Jennie Garth has opened up about the sheer chaos surrounding the original Beverly Hills, 90210 cast — and the subsequent impact the frenzy had on her mental health.
Garth, 54, played Kelly Taylor on Fox’s seminal 1990s drama about a group of high school friends living in the affluent neighborhood of Beverly Hills, California. Speaking on the latest episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast about her forthcoming memoir, I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention, Garth recalled being “sent out” to press events for the hit show.
“It was pandemonium,” Garth recalled. “And after that started happening, I started to develop agoraphobia. Like I never left my house.”
Garth said her agoraphobia — fear of situations where escape may be difficult — arose from the hordes of fans who would attend these events. She recalled one particular instance where she and her late co-star (and on-screen love interest) Luke Perry were sent to an actual zoo to meet fans.
“They had us in, I think it was the bird enclosure, to get to the signing area where they had set it up,” Garth said. “And we went and it was impossible because it was dangerous. The kids were pushing and shoving and screaming and fainting.
“There were just thousands of people. We definitely were animals in a zoo. That’s what we felt like.”
Garth also recalled many events getting canceled because of the mobs of people who would show up, saying it was “terrifying, cause you’re on those little riser things they put you up on and like a folding table and it’s just shaking and rocking.
“People are sweating and crying and passing out. And like literally the medics are carrying people off,” she continued. The actor added that even today, when fans meet the original Beverly Hills, 90210 stars, “they don't know how to handle it.”
But back then, the fan frenzy took a toll on her mental health.
“I wanted to go to the mall. I wanted to do things that young people were doing,” she said. “But I just didn’t. I got scared.”
Beverly Hills, 90210 starred Garth and Perry, along with the late Shannen Doherty, Jason Priestley, Tori Spelling, Brian Austin Green, Gabrielle Carteris and Ian Ziering.
The series, which followed the group as they transitioned from teenagers to adulthood, ran for 10 seasons from 1990 to 2000.
Years later, the CW rebooted the show, welcoming a new leading cast of Shenae Grimes-Beech, Tristan Mack Wilds, AnnaLynne McCord, Jessica Stroup, Michael Steger and Jessica Stroup. The revival centered on a family whose two children must adapt to the drama of Beverly Hills after relocating from Kansas.
Garth, who reprised her role as Kelly Taylor in the five-season revival, later confessed that she wishes she hadn’t done the reboot.
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