like, you did that crazy thing, so then they did that crazy thing. By her own admission, she's drinking and drinking during this time, and like, if I'm going and throwing a log through someone's window, that sounds crazy. If I'm getting really drunk and I'm angry at my ex or my on-and-off and I throw a log through their window that maybe sounds closer to something that could happen. During one argument he said she quote threatened to hire a few guys to beat me

up and to sodomize me on the front lawn. In 1993 Shannon who's I think 22 at that time married 19 year old-old Ashley Hamilton, son of George Hamilton, famous gentleman in his own right. He probably was born with very white teeth. There you go, big, big white teeth and big tall hair. Within half a year, the marriage was over. Shannon alluded that her marriage with Hamilton spilled over into her struggles at work, quote,

"'I was in a really horrible marriage "'and there were things transpiring in that marriage that made it very hard for me to be consistently on time for work. I know that became a very big problem, as it should be, because if everybody else is on time and you're waiting for one person, it sucks. This was on her podcast.

Let's be clear. Yeah. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's all be clear. Let's be clear. Yes. Her chronic lateness, nonchalantant attitude and aggressive partying aggravated not only the producers of Man or Tuno but other collaborators as well

Peter Dutch Oh D-U-C-H-O-W Ducho Duchao. It's cuz so many ways this could get so many beautiful paths Produced her TV movie obsessed, you know that she was chronically late. Like a lot of talented people, she has mood swings. Hers are perhaps a lot more exaggerated than others. And any 21 year old is difficult to work with. She- that's not true. She has to learn some lessons that everybody has to learn. I've worked with a lot of like very professional and competent 21 year olds. That's not true. Yeah. A senior crew member on the thriller blindfold called her on set behavior cantankerous, snotty, and threatening.

Dennis Miller kept a photo of Shannon backstage with a devilhorn and goatee scrawled on it after Shannon took some swipes at him on his talk show for seeming illities with her. That's a badge of honor, dude. That's a man-child. Like, if Dennis Miller is singling you out, you're doing something right. Fuck Dennis Miller. Yeah, fuck that guy. And says producer and director Walter Miller, who oversaw the 1992 Emmys, where Shannon dropped out of presenting an award at the last moment, Quote, she was a colossal pain in the ass.

The public distaste for all things Shannon slash Brenda reached a crescendo with a heavily marketed single-issue zine entitled I hate Brenda Which made a splash and solidified a steadily growing microculture of Shannon Doherty haters. I hate Brenda was the brainchild of Darby Romeo and Karen Morataya, creators of the legendary punk zine Ben is Dead If you've ever heard of it have not we're obsessive fans of 902 and oh said Karen Morataya we love everyone else on the show except her we hate her she pretends to be so moralistic in reality she's not she's destroying the lives of all these innocent people and i just can't take it dan that's fascinating it's

fascinating that people are doing that on their own, like coming to that feeling. Yeah, in reality, you mean the reality of the TV show? Like what? But maybe like this is what you were getting at when you were talking about this bleeding over between facts and fiction, that like the she-pretends part is that her character is pretty nice, it sounds like. Her character is, she's not even that nice, but she's like, if you already dislike Shannon, like Brenda was the type to get on her high horse about her principles and so is Shannon already, and I would also add, everybody on that show was. All the other characters were equally moralistic and often toward Brenda, in my experience

as a homosexual viewing it, who wants to empathize with whoever the most rotten person on the TV is supposed to be I didn't think she was that bad Honestly, I really really didn't it feels like people are making these judgments based on what they think she's exactly well put it to you This way when Shannon leaves the show and the Brenda character is written out She'll end up getting replaced by a character named Val Malone played by Tiffany Amber Thieson. And I think she's much more of a conventional soap opera villain in terms of what you're imagining.

She would do things like fake an abortion or be involved in a ransom scheme and all of these like kind of like bad girl things. Whereas Brenda was actually by that standard, pretty straight edge, honestly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in terms of soap opera villains. But what I was wondering is maybe people are seeing this kind of straight edge character

and then they're hearing stories of her partying and they're like, oh, she's a hypocrite. Or it's like, no, she's an actress is actually just playing a role. Yeah. It's interesting because Darby Romeo, who's one of the creators of the zine, says, the movement wasn't really about Brenda quote It's all about Shannon Doherty and that's it. I think it's more the way she treats people So this person's acknowledging that this is sort of it's interesting. I've just said personal so I've

Zine this is the zine. I'm gonna send you the the front page of the I hate Brenda zine I love this a lot of a lot of care was put into this hate campaign. Dude, it's a great, well this is written by, again, there's this very famous influential punk scene that this person wrote and I Hate Brenda was their sidebar because they were a big 90210 fan who hated Brenda. So it came out very organically. I just love in today's world like it's

so easy everything's so cheap you can just log on to SteveMartin.com and just write I hate Brenda and then eat breakfast and then it's so but like someone had to spend hours making the zine. Oh dude she was talking they were talking about like we were in the microfiche for this shit all the time. All the time. If a library, readin' up on Brenda. And I'll read a little pracy of this intro paragraph, but it's actually really well written. And it's one of those things where like, this feels like a sort of prototype of like the snark community that would grow on the internet in the 2000s. This feels like a progenitor to that. Yeah, this feels like Perez Hilton. It feels like a little bit gay, like a little bit,

like they're having fun with it. It's kind of beautiful. It's very gay. It's very gay in its sensibilities. Yeah, it's very like beautifully put together. I'm kind of into it. It's gorgeous. And I'll read you a little. If anything, you should read, you should read the full first paragraph of this, but I'll read you a little put together synopsis it's hard being America's new hip nubile teen television starlet yet Shannon Doherty certainly is trying very trying according to the numerous sources we spoke to what started off as a generic dislike for the Queen Bee of TV's Beverly Hills now to know soon

developed into an 80,000 watt transmission of protests to dethrone her. How much of Brenda is Shannon Doherty? Do we really hate Ms. Doherty? Is she just a victim of her character, Brenda? Or is her character becoming a victim of Shannon? As you read these pages, you will probably define your own perspective of this multifaceted, yet strangely one-dimensional woman.

Our newsletter is a forum for thoughtful analysis as well as fun and expression. We're not out to change the world, just to star. And then you can see at the bottom, you have all these different people's reasons for hating Brenda. You have an interview with someone who loves Brenda to provide, you know, we- these are uh, what's it called? Shared time? What do you have in the United States where all the candidates have to have the same amount of time? It's not real. Is that fake? They don't have the same amount of time.

Yeah, no, that doesn't sound right, right? Equal time. And then, interestingly, we have this interview with the real Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, and it's specifically like running down Shannon Doherty for, I guess, the way that she tried to get some backstage passes for Pearl Jam in a way that feels kind of mean and that I think would kind of hurt my feelings if I were Shannon Doherty for I guess the way that she tried to get some backstage passes for Pearl Jam in a way that feels kind of mean and that I think would kind of hurt my feelings if I was Shannon Doherty because apparently

She had a real crush on this guy Eddie Vedder and he kind of shit on her and I Yeah, so it's kind of like it's interesting because there's part of it that seems very snarky and in good fun And there's parts of it where you're like, oh, I don't think you quite found the line on that cuz that this really This is really reminiscent of a lot of the stuff in Britney Spears' book because she talks about that like when stuff starts to turn bad in terms of the tabloid stuff about her or even early on before like it got crazy. The thing that was really horrible for Britney was that they would like interview Drew Barrymore, people that she hung out with, people that she had like partied with, and then people that or like that she had a crush on and they would just

very openly talk about her and just be like, oh yeah, Britney's crazy. Because there was clout to be had in it when Justin Timberlake released Cry Me A River. Exactly. I was like, get her, get her. Yeah. But what's so like, I don't know, fucked up about is that like it's one thing like we all you know admit that people that we know in our lives might like have thoughts about us. But like, you know, you'd like to think that someone's not just gonna like disrespect you so, like casually like that.

You know, there's something so. Someone that you had an interaction with where you were like, oh, I was, I was actually kind of myself around that person and I guess they didn't like me. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I thought it was a good interaction. Yeah, yeah. That must be so unsettling. Dehumanizing. Yeah, foundation shaking. For her

part, Shannon tried to play it off, but like she'd be like, I hate Brenda too and da da da da da. But like, here's a perfect example. Apparently the thing that kind of set off this newsletter, among other things, it had been building for a while, but Brenda hate but she said Shannon Doherty said and she kind of gave this like kind of pretentious up her own ass statement in some interview but like I'm gonna make a band called Uncle Velvet and it's gonna be a very cool band it's gonna be a mix of like you two and Pearl Jam it was a really stupid ass like dumb fuck thing to say but also like the bitch was 20 cut her some slack yeah she's famous and everyone's telling her you're great you're amazing also you're 20 I've said shit like that before too I was a drag

queen my name would be Amy grindhouse I know I'm not gonna be a damn drag queen I'm also not being interviewed for People magazine you know what I mean? Also a really good drag name. I did my best. Did my best. I was just going to point out too that like the weird cross between reality and the show, part of this is like, the headline is the I Hate Brenda newsletter, and then there's a, an oval cutout of Shannon Dority. And below it, it doesn't say Brenda. it says Doherty. Like it's mixing the character and the actress and obviously yeah we talked about like the actress speaking about wanting to be in a band and this

kind of thing so it's like wait who are we talking about Brenda? Are we talking about Shannon? And do you really know Shannon? Yeah it reminds me a lot about art times now because I think when certain things, entities, big enough, especially on the internet, people feel entitled to speak on them because they're like, well, you know, because this is like, but basically public domain now, they deserve it. They've gotten this big. It's why it's about Brenda is why it's all about Brenda is because of the show being so big. And then it's like, obviously it's not really about Brenda, but it's all about Brenda is because of the show being so big and then it's like obviously it's not really about Brenda But it's like they feel entitled because of how popular the show is well

I think to you if you look down at the bottom of the page There's a funny fit There's a really good quote that kind of encapsulates the funniness of this whole project Because it's a quote from Shannon Doherty not Brenda Shandorny. They've got it in the footer So this will appear on every page the world we live in isn't safe for any woman Shannon Doherty and that's at once like both like a very funny Statement to make in the sense of you imagine her delivering it with such gravity as this like 20 year old teen soap star But at the same time she's fucking right

And it's funny that they're like quoting it as like isn't't she so dumb? And it's like, isn't that demonstrably true? Yeah, and aren't you perpetuating it? Yeah. This was made by women. They're proving the point. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. This whole thing, this kind of like, I hate Brenda, I saw it described as a micro trend, and that's a good way to put it. It ends up blowing up with this big event, bumper stickers, a book, an album called Hating Brenda where these people did like, like they were basically Mitchell doing hit em. They're like, here's a grunge track, here's a dance

track, here's a blank track about I hate Brenda. One of them's called Brenda Can't Dance to This. Brenda Can't Dance to This. It's like a dance track. Wow. They had a big live event that had a Brenda piñata, 90210 drag queens, so you say it felt very queer. It's very queer but it feels almost like a tribute. Like if I was Shannon Doherty it would be hard not to be complimented. I'm living rent-free in your head bitches. Why are you obsessed with me? You know that's the vibe. And apparently the best part is, and I don't know if these guys are just part of the performance art but they had pro Brenda picketers outside this event

so while people are smashing this effigy of Brenda inside you have people outside being like Brenda is good Brenda is good. Brenda is good Was more strange. Yeah Hating Brenda and hating Shannon became a trend in mainstream magazines as we talked about the Wendy's Twitter account the Wendy's Steve Martin account Always right there to hop on the trend glamour magazine named Shannon Doherty prima donna of the year for 1982 because she allegedly melted down on a set when only pre-Madonna of the year for 1982 because she allegedly melted down on a set when only eight Avion bottles arrived to wash her hair instead of ten. No word on if that's true but fun if so. Sassy magazine opined Shannon Doherty comma

pathetic loser exclamation point. Whoa! We didn't care back then and then kind of don't now. Yeah. In a prepared statement 902 and no executive producer Aaron Spelling said quote We are very surprised at this negative attack on Brenda not Shannon mind you Brenda It certainly isn't the response we're getting from fans of the show from what we have heard the campaign appears to be in very poor taste And is obviously designed to attract media attention. By 1994, Shannon had not only alienated the public but her castmates including not just Jenny Garth but Jason Priestley, Luke Perry, Tori Spelling, her former bestie, and her employers. In the end, it was reportedly said former bestie Tori Spelling, anxious over how much

tension Shannon's behaviour was creating among the rest of the relevant players who made the request. Daddy, do something about Shannon. Wow. Wow. Papa Aaron, unhappy with the partying and men Shannon had introduced his daughter to, was happy to oblige. Shannon Doherty was f-f from Beverly Hills in 90210 after four seasons, replaced as I said by Tiffany Amber Thieson as the world's hottest bad girl Val Malone. Like that's the best- that had that hetero vibe I was telling you about earlier, Val Malone. That's a good villain name, Val Malone. Val Malone's the best, Val Malone's a hot bitch.

Speaking on her podcast, let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. By then in her 50s, Doherty acknowledged her responsibility in her 902.0 firing, but says, quote, I certainly wish that I had been sat down and looked at and said listen, the end result is you are going to get fired because none of us are willing to put up with it anymore. And I understand that you have an issue in your personal life, but that also can't lead into work. You have to get your shit together. Yeah.

Section 3. Oh. Nobody's pussycat. Okay, meow. For all her personal problems, Shannon left enough of a positive impression as an actor that she would be cast in another Aaron spelling project. Oh, okay, Okay, Papa Aaron. Well, Papa Aaron, listen, Papa Aaron knows all about the Dullabills and he knows that

Shannon is both a good actor and probably that Shannon Doherty does another Aaron spelling show will get some curious eyes on it. Okay, true. The people were calling for blood so he gave them blood and then the people called for Shannon so he gave them Shannon. That's exactly right. They said, I like these brunette ladies you're putting on the TV, but I've got one complaint. Their eyes are pretty symmetrical.

And so he's like, I hear you. I hear what you're saying. I got just the person to the job. Just the thing. Mm-hmm. Charmed ran from 1998 to 2006. I didn't realize it lasted that long. I haven't actually...

I watched one episode of Charmed for this show. It was the first time I'd ever watched Charmed and it was an episode where Shannon Doherty got turned into a dog. Oh shit, you hear that, B-Man? I have a fun fact about Charmed. Please. He plays at the gym. By all means. We were at work with a co-worker of mine who's a bit younger, not too much younger. I wouldn't say like, Gen Z younger, but younger. Younger millennial. And we were talking about, for some reason, 98 Degrees, the boy band.

Are we familiar? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so like it was like 98 Degrees, you know, and then it was very clear that this coworker, she did not know about 98 Degrees. And so then like me and my other older coworkerworker who's my age were just repeating the name Nick Lachey As our eyes got wider and we got crazier we're just like Nick Lachey So we had it, you know, obviously like he's still

He's Netflix now right him and his wife have like a have a reality TV hosting Empire she's got she's like the I don't know what he is for today but he's just like the guy who hosts any kind of love island or Ryan Seacrest yeah exactly and so anyway we showed her his picture it's like you know him trust me because you've watched like reality TV and then she right away she was like she gasped and she said it's Leslie St. Claire, Leslie St. Claire from charmed. And Nick Lachey, he has a recurring role in charmed as a character named Leslie St. Claire. Great name. My god. Good to know. Good to know. Well, he has nothing to do with what I'm about to say. Nick Lachey. He is Nick Lachey. We can't deny. It all does go back to that.

Gear shift, gear shift, back to Charmed. Yes. The show Charmed ran from 1988 to 2006 told the story of the three Hallowell sisters, young women who discover that they are witches. This included Shannon Doherty as eldest sister Prue, Shannon's good personal friend Holly Marie Combs as Piper, and Melrose places Alyssa Milano as Phoebe. Yeah. Unfortunately if our Shangel was hoping to keep her wings unruffled this time around, God had different plans.

Our dear sister, which is Shannon, Doherty, and Alyssa Milano hated each other's fucking guts. Uh-oh. Mmm. Problem. Mmm. Problem. Yeah. It's hard to pin down the source of this enmity other than the vibe just gradually went off due to a sense of competition between them, with each claiming some responsibility but

more or less pointing the finger at the other as the main source of the problem. Uh oh. Said Alyssa, we definitely didn't get along. We're very different women. There were mornings when I came and said good morning to her and she didn't respond. Other mornings she turned to me and I was the one who didn't answer. Mm-hmm. Speaking at the time, Doherty said, I want to work with actors who really, really care

and that want to be there every single day. I don't want to work with people who bitch about their job and complain about it and say they hate it. Oh my. Hmm. In a 2001 interview with Entertainment Weekly, head of the fourth season, Milano said, I think it's hard when you put Square brackets, long pause.

Okay, oh my, oh my. Two very different people together. I'm very laid-back and passive. I have my Buddha. I come here and meditate. Shannon's got a lot of energy. She has her Buddha. She has her Buddha. I'm all about peace. Baby listen, some of us are about peace. Okay, red flag. I'm sorry, red flag. Shannon's got a lot of energy. She's very headstrong. She wants to get the job done. It was perhaps that can-do attitude and desire to get the job done that led Shannon to depart Charmed. After three seasons in 2001, quoting Spelling Television, we have had a long and prosperous relationship with Shannon, and we didn't want to hold her back from what she wanted to do.

Shannon, concurrently said, At this time, I feel that I have accomplished everything I set out to do when I returned to series television. Or if you believe what Shannon and the entire rest of the cast, including Holly Marie Combs and Shannon's replacement Rose McGowan, have said since, Alyssa Milano went to the producers and gave them a her-or-me ultimatum and Shannon Doherty got f-f-fucking fired. Again. Wow. Again. Again.

She's two heads strong. Two heads strong. So the veneer of civility in the wake of this incident fell apart quickly with Doherty singing interviews. There was too much drama on the set and not enough passion for the work. You know, I'm 30 years old and I don't have time for drama in my life anymore. Milano offered. I think it's unfortunate that she left and that she needed to badmouth everyone involved and the audience. She said that Charmed was a show for middle girls. Doesn't sound like an apology or whatever. She sounds really angry. I just hope I didn't contribute to that anger.

Oh, gosh. Okay, we know you did. Said middle sister Combs on Shannon's exit. it was done very poorly, in my opinion. This unhealed wound was freshly picked open several times over the years in 2013. Alyssa told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, I don't know if she got fired. We never really figured out what happened. I can tell you that we were on air with her for three years and there were definitely some rough days. Holly and Shannon were best friends for like 10 years before the show started so it was very much sort of

like high school. I would hope that in our 30s it wouldn't feel like that anymore. On Twitter, Holly Marie Combs responded, working on Charmed was nothing like high school. I went to high school. It was a very important job to me, and always will be. Just this year, in February 2024, Shannon and Alyssa reignited their public battle. Oh, I thought you were going to say they reconciled. Oh, the opposite. No, it went worse. They reignited their public battle over what exactly had happened between the two of them. With Shannon and Holly doubling down on their claims in Shannon's podcast. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's all be clear. I love this. To me, this is like so what the people need.

Like we don't need reconciliation. We need the two stars from charmed. Let's agitate it more. Get back in each other's throats. I don't know people definitely still watch charmed but it's not a recent show and like It's on at the gym. It's on at the gym sometimes. I love even more though that they're like taking it back to like the old beef and they're just like you know what let's fucking go. Let's un-fought it's been 20 years Dave Matthews shit on those people and we were angry at each other on? Let's fucking go. Let's un-fought, it's been 20 years. Dave Matthews shit on those people and we were angry at each other on the set of Charmed.

Let's go. Yeah, yeah, they're like, I got time today. I got time. And on that note, Shannon Hawley doubled down on their claims in Shannon's podcast. On February 2nd, Alyssa Milano spoke at a panel event at the fan convention, Megacon, saying she was sad that Charmed had been, quote,

tarnished by a toxicity that remains to this day. She said that she had taken accountability for and apologized for whatever part I played in the situation and had personally experienced trauma while shooting the series. A day later, Milano said on an Instagram post, I did not have the power to get anyone fired. This was so long ago that any retelling of these stories from anyone is just revisionist history. I will add though with absolute certainty everything was documented. There was a professional mediator. I was told Holly and Shannon would not participate in any mediation and an

on-set producer slash babysitter who were both brought in to investigate all claims that was then recommended by this mediator after collecting testimony from cast and crew. What changes should be made if the show is going to continue? Shannon Doherty then in the final months of her cancer battle, because again this is February 2024 and she'll be dead by July. RIP. RIP. Responded publicly also at a charm fan event where she was surrounded by the other leads of the show, Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan. Statement in part, There is no revisionist history happening in the truth that I know we told.

There's no brush flinging or shoe flinging. There is no lateness to set. There is no mediator for months on end. I recall the facts as if I were still living in them, and what I will say is that what somebody else may call Drama is an actual trauma for me that I've been living through for an extremely long time It is only through my battle with cancer that I decided to address this trauma and be open and honest about it so that I can actually heal from a livelihood that was taken from me a livelihood that was taken away from my family because someone else Wanted to be number one on the call sheet. That is the truth. Right. Well, it does sound like sometimes Shannon was a better actress than people. It does kind of seem to me though that like these

sets are not, I don't know, conducive to collaboration maybe? Like the mention of a mediator, I was like, oh, that's interesting. You're saying that Aaron Spelling wasn't running woke sets from the 60s to 90s? Yeah, exactly. Get out. I'm saying that you know he's also a common denominator in these tales. That's a good point. I think that's such a valuable thing to say because like a lot of these stories, Britney Spears, or like the Nickelodeon nightmare stories people have told about like yeah they're all like on these entire like worlds that are all like these gross dudes with leather jackets who are pulling the strings yeah yeah yeah the whole time

like we're all saying this debate between like oh do you like Brenda do you not like Brenda does she deserve to fucking die or not? Meanwhile, Aaron's spelling is just cashing his checks, right? Yeah. I mean, as the female correspondent, I will say, thank you for your service. Yes. Yes. Thank you for having me here. You're so woke. Thank you. That's what I think of myself too. But like, I don't know if so rare is it that women battle against women. You know what I mean? Like that confrontation seems staged by an environment that wants to belittle women.

You know what I mean? Like it gets stoked by the creepy men and that kind of thing. So you know, we're talking about the 90s in general. I think the 90s was like a staging ground for a lot of that because Oh god, yes. it was go girl, you go girl, like spice girl, yeah girl power. Britney versus Christina. Yes, yeah. That narrative was controlled by men, the Madonna and the slut, the Madonna and the whore. Yeah, yeah. So it's just like, I don't know, so often I find that femalecentered spaces do not cultivate that vibe and there's a reason.

And maybe it's because we've learned through that all the you-go-girl power, blah blah blah, you know? I think that one thing that's interesting about this situation though, because you're talking about women versus women, one thing that's interesting about this particular charmed situation is that Holly, Marie Combs, and Rose McGowan both support the statement that Shannon Doherty made pinning the issue on Alyssa Milano. Combs said, this is not revisionist history, this is just the history she didn't want people to know about. McGowan, who replaced Shannon Doherty, commented,

Sometimes a mess has to be made for things to be cleaned up. This, for me, is way bigger than a TV show. It goes to years of continuous, behind-the-scenes character assassination and targeted reputation smearing because of narcissistic pathological jealousy. Wow. So we are back to jealousy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, rearing its green little head. Its green horns.

Do you think jealousy's ever like, I'd like to wear a different color. There are a lot of shades of green now. Listen, that's true. Variety, variety. I know, I would be jealous of green, you know? Yeah, why not? Whatever the case, in 2001, when this all went down, public perception was against Shannon

Doherty, now fired from her second straight show in a row for not being able to get along. Ohhhhhhh. After being fired from Charmed Her Career, Honestly Never Really Recovered, says Omer Daniel writing for Ynet News News Hollywood simply preferred not to mess with her of course the entertainment industry is full of troubled and scandalous stars you've had countless opportunities needless to say most of them are men but when it comes to a young and strong woman it is much more difficult for her to recover from a problematic image yep I know there's so

many stories from that same era of strange behaving men and it's just a different story. Like Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey. And there's like ways that maybe they're not doing great, but the way that they're talked about is like, what a character. That guy's crazy. Yeah, Gary Beasley's not doing great. And we all got, no, he's not.

He is seen as a character. Did you know that Nicolas Cage made them bring 80 staplers to that set and they, god damn it, they did it. See, what set? I made that up. Oh, that was good. Section 4. I'm not done with living. Aww.

Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Shannon Gamely attempted to refocus her career on reality television, throwing herself into efforts like hidden camera prank show Scare Tactics. And she also did Breaking Up with Shannon Doherty, where Shannon would dump your boyfriend on your behalf if you were too mean to do it yourself. That sounds really great. That sounds like a fantastic show. Episode 1 of it is available on YouTube if you're interested. I would watch that. I might just have to give a little peek of that. Meanwhile her personal struggles continued at

full mass. She got married and then annulled from Poker Pro Rick Salomon and I really want to check this over to our boy Mitchell because Rick Salomon, do you know that name? No I don't, I don't know this person. It was the guy from Paris Hilton's infamous 2004 sex tape. A night in Paris? You asked me because I'm heterosexual and I would have watched it I thought maybe you'd bash one out to that shit back in like when in the day, you know the day I've seen it but that's like not the kind of thing I would have bashed one out to I think I would just watch it Out of curiosity,

like Saddam Hussein's execution video or something. Jesus Christ. I'm just saying, that's the truth. 2004, that's what we were doing in 2004. Yeah. It was a dark time, it would be like, we're all down in the spider hole, baby. People are like, hey, there's this grainy video

of this girl having sex, so she can get more famous, and I'd be like, okay, I'll watch it. And you can watch someone getting murdered in front of your ass and it's also like the kind of looks the same and yeah sorry everybody 2008 saw an interesting return to the past as Doherty was tapped to reprise her role as an adult Brenda Walsh what in 90210, the rebooted version of the original Beverly Hills 90210, also on deck for a return, Kelly Taylor, aka Jenny Garth. Oh. Is this also produced by Mr. Spelling? I think he's dead by then, but yes, let's just go yes. Oh, okay. Let's just go yes.

This led to that reconciliation you were looking for, Josie, between the former rivals, said Dorothy. We talked about the arguments and the problems that were between us. We looked into each other's eyes and said to each other, now I understand you. Okay. On her own podcast, Garth put their past to bed, saying that they were merely two Ares women, stubborn, independent, and strong. Doherty also reconciled with Jason Priestley, Tori Spelling, and Luke Perry,

with whom she shared a special bond saying in 2019, I love him, and he knows I love him. He's my darling. That's nice. Yeah. That's really sweet. In 2011, she got married for the third and final time to photographer Kurt Iswarienko. In 2015, she announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. That's a lot in battle with cancer. Almost 20 years, right? Through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, she was able to enter remission in 2017, so it's actually like a couple of battles with cancer. Okay, yeah.

By that point 2017, she'd earned a lot of admiration for her resilience and was beginning to enjoy a public reappraisal of her infamous legacy. Okay, yeah. Shannon continued to revisit her old projects in 2018. She was cast in a special guest role in the short-lived Heather's TV reboot. In 2019, the cast of 90210, including Shannon Doherty, was tapped to reprise their iconic roles in the bizarre BH 90210, which I watched. BH?

Beverly Hills! Okay. Yes. Well, kinda, cuz Beverly Hills! Okay, okay. Yes. Well, kinda, cuz what BH90210 was was it was a show about the actors of 90210 getting back together for a reunion. So if you imagine Shannon Doherty as a fictionalized Shannon Doherty as Brenda Walsh. BH90210 is a scripted episode. This is scripted. Yes. Scripted. But that doesn't, that's not interesting.

That, that seems like it has a lot of weird, weirdness. It has a lot of weird weirdness, but only for people like us three who want to be weird in the weirdness, for the average person who is like, oh, you should just get them back together and have them play their characters, which is fucking everybody. They were very off-put by the fact that Brian Austin Green was playing Brian Austin Green, but he had a different wife than the real Brian Austin Green, and he had a fake storyline where he was having an affair on his fake Brian Austin Green wife

with the real twin spelling. No, it made no sense. It fucking made no sense. Gabrielle Carteris was like, I'm Gabrielle Carteris and I am cheating on my real husband as a lesbian, which I am not. It feels very 90s though. It feels like a Wes Craven project, like the new nightmare. It's very new nightmare. It has new nightmare vibes for sure. But I remember even at the time being like, the downfall of this project will be that I, as a fan, want to concisely explain it to my friends and I can't. Yeah, yeah. A for effort though. Let's do an A for effort.

Yeah, you're doing a great job. You're doing a fantastic job. And I believe it is while participation in this project was being negotiated that Luke Perry died suddenly of a stroke at 52. The whole cast was guided and Shannon in particular felt the loss. She signed onto the BH902 and her project as a tribute to Luke on the condition that her character not be a villain. She was tired of reliving that narrative. She also appeared on an episode of Riverdale, sending off Luke Perry's character on that show, which was Archie's dad. That's sweet. That's really sweet.

In February 2020, Shannon Doherty announced on Good Morning America that her cancer had returned to her spine, and it was now at stage four. In 2023, it spread to her brain and bones. In April 2023, it was leaked that shannon was divorcing her husband kurd near suwarianco for infidelity with his personal agent which she found out the night before she went in for brain surgery this is soap opera shit oh my god brain surgery Brain surgery divorce? Whoa. Against Kurt's wishes Shannon barred him from being in the surgery room. Wow. She went on to sue him for alimony. Quote,

while I am unable to work and paying exorbitant amounts for experimental treatments not covered by insurance in hopes of prolonging my life, Kurt flies, spends thousands of dollars in spas, jewelry stores, Gucci stores, and flights for his, scare quotes, agent, and at the same time claims he doesn't have enough money to support me. On her podcast she said, it was embarrassing. I am horrified that I can't keep a relationship together. It's a reflection of me.

But this one I think is on him. I think this is on him. I think this is on him I think this is on him too. Don't cheat on your wife Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah, she says I failed three times at marriage, but I still believe in love Shannon reportedly never stopped fighting or giving up hope of living She said I feel like I'm a very very healthy human being it's hard to wrap up your affairs when you feel like you're gonna Live another 10 or 15 years. Yeah.

In her final days, Shannon found joy, as Josie indicates, in working on her podcast. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Let's be clear about this. Let's just be clear. Taping several episodes a day, she was doing like three episodes a day by the end. Damn.

And planning ways to reunite with the rest of the Charmed cast, with one notable exception. Okay, mhm. By the end her major feuds had all been settled or publicly reevaluated to offer her more sympathy. Shannon Doherty died at her home on July 14th, 2024. Surrounded by her loved ones and her dog Bowie, she was 53. There is something so legendary about spending like your last days alive settling old feuds. Like she's like, finally all my enemies have reconciled with me.

Very legend- very cool shit. Very soap opera. Finally, finally I've reconciled with all of my legendaries, or in the case of Alyssa Mulano, public sympathy has tilted so that I am seen as the wronged party in her beef and I can die happy in that particular regard. Yeah, yeah. I like that. It's like she's just got her affairs in order in the most like, fantastic way.

Before she died, while considering her own funeral, she said, there's a lot of people that I think would show up to my funeral that I don't want there. I don't want them there. Because their reasons for showing up aren't necessarily the best reasons. Like, they don't really like me and, you know, they have their reasons, good for them. But they'll show up because it's the politically correct

thing to do and they don't want to look bad. I kind of want to take the pressure off them and I want my funeral to be like a love fest. I don't want people to be crying or people to privately be like, thank God that bitch is dead now. Even after death, Shannon's legacy is her outspoken nature as much as it is her body of acting work. Shannon said in disclaimer, I've stitched together a few quotes here for the sake of giving us a nice cushion to land on. I think everyone understands that I'm always completely honest and sometimes it's worked against me.

I can't change that, and I like it myself. I like that I'm real. I won't pretend to be someone's friend if I'm not really like that I was raised to have an opinion that my opinion should be valued So I just kept on pressing up against that machine up against men who didn't really want to hear my opinion Later, I learned the simple art of diplomacy. I learned that there might be a nicer way to say things. She added I felt misunderstood my whole life. The only difference is that now I'm okay with it I found some peace and discovered who I was. I wasn't really what the tabloid said. I had some difficult experiences in my personal life. I dealt with a bad husband or a bad partner,

and I did all this in front of the camera so I didn't deal with it well. I have a rep. Did I earn it? Yeah, I did. But after a while, you sort of try and shed that rep because you're kind of a different person. You've evolved and all the bad things you've done in your life have brought you to a much better place. And that is the story of the life, death, and evolution of a tabloid bad girl, Shannon Doherty. And because we love a happy ending, two days after her death, a judge posthumously granted

her divorce from Curtis Wariyanko. Get wrecked, Kurt. I love that. Two days after her death! Get it! The rare posthumous divorce and she was cleared of that particular burden on her. I was gonna ask that, yeah. He had two days to marinate and to feel the loss and to be like, oh man, I did her wrong. And then it's like, oh by the way, you got fucked, dude. I'm so glad to know all that.

There's a lot of that I didn't know. Or like I knew like very vague outlines. Now I feel informed. It's interesting because while I was doing my research for the story, I happened upon an article about Geno Ortega who plays Wednesday, who's in Scream, et cetera. And it was specifically an article about how she mentioned

that she sometimes gave creative Script input on Wednesday and she really got taken to task for it in great diva I don't think a teen years ago would say this well that means you're a bitch Da da da da and so I was really taken by the way in which like to some degree the way that we treat Famous women and girls has changed to some degree. it's totally the same right like it's a similar thought yeah like how dare this young woman not be grateful for like what we perceive the establishment and us by virtue of being fans have given her or whatever it is yeah yeah or just the fact that like to maneuver that situation takes so much experience and

poise and politics that if someone doesn't none of what she was good at immediately right none of yeah which of her own emissions she would she was not good at but why do we expect that of especially young women whereas Justin Timberlake or whoever it is can be like Cry Me River and it's like oh you did good job yeah particular, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like a particular type of activity, like put a 20 year old woman on a pedestal and then like, now let's hear what she says and then judge her for it. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you fucked up, you fucked up. Yeah, with men like to compare to Justin Timberlake for instance, it's like that's not even being done to him. We want different things from him. It is to a degree now, I think like to a degree. Oh, yeah, I feel a little bad for the guy but also what a shame to be someone like shannon dordy and and kind of get like The the the first show I almost get it because like she was trouble Fair fuck. Yeah, but the second show

It kind of feels like she had a bad problem with someone on the cast and and maybe that person It kind of feels like she had a bad problem with someone in the cast and maybe that person, according to her, relied on this reputation of her as being this like problem actor, this problem woman to kind of write her out of the script. I felt like I learned a lot how to be a person from this Shanna story about how to live in the world. I try. I try. When I do my sad girls of the 90s stories, that's what I'm trying to achieve is that we were all really mean

to girls in the 90s and we still are. Good one, Taylor. It was a really good one. It was a pleasure. Yeah. So wait, wait, let's go back to it. Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Was I right? It was worth it. That's what I like to hear. Dang, dang, dang. It was worth it! Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Was I right? It was worth it. That's what I do. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy. But no pressure, bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet!

Mitchell's sources for his Hit'em Infamous included a piece for The Guardian by Daniel Dillon-Ray entitled Hit'em infamous included a piece for The Guardian by Daniel Dillon-Ray entitled Hit'em, how a dream about raves, graves and slime led Matmos' Drew Daniel to a new music genre. He also consulted a biography of Matmos on AllMusic.com by Heather Fares. The fader article Hit'em is the summer's crunchiest and most unlikely new genre by David Renshaw. The MPR segment, The Sound of the Summer, came to electronic musician Drew Daniel in a dream, and we also used Hit'em tracks by Jet Ski, Palo Supply, Eeprom, and

the track Death Blowing Bubbles by Mitchell Collins. For the main story, my sources included Nobody's Pussycat by Tom Gliato, published in People on November 9, 1992. They Love to Hate Brenda of 90210 by Diana E. London for Los Angeles Daily News, February 11, 1993. The Brenda Walsh Hatefest, 1993, by Kirkland-Sacone on their WordPress blog, May 1, 2022. I also read from the I Hate Brenda newsletter by a number of folks including Karen Morataya and Darby Romeo. The wicked behind-the-scenes drama of the original Charmed feuds firings and feminist fury by Tierney Bricker, 11, 2024 for E! News.

Shannon Doherty responds after Alyssa Milano denies getting her fired from Charmed by Corinne Heller February 4, 2024 for E! News. Why Melissa Gilbert Wants to Punch Shannon Doherty in the Face, ABC News, January 24, 2014. Shannon Doherty Under Cancer, Not Ready for Pasture, I've Got a Lot of Life in Me by Nardine Saad. September 29th, 2020 for the Los Angeles Times. Shannon Doherty's Entire Relationship History Explained by Kachiona McTaggart for Nikki

Swift May 21st, 2023. Shannon Doherty says husband Kurt Iswarenko had a two-year affair by Yana Grbenyuk. December 6th, 2023 for Us Weekly. Shannon Doherty says relationship with Jenny Garth is now good after past drama I Don't Hold Any Grudges by Stephanie Wenger May 20, 2024 for People Magazine Shannon Doherty star of Charmed, Heathers and Beverly Hills 90210 dies at 53 in Vanity Fair by Tracy Moore July 14, 2024 Big Star Who Made a Mess The Turbulent Life of Shannon Doherty by Omar Daniel for Ynet News July 14, 2024 Shannon Doherty by Omar Daniel for Ynet News, July 14, 2024.

Shana Doherty, 90210 Actress, Dies at 53, by Lisa Richwine for Reuters, July 14, 2024. Shana Doherty's Husbands, What She Shared About Three Marriages Divorces by Chrissy Callahan on July 16, 2024 for Today.com. And Jen Ortega reflects on controversial Wednesday Writers Room comments, I probably could have used my words better by Ethan Shanfieldfield for Variety August 6, 2024. I watched the YouTube videos Shannon Doherty reveals, Who She Doesn't Want at Her Funeral and Entertainment Tonight, and Shannon Doherty's Death and Her Long List of Famous Enemies by Carina Lord Biographies.

Much of the information came from Shannon's own podcast, Let's Be Clear, with Shannon Doherty. We used clips from MTV News hosted by PassVid on YouTube as Hating Brenda 1993 and the song Brenda Can't Dance to this by Rum. Lastly, I consulted the Wikipedia articles for Beverly Hills, 90210, and Tori Spelling. Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. Big, big, big thanks to our coffee subscribers, John Mountain, Dylan and Satchel, Soph, Dizzy Lizzy D, Erica Jo. If you want to be a subscriber, hear your name in the end credits and get

access to the Bittersweet Film Club where we are going to be covering Cats 2019. You should go to coffee.com, koifnfi.com, slash bittersweetinfamy. That's also where you can get access to Death Blowing Bubbles by Mitchell Collins or Interstitial Music for this episode. The song you are currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Veronica, why are you pulling my dick? Renda, Renda, oye me, ¿quien sos? Una gran estupida.