Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh, duh-nuh-nuh-nuh, chh-chh!
Admit it, after reading that simple line of nonsense, you've now got the iconic Beverly Hills, 90210 theme song playing in your mind, where it's likely to remain for the next few hours. That is, if it wasn't stuck in there already, playing on a loop, since Fox dropped the adorable new teaser for BH90210, their six-episode event series reuniting original stars Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, Brian Austin Green and Tori Spelling that's heading our way this August.
But with this not-quite-a-reboot taking that whole concept to an extra-meta level, featuring the actors playing heightened versions of themselves getting back together to—you guessed it—mount a Beverly Hills, 90210 reboot, we've got some delicious art imitating life to look forward to.
"It's elevated versions of our real selves, so it's going to be Ian, it's going to be Brian, it's gonna be Jason," Ziering explained to E! News at Fox's Upfront presentation on Monday. "And there's gonna be hints of some of the things that occur in our real lives, but they'll be exaggerated. The stakes'll rise, the tensions will permeate through different storylines. We'll bring together a lot of comedy, some drama, in a way that really it's more assisted reality, heightened reality than a complete reboot. But it's going to be us coming together to get the show back on the air."
For Spelling, who's celebrating a birthday on May 16, that means letting it all hang out. "It's something that the press is fascinated with, so we'll definitely be doing the whole financials of it all, because I know that's something that the press loves to post stories about," she told Entertainment Weekly recently, referencing her role as a tabloid fixture. "We'll take a look into that."
(One thing that remains to be seen? How the show will touch on the shocking death of Luke Perry, who passed away in March after suffering a massive stroke at the age of 52. "We thought long and hard about all of those things at every step of the way—even when Luke was with us and involved with the development of the show on some level," Garth told EW when asked if they considered scrapping the project, announced the same day Perry suffered his stroke, and if they planned to honor him. "But I personally am just not going to comment on that.")
So, while we count down the days until BH90210, which begins production soon, sees its stars make their grand homecoming on the Fox network, let's take a look at everything the close-knit group of actors has endured since the seminal soap wrapped in 2000 that better make its way into the event series in some way, shape or form.
There's something rather hysterical about West Bev's resident bad girl—both on screen and off—appearing in this teaser getting her om on in a zen garden, but it certainly speaks to the ways in which the years following Shannen Doherty's departure after season four have had a taming affect on the former wild child. Famously, Doherty was killed off another Aaron Spelling creation, Charmed, in 2001 amid rumors of on-set tensions with co-star Alyssa Milano, leading to a lull in her career that she never quite recovered from. But, of course, the most life-altering moment came in early 2015 when she was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer metastatic to at least one lymph node. Alongside third husband Kurt Iswarienko, whom she married in 2011, Doherty documented every step of her journey battling the frightening diagnosis on social media until April 2017, when she was able to declare the good news we'd all been praying we'd hear. "Moments. They happen. Today was and is a moment," she shared on Instagram. "What does remission mean? I heard that word and have no idea how to react. Good news? YES. Overwhelming. YES. Now more waiting." Still in the midst of the critical five year post-remission period, where vigilance to watch for recurrences is paramount, there's little doubt that Doherty's health, as well as her famously rocky relationships with her co-stars, will factor heavily into her storyline on BH90210.
Since his 90210 days, Brian Austin Green's narrative in the press has mostly been centered around his love life and family. Two years after the show went off the air, he and former castmate Vanessa Marcil welcomed son Kassius into the world. And two years after that, the erstwhile David Silver began dating Megan Fox after meeting her on the set of Hope & Faith when he was 30 and she was just 18. By 2006, they were engaged and by 2009, they weren't. But by June 2010, we learned the engagement was back on and mere days later, they tied the know in Hawaii. While they got busy on making some babies—first son Noah was born on September 27, 2012, followed by Bodhi on February 12, 2014—they also tussled with the paparazzi, resulting in a lawsuit filed against them in March 2012 for allegedly assaulting a photographer while in Hawaii the year they got married. The couple would split once more, with Fox filing for divorce in August 2015, but by early 2016, they'd be back together before the birth of their third son that August. Recently, Green's faced down claims from Marcil that their son has never met his youngest brother Journey and he and Fox had "completely cut Kass out of their lives" five years prior. Green's yet to publicly respond to his ex's claims. Perhaps he's waiting to clear the air in BH90210?
Of all of the core 90210 cast, no one has remained a tabloid fixture in the ensuing 19 years since it went off the air quite like the daughter of its legendary creator, Tori Spelling. It all began, of course, when she met future husband Dean McDermott on the set of the Lifetime movie Mind Over Murder in July 2005 and slept together the night they met. The only problem? Both were rather married at the time. Spelling had married Charlie Shanian a year prior, while McDermott had been with wife Mary Jo Eustace since 1993. After they both split from their respective spouses, they tied the knot in May 2006. That same year, Spelling's father passed away and though she expected to inherit a sizable portion of his $500 million estate, she and her brother Randy only received $800,000 each. As she and McDermott began to make babies—five altogether over the course of a decade—they also started to face a series of financial woes and persistent claims from Eustace that McDermott stopped paying child support for their son. Then there was McDermott's admitted infidelity, his subsequent trip to rehab, Spelling's dangerous fall onto a grill on Benihana, the lawsuit with City National Bank over their failure to fulfill payments on loans, and, as of April 2019, the bench warrant issued when she failed to appear in court. It's all played out in front of the prying eyes of reality TV viewers and the paparazzi—and it all better come into play in BH90210.
While Gabrielle Carteris, the elder stateswoman of the group—she was 29 when the show began in 1990—has had a relatively tame go of it since her 90210 days, living happily married to husband Charles Isaacs since 1992, she did face a health scare of her own in 2006 when an injury caused by stunts while filming the movie Past Tense left her face partly paralyzed and racked by intense spasms. "For the first year I didn't go out in public," she told People in 2008. "I was losing my speech. I went to several doctors. I have permanent damage to my facial nerves. I went to the UCLA Movement Disorder Clinic, and after two years of tests and constant monitoring they have finally found the right medication that keeps the spasms under control. I did a lot of acupuncture and physical therapy. Six months after the injury occurred the paralysis in my face eased. This has been a real journey, and I'll probably be on meds for the rest of my life. But I don't look at myself as a victim. I'm blessed that I wasn't paralyzed forever."
Of course, a potential source of drama and, probably, comedy in Carteris' life would be her role as president of SAG-AFTRA, a position she's held since 2016. What's it like when the president of a union goes back to work? Something tells us BH90210 will have some fun with that.
While BH90210 marks Garth's second return to the 90210 universe after reprising her iconic role of Kelly Taylor for the first two seasons of The CW's reboot, which debuted in 2008, her life got decidedly more dramatic since departing the series. In 2012, she watched as her once-happy marriage of 11 years to actor Peter Facinelli fell apart, with the Twilight star and father of her three daughters filing for divorce that March, citing irreconcilable differences. "You get the rug pulled from under you," Garth told People at the time. "I have no landscape of what my future will look like, where before I had something that I can count on." In the fall of 2014, she began dating actor David Abrams after meeting him on a blind date that she only agreed to for dating practice. By July 2015, they were married. Nearly three years later, he filed for divorce some five months after the couple decided to spend some time apart to work on their marriage. But by February of this year, they appeared to have reconciled, with Abrams filing a petition to dismiss the divorce proceedings. If BH90210 doesn't feature a scene with her and BAG commiserating on their uniquely similar reconciliations, then something's wrong.
Life for Jason Priestley has been relatively calm since his days as 90210's everyman Brandon Walsh. After leaving the series a year before it signed off for good, he maintained a rather steady career on television both in front of the camera and behind, directing several episodes of shows like The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Rookie Blue, and Van Helsing, among others. Happily married to make-up artist Naomi Lowde since 2005, the race-car driving father of two found himself in a life-threatening situation in 2002 when his Indy Pro Series car crashed into a wall while going nearly 180 miles per hour while completing a practice run at the Kentucky Speedway, leaving him with a broken back and a head injury. Over a decade later, he was hospitalized with another head injury—a concussion—when he was thrown from a horse on a film set.
Despite a divorce from first wife Nikki Schieler in 2002, which the Playboy model would claim was contentious and lacking in any support or even help moving out, Ian Ziering's life has been remarkably stable. He remarried in 2010 to Erin Ludwig, welcoming two daughters in 2011 and 2013. He's remained a near-constant presence on television since 90210 wrapped in 2000, most notably on reality shows like Dancing With the Stars, Celebrity Apprentice and Worst Cooks in America: Celebrity Edition. Although nothing compares to the total career reinvention that was his starring role in Syfy's totally bonkers Sharknado film franchise. If there aren't nonstop jokes about his seminal work as shark hunter Fin Shepard in BH90210, then there is no justice in the world.
BH90210 premieres Wednesday, August 7 at 9 p.m. on Fox.