Beverly Hills, 90210 is back! Sort of. With BH90210, the original cast of Beverly Hills, 90210, reunites to mount a revival of their beloved series, only this isn't a reality show.
"All of the characters are fictionalized versions of ourselves," Tori Spelling explained at the 2019 Television Critics Association summer press tour. Spelling is an executive producer and co-creator on the series that her costar, co-creator and fellow executive producer Jennie Garth deemed a "soapedy."
"We kind of wanted to leave it to the audience to figure out what's real and what's heightened," Spelling said, noting she thinks the audience will have fun figuring out what really happened in their lives and what was made up for the show.
The series is a mix of a soap opera, a comedy, a mystery and even some horror elements. "We were essentially creating something," Spelling said about the tone of the series.
Alongside Garth and Spelling are Brian Austin Green, Shannen Doherty, Ian Ziering, Jason Priestley and Gabrielle Carteris. Luke Perry, who passed away in March, knew about the show and he was in full support of it, Garth said. They had discussed him appearing in the show at some point. It was his passing that actually convinced Doherty to be involved with the project.
"These guys know, I definitely wasn't going to do it. Nothing against the show, I knew that the show would get sold and do well with or without me. They didn't need me, so it just wasn't at that moment what I wanted to be doing. And when Luke passed away, things drastically changed for me and I thought it was a great opportunity to sort of honor him," Doherty said on the panel. "I'm really glad I made that decision because now I get to sit up here with a lot of people that I respect and that I love and we went on this amazing journey together where we got to sort of heal through losing somebody who means the world to all of us."
The show does honor him in the first episode, and executive producer Chris Alberghini said they went through a few different versions of tribute until they landed on what felt right.
Because the cast is playing fictionalized versions of themselves, they completely fictionalized their families and spouses, "just sort of to protect our families," Garth said.
The six-episode series is just the start, if the cast gets their way. And what a start, Carteris said the series helped the cast work through a lot of trauma, "which was really great."
Click play on the video above to hear more from the cast of BH90210.
BH90210 premieres Wednesday, Aug. 7 at 9 p.m. on Fox.