REACTION: 90210 Cast's "9021OMG" Reunion Special

A new reunion special with the cast of “90210” was released on CW Seed on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after it was announced.

When I first received the alert yesterday about a new unscripted special with the 90210 cast, my mind immediately went to the cast of “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

Something else?! I thought. Is this Jennie and Tori’s umpteenth project?! Why couldn’t they just do an unscripted reunion special to begin with, instead of the mess that was “BH90210”?!

Then, of course, I looked closer and realized this was actually about the cast of nu90210, not the original.

And again I thought, Why couldn’t the “Beverly Hills, 90210” cast have done an unscripted reunion special to begin with, instead of the mess that was “BH90210”?!

Then I saw the name of this “90210” reunion special: “ET Presents… 9021OMG! The Cast Tells All.”

9021OMG.

That's right — the same name as the new podcast, only three weeks old, with Jennie Garth (Kelly, Beverly Hills, 90210) and Tori Spelling (Donna, Beverly Hills, 90210).

Then I had a good laugh.

Seriously... who approved that name for this “Entertainment Tonight”-produced special? When was this special developed? Was it too late to change names in the wake of Jennie and Tori’s podcast?

Talk about a crowded marketplace.

Even though I have well-documented issues with nu90210, and missed a number of episodes during its last few seasons, there was no way I wasn’t going to watch this special and review it all for you. So here we go...

9021OMG! The Cast Tells All

• Now we know what Matt Lanter (Liam) was referring to when he posted this last month.

• The timing of Shenae Grimes’ (Annie) participation is interesting, given her recently admitting how badly her time on the show affected her mentally.

• I’m also confused by this special being done now in the year 2020. The show premiered in 2008 and ended in 2013, so this isn’t a milestone year for the series. Furthermore, there have already been cast reunions — including one earlier this year.

• Well… actually, the reunion linked above, which was orchestrated by Grimes over Zoom (or a similar platform), is actually more of a true reunion than this. Here, the stars are interviewed separately, apart from Lanter and Grimes doing a joint interview.

• The special, which, for better or worse, has all the vibes of “Entertainment Tonight,” is hosted by Matt Cohen, who appeared as Jeremy in four episodes of season 5.

• Naturally, the special relies on a lot of archive footage and old interviews, including from when the show first launched. Jessica Stroup (Silver) is seen saying, “Everybody’s thinking, ‘Is this going to be exactly like the old show?’ No, it’s going to be completely different.” Ain’t that the truth.

• Tristan “Mack” Wilds (Dixon) is seen saying, “It’s an updated version of the show. It’s not the same show. It’s not a remake. It’s a spinoff.”

• Michael Steger (Navid) is seen saying, “It’s going to be dealing with more adult issues because kids today are so much more grown up.”

  • It’s comments like that that make me wonder how much of the original show, if any, this cast watched. Because if you actually watched “Beverly Hills, 90210,” you’d know it dealt with adult issues pretty much from the start.

• Wilds gets the first present-day interview, noting how there was “crazy buzz” for the series, which was “greenlit before we even shot a pilot.” He goes on, “We were doing press before we even shot an episode.”

• Jessica Lowndes (Adrianna) reveals the show’s premiere was the first time she walked a red carpet.

• Wilds (with whom I share a birthday!) further says that while they knew the show was going to be “something,” you never know if it’s going to be a “hit.” I’m guessing we have different definitions of “hit.”

• Stroup says, “I knew from the minute I got that call that my life was going to change.”

• It takes more than three minutes for the special to even acknowledge the show’s predecessor, noting that “90210” came eight years after “Beverly Hills, 90210” ended.

• Old footage is then shown with Grimes introducing herself and saying, “I play Annie on the new ‘Beverly Hills, 90210.’” So much for them being different shows, right?

• Grimes is then seen saying in the present day how “life changed overnight” after she was cast as Annie following Hilary Duff (Olivia, Gossip Girl) passing on it.

• It’s then noted that Grimes originally auditioned for Silver, but producers felt Stroup was a “better fit.” For her part, Stroup also auditioned for Annie.

• AnnaLynne McCord admits she wasn’t interested in being on the show at first and was “trying to get out of it,” until a friend told her how she was going to be on an “iconic show” that didn’t even require a pilot.

  • She also claims she wasn’t allowed to watch the original growing up and instead watched things like “Little House on the Prairie” — which starred Shannen Doherty (Brenda, Beverly Hills 90210). Furthermore, she was homeschooled, so she said being in high school on the series was pretty much her only high school experience. That’s something Garth has said on her podcast about herself too.

• McCord goes on to say that her sister Rachel’s personality influenced how she portrayed Naomi: “Rachel McCord is the real-life Naomi Clark.”

• Steger is seen saying in old footage that his character is the “head of the journalist department for Blaze News at West Beverly High so he pretty much spreads all the gossip on campus.” It’s a fairly stupid remark given that, as a student, he wouldn’t be the “head of the journalist department” (and yes, if my ears are working correctly, he says “journalist” and not “journalism”). It’s also a bit of a shame because the Blaze in “Beverly Hills, 90210” wasn’t at all about spreading gossip.

• Then, in his present-day interview, Steger says, in terms of researching the original series, he “zoned in on Brian Austin Green’s character.” That makes little sense, given that David was the high school deejay and had nothing to do with journalism… despite Steger saying “because he was a journalist in his high school.”

  • So again, I must say, it really seems like this cast did not watch the original show, even after all these years, even with Steger saying, “It was almost nice to have ‘[Beverly Hills,] 90210’ as a template because we had reference.” Yeah, okay.

  • Yet it gets worse: Steger then claims he was “very familiar” with the original series. But here’s a true statement: “It was 10 years of an epic television show that everybody knows about, so it was something I thought you couldn’t ever top.” Damn straight. He also says he thought it was a “joke” when he first heard about the new series. If only.

• Steger then shares how he was working at what he calls “The Peach Pit of Hollywood,” The Griddle Cafe, before he was cast on the show, and that the original stars, including Luke Perry (Dylan, Beverly Hills, 90210), used to dine there.

  • That prompts Cohen to note how, in a “nod” to the original series, nu90210 brought The Peach Pit back as a coffee-bar kind of place. Don’t remind me.

• Similar to McCord, Lowndes shares that she was about to stop acting before being cast on the show. She also reveals that producers were looking for a blonde and didn’t want her to dye her hair (as they had Stroup do to become a brunette). Then “a month and a half later, out of nowhere,” they asked her to cut her hair and “be on set the next day.”

  • Mind you, they asked her to chop her hair off for what was expected to be just two weeks of work because she was only slated at that point to be in a few episodes. I guess, as they say, the rest is history. “It was a call that changed my life forever,” Lowndes says.

• Lanter similarly shares how he first came on the show as a guest star. He notes, “I kept getting the comparisons to Dylan, the character Dylan, and I think that’s probably where most people would say my character sort of compared to if they have to classify each one of our characters as, ‘Okay, who was this in the original?’”

  • That prompts Cohen to say, “Just like Luke Perry, Matt was a heartthrob who had his fair share of makeouts onscreen.”

    • Amusingly, Lanter says he and his wife once tried to add up how many girls he kissed for the show “and we stopped at like 35 or 37 or something like that.” That seems… excessive… especially given that the show was only on for five seasons.

• Props to the special for acknowledging that Ethan (Dustin Milligan) was written out over “creative differences.” It’s said the character was initially intended to be more comedic “and it just wasn’t working when producers tried to make his character more serious.”

  • This kinda bothers me, because while there were obviously behind-the-scenes issues (see: Rob Thomas dropping out before the pilot was filmed, Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah not lasting past the first season, etc.), there was no real indication onscreen that Ethan was intended to be comedic (like Steve maybe??) and he really grew on me over the course of the first season, especially as he pined for Silver.

• Trevor Donovan (Teddy) recalls joining for season 2 and how one of his first lines was, “Naomi, I like the way you handle balls.” More seriously, he addresses the “quite a bit of negative feedback” he received because of his age, which he argues “kind of fell in line with [‘Beverly Hills], 90210’ history.”

  • Cohen chimes in, “and all high school TV dramas,” but Donovan insists he was “exceptionally old” at 30 when he was cast. Gabrielle Carteris (Andrea, Beverly Hills, 90210) was 29, but instead of noting that, the special points out (which is also valid) that Donovan was only a year older than Steger and that Ryan Eggolds (Ryan) was younger than both of them at 25.

• It’s noted that Rob Estes (Harry) was the last one to sign on.

• Grimes says of Lori Loughlin (Debbie), “I loved Lori so much. To me, Lori was like the epitome of grace on set. Lori really led by example.” I could make a prison joke here but I won’t.

  • Grimes goes on to say how Estes and Loughlin “stepped in as parental figures to me,” as she had moved to Los Angeles without her family. I could make a joke here about Loughlin as a parent setting an example but I won’t. Notably, NOTHING is mentioned about Loughlin’s legal issues in the specal.

• Steger, Wilds, and Grimes each recall shooting the first episode and then it’s noted how the show went on to film at “iconic Hollywood locations.”

  • This is a good time to plug 90210 Hunts.

• Lanter brings up the storyline where Liam was an actor in season 4 and Grimes has no memory of it.

• Several cast members recall Wilds falling asleep while filming a hospital scene in season 5 and there’s amusing BTS footage showing it. Wilds, in the present day, blames it on being sick at the time. “I never felt more bad and never laughed at myself harder than that. It was ridiculous,” he says.

• Lanter also reveals McCord fell alseep on him during an early scene, prompting him to call his manager and ask, “Dude, what did I get myself into? My co-stars won’t even stay awake to do scenes with me.” He admits, “I didn’t know if I should feel bad about my own acting or be upset with her,” but he makes clear he thinks McCord is “fantastic.”

• McCord reveals her nickname on set was “Scandalynne,” and shares how she was a “crazy lady,” acting goofy all the time.

• Wilds points out that with 20-hour days, they were pretty much “living” together, with McCord saying, “We spent more time together than you’ll ever spend with anyone you know.”

• The special then uses footage of Grimes saying in 2008, “I don’t know if we’d be able to handle the hours we’ve been working if we weren’t getting along” to assert, “Yeah, that may’ve been what the cast said at the time to the press, but behind the scenes, that wasn’t the case,” as a rumored on-set feud between Grimes and McCord was “totally true.”

• Grimes laughs, “90210’s way more interesting behind the scenes than it was on camera,” with McCord similarly saying, “There was way more drama off the set, off the screen, than there was on the screen.”

• For her part, Stroup says, “We were kids. We literally grew up together. It was like we were family and we fought like family,” while Lowndes laughs, “I stayed out of all of it.”

• Grimes recalls that the most irrirating question she would get on set — and she ventures McCord would say the same — was “‘Is everything okay? What’s wrong?’ And it’s like, ‘This is just my face because we’ve been here for 19 hours, people.’”

• Stroup says Grimes and McCord were “just very direct about the fact that they weren’t happy with certain lines.”

• McCord admits she wanted to “strangle” Grimes, but says she was the “one person who could handle her” and “I would tell this to her face.”

• Grimes says she felt like she had a “stigma” attached to her, with the crew reading things about her and treating her differently as a result.

• McCord: “I was going through some stuff, but one of the things I’ve learned is, when we’re in pain, we cause other people pain without realizing it. When we’re feeling all this drama on the inside, we create drama on the outside.”

• Grimes: “I think you put a bunch of young girls together, and really there were three or four of us at one time, and two of us would be closer, one would feel like they were left out and get pissed off about it, and then two others would get closer and then one was ostracized from the group, and that pretty much existed for the duration of the show.”

  • That’s also a good description for behind the scenes of “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

• Lanter interrupts to point out that such “ebbs and flows” are hallmarks of friendships. “That’s groups of normal friends who are not on a TV show,” he says.

• Says McCord, “I’m so grateful that on the last 24 hours of ‘90210,’ Shenae and I fully repaired what was our relationship issues or would’ve been our relationship issues and I ended up at her wedding in England.” Grimes similarly says, “Me and AnnaLynne ended the show closer than we’d ever been probably and we’re still close to this day, which is why she loves to talk shit about how much drama there was behind the scenes when we were filming.”

• All this prompts Cohen to say, “So basically, AnnaLynne and Shenae had a similar real-life relationship to OG ‘90210’ stars Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth. So of course, bringing back Shannen, Jennie, Jason Priestley, and Tori Spelling was a must for this generation of ‘90210.’”

  • I have no idea what the supposed connection is between McCord and Grimes having drama and bringing back the original cast. Makes no sense.

• An old interview of Loughlin is then shown with her saying, “We’ll try to get as many of the original cast members to either come on as recurring or guest roles.”

  • Not counting Silver of course, they ended up getting five on camera and one behind the scenes. Not quite successful with that mission, if you ask me.

• Then there’s old on-set footage of Jennie talking about her character on nu90210 and how her “half-sister is a student at the high school now,” the first time that link is addressed in the special (we’re nearly 30 minues in at this point).

• Stroup says in the present day, “My character was like the bridge between the original and ours.”

• It’s said Garth agreed to reprise her role as Kelly without reading the script… which explains a lot. She’s then seen saying, “I just had had to make a decision based on how I felt about it in my heart.” In other old footage, she says, “I thought hard and long about it and I really realized that ‘[Beverly Hills,] 90210’ was the show that gave me all the opportunities in this business. It really started me, it launched my career, and I didn’t want to turn my back on it. I’ve never been one to sort of walk away from something. I have a sense of loyalty to it and I wanted it to be done right. I wanted to come and sort of add a little bit of credibility to it.”

  • How’d that work out? Well, I noted Garth’s attempts to later disassociate herself with the nu90210 here.

• Stroup says, “It made it feel more real. It made it feel — we were creating something new, but it had that sense of foundation from the original.”

• “We get to revisit our mom, and things haven’t changed much in that department,” Garth further says in the archive footage. And yet that’s just so wrong. By season 2 of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” Jackie was sober and a pretty good mom to Kelly for the rest of the series. So the fact that nu90210 undid that — and then made the decision to kill Jackie off — is something I’ll never get over.

  • It’s noted that Ann Gillespie (Jackie) came out of “retirement” to film nu90210 and archive footage shows her revealing she only found out about her character being brought back the week before and was unsure if she could make it work with her commitments as a pastor. “I was thrilled at the idea of seeing Jennie. That was my big excitement,” she says.

• In more old footage, Doherty is seen saying, “It seems like a completely different show, minus the fact that, you know, myself and Jennie and Joe E. Tata are hanging around on ocassion.”

• It’s then noted how Doherty wasn’t interested in reprising her role at first, but she ultimately signed on to thank the fans: “You play the one character you said you would never play again because they want you to play it.”

• “I like her better now, to be honest,” Doherty says of Brenda in the archive clip. “Not that I didn’t like her then. But playing her now, she’s just a lot more chilled. She’s that girl who went off to London. She’s a succesful theater actress. She comes back and it’s like the past is the past. None of it means anything to her.”

  • Yeah, until Brenda and Kelly start fighting over a guy again, as I noted here.

• In old footage, Grimes says she was like a “kid on Christmas Day” upon meeting Doherty, and says in the present day, “I was the biggest original ‘90210’ fan out of the cast on our show, so I got very nervous anytime any of them were on set.”

• McCord also gushes, then and now, about meeting Doherty, saying in the old footage, “She’s the coolest person that I’ve met who’s done as much as she has,” while Lowndes says, “Shannen was so awesome to work with and so encouraging.”

• It’s noted that Doherty “signed on for four episodes in season 1 but ended up guest-starring in seven,” with footage showing her saying, “I think there’s such a thing as overstaying your welcome and I don’t want to do that. I want the fans to walk away with love in their hearts for Brenda.”

• They show a scene of Brenda telling Adrianna, who has just given birth, that she’s adopted a little girl and I have no recollection of this.

• Lowndes brings up Priestley directing an episode and Wilds recalls him saying, “He’s like, ‘Learn as much as you can. All of this — all of the lights, all of the fandom — it’s always going to be crazy, but learn as much as you can.”

• The special then shows old footage of Spelling on set saying, “At first I was really nervous. It was like being the new kid at school and then it was funny, halfway through my first day, I was like, ‘This feels oddly familar. I know this girl!”

• An archive clip shows Garth gushing, “It’s great having Tori back on the set because I’ve been waiting and waiting and praying and hoping it would happen and now she’s here and it’s like she’s always been here. The two of us just click… I thank my lucky stars for her. She’s so much fun and we laugh and giggle way too much and people get mad at us because we’re wasting time, but we can’t stop laughing because we just laugh at each other for no reason.” You don’t say?!

• Spelling reveals in a present-day interview (though I’m 99 percent sure it wasn’t recorded specifically for this), “I got to dictate my storyline and totally screwed myself because they were like, ‘Well, who is Donna now?’ I’m like, ‘She’s a fashion designer, that makes sense.’ So I picked Japan [as her location] and then they were like, ‘Okay, great, then you’re going to speak Japanese on the show,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my god,’ so in true Tori form, I was like, ‘Oh, what’d I just do to myself?’”

  • Um, if she got to decide her storyline, that makes me even more upset knowing that she apparently decided the story should be that Donna and David were on the verge of breaking up.

• Cohen then points out, “The OGs weren’t the only famous faces who infiltrated ‘90210.’ More than 80 celebrities stopped by, including royalty. We have the story behind Meghan Markle’s very — and we mean very — memorable scene.”

• After an ad break, Cohen says, “From rock stars to reality stars, so many faces rolled through to guest star on ‘90210,’ keeping fans entertained and the cast on their toes.” There’s then a montage showing Pharrell, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Nick Carter on the show.

• McCord calls it “really funny” when Kim and Khloe Kardashian cameoed: “This was all before people really knew who were the Kardashians and what was this all about. Everyone on set was like, ‘What are they gonna be like?’… They were the coolest chicks in the world. They showed up on time, they were like fully ready to go. Khloe was hilarious, as we know she is, and Kim was probably the sweetest person I’ve ever met in my life… They were just nice people.”

• Wilds says of working with Snoop Dogg on the show, “Whatever you think of Uncle Snoop, Snoop Dogg is that 200 percent.” He further reveals he helped get Snoop to agree to do the show. “Next thing you know, Snoop comes on set, the whole nine, has his own trailer smoked out. It is Snoop, 200 percent, but the illest thing, I think he did an MTV interview and he was like, ‘Yeah, you know, I came out here ‘cause my little nephew, Tristan Wilds.’ So everybody on set, everybody from the top of The CW down, was giving me props.”

• Another montage shows Carmen Electra, Rita Ora, Nelly, Ne-Yo, Camille Grammar, Brandi Glanville, and Denise Richards all appearing.

  • Not mentioned is that Richards appeared on both “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “BH90210” (one episode of each).

• McCord brings up Sara Foster (Jen), exclaiming, “Life! I fell in love with her. That chick was just real. It was so funny because she had such an actual Naomi Clark-type life. I think that she does such an amazing job of just playing with what she’s been given, all those assets, but she’s very, very intelligent. She’s very smart.”

• Lowndes says it was “really fun to work with” Rumer Willis (Gia) and Steger says he was “pretty thrown off” by getting to work with Bruce Willis’ daughter. He admits, “I was a little bummed she never brought him to set.”

• Grimes reveals she was “nervous” about Perez Hilton being on the show (don’t get me started on him) “because at the time, Perez had done so much press about all of us. A lot of it was negative, and it was a really cool experience to get to put a face to that name that all of us had kind of grown a little bit fearful of.” But she notes, “He was so lovely and so respectful. From that point on, Perez was so supportive of all of us. I love just those moments in life where things kind of turn 180 for the better.”

• Cohen looks back at his own guest stint on the show, but Grimes doesn’t remember much of the storyline, prompting Lanter to say, “It’s extremely difficult for all of us to keep up with the crazy storylines.”

• They also showcase appearances from Joe Jonas and Ryan Lochte, the latter of whom also does what seems to be a present-day interview, in which he recalls he was “nervous because I didn’t know anything… but it was fun. I’m glad I can say I did it.”

• Others shown include La Toya Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson, who made his acting debut in the series finale. (It’s still his only acting role to date.) Stroup recalls, “Working with Prince Jackson, that was the very last day of the entire series for me, and I’m not gonna lie, we may have had a wrap party the night before, and thankfully the scenes I was shooting that day, I was very upset, Silver was supposed to be very upset, and it played very well because I was not feeling good.”

• Cohen then transitions, “So while the last episode had the son of pop royalty, the series premiere featured a future duchess.” Steger: “Meghan Markle was really great to work with.” Wilds: “I definitely remember her vividly.” Stroup: “I remember her being very sweet.” McCord: “Ms. Markle was a little bit naughty in episode one… Very, very scandalous, this Ms. Meghan was.”

  • Given that they even acknowledge Markle had no dialogue and was only onscreen for a few seconds, the fact that all of the above are talking about working with her — when only Grimes and Milligan shared that one scene with her — makes me laugh.

  • They do show an old inteview of Milligan amusingly saying, “She was a lady. I was a gentleman. And that’s all I can say about that.”
    

  • But Steger and Wilds both separately claim that Markle thought she was going to have a bigger, multi-episode role. Steger specifically asserts she was supposed to be one of Naomi’s best friends, prompting McCord to say, “Michael has a different story than I do! She was being a little ho with my [onscreen] boyfriend, so we were not gonna ever be friends! So I don’t know where Michael got his story, but no.”

• Lowndes admits she found her addiction storyline in season 1 “really challenging and hard,” and says she did a lot of “research” with movies and interventions. “I just wanted to do the role justice,” she says. “I think you watch most of season 1, my character’s crying a lot, and that was emotionally taxing, but I poured my heart and soul into it.”

• Lowndes calls the pregnancy storyline “wild,” saying, “I felt a responsibility to tell the story the best way I could and be as truthful with Adrianna’s experiences as I could. I didn’t even know when I was filming the impact it was gonna have. Even to this day, I have people reaching out saying how much this show has impacted their life and how my character has helped them through different struggles they’ve gone through and that’ll never get old.”

• Stroup says of her bipolar disorder storyline in season 1, “I remember studying the lines. She was having a manic episode… I remember wanting to be so delicate with it going through my own mental health struggles. It was really a turning point in my life to be able to vocalize things and to understand that everyone has something going on. I loved her for her honesty. I loved Silver for the fact that she wasn’t afraid to let that out.”

• McCord shares, “I really attached to Naomi Clark’s storyline of sexual assault.” She speaks about being assaulted herself at 19 and confesses, “We had a moment I will never forget. It was the end of the night and [Silver’s line] was, ‘Mr. Cannon didn’t rape you. You are in love with him,’ or something like that, and the whole world just went into a blur. I was suddenly back to my 19-year-old body with my friend there saying that I was in love with this guy who had done this thing to me. It wasn’t ‘90210’ anymore. I just started losing it. I was crying, I was bawling… They cut and I’m a wreck and I took off. I took off running out of the stage.”

• McCord goes on to say, “I think ‘90210’ did a great job of highlighting really important topics,” and specifically brings up Teddy being gay.

• Donovan recalls being asked how he would feel about his character coming “out of the closet.” He says, “They wrote it at a good pace. They didn’t rush anything. They really showed how difficult it was for Teddy, my character, to come to terms with it himself. I got a lot of fans commenting on how my character and the story and the journey changed their life and saved their life or saved their brother’s life or saved their best friend’s life. I can’t tell you how many messages I got on social media from kids who were like, ‘Your character was the reason I came out.’ It challenged me. It made me think and put myself in someone else’s shoes, which is what we do as actors. It was a life-changing experience for me and to know I was part of something that affected so many people in a positive way is huge.”

  • At the time, I really wanted Teddy and Silver to be a couple, so…

• Lowndes reveals that in season 1, “everyone got to keep parts of their wardrobe,” but she couldn’t keep hers because a lot of it was maternity wear, but she became “obsessed” with Adrianna’s clothing as the series went on because it was “so [her] personal style.”

• McCord says Naomi became a “bit of a style icon,” while also poking fun at some of the costumes she wore (Neytiri, Princess Leia). Joking about taking home items “that went lost and missing,” she cracks, “Sorry, CW!”

• Grimes says her wardrobe in season 1 was “mental, but it kind of suited” Annie since she was coming to Beverly Hills from Kansas. Over time, though, Grimes says, Annie’s style pushed her out of personal comfort zone.

  • Calling it “mental” is a really poor choice of words.

• Lanter jokes about his character always wearing plaid shirts and Wilds is semi-mortified about how Dixon dressed “at the height of the fedora craze.” He amusingly delcares, “Listen, at the time, I was fly. This was fly. I don’t care what nobody says. Dixon was fly.”

• Stroup reveals she has boots of Silver’s that she still wears “to this day.” She goes on to say that after she cut her hair for season 2, growing it out onscreen was a “nighmare.” She adds, “True regret right there.”

• Steger claims he “fought” for his shaggy hairstyle and it “stuck for five years.” He insists, “This was the look of the time. I mean, everybody had it. I had it, Zac Efron had this haircut, Bieber followed suit.”

• “If anyone tells you they’re always ready to be shirtless, they’re lying to you,” Lanter says. “When I had shirtless scenes, I would exercise and just eat like sweet potato that day.”

• Grimes says she would try to “negotiate” to have the other girls in bikinis instead of her, arguing that Annie should be “reserved.” She reveals, “It actually worked a lot.”

• Of the attention the show brought, Grimes says, “I don’t think any of us were really prepared for the publicity storm that happened. I really didn’t believe we were going to be these kind of overnight-famous kids.”

  • Oddly (or not), she doesn’t mention all the… negative… stuff she recently shared in her podcast (apart from the part about the crew treating her differently).

• Lanter recalls fans sleeping outside his hotel in Paris and running after his van and banging on it. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I feel like Brad Pitt right now,’” he remembers. “I never experienced that [before]. I never experienced it after that. It was nuts.”

  • Steger also talks about getting a lot of attention in Europe and amusingly recalls being with Lanter in New York and getting stopped by none other than Jamie Foxx. “Cut to the week after, he invites us all to a party with Stevie Wonder and everyone… that was probably the coolest fan experience,” Steger says.

• Wilds remembers going to the Beverly Center and “girls screaming like I’m Justin Bieber, just screaming at the top of their lungs, so much so, it got me nervous and I started screaming. So we’re just standing there screaming together.” He also describes performing a concert and everyone “erupt[ing]” whe he mentioned the show.

• Stroup admits, “It still hasn’t hit me that people watch the show, but there was a moment where it did sink in a bit more.” She recalls traveling to Amsterdam with a co-star after the first season and a waitress called her Silver. “That absolutely blew my mind,” she says.

• McCord talks about getting a restraining order against a female fan who would harass her and her friends. “It ended finally after that, but it was ongoing for probably over a year,” she says.

• Lanter says a female friend followed him home, knocked on his door pretending to be a neighbor in need of eggs, came back the next day with eggs for him with her number on them, “and I was like, ‘That’s super clever.’” Grimes calls this “quite slick” and Lanter says it was “ballsy.”

• I really laughed at this question: “How different would it have been with social media?” And Steger saying, “If we had social media…” as if the show was made during the Dark Ages. If you want to talk about a show being pre-social media, talk about “Beverly Hills, 90210,” okay?

• Wilds claims the show “ended at the beginning of the Twitter boom, like literally the beginning of people really being on Twitter.” For the record, Twitter started in 2006. nu90210 started in 2008 and ended in 2013. He goes on to say that if the show was on now, the fandom would be “ridiculous,” though he also says, “Even now, the show is starting to still move around the world. I think right now we’re in Brazil for the first time, and seeing what they’re saying and how much they appreciate it and they’re connecting to it so much, man, it’s ridiculous.”

• McCord claims they were “kind of in the last wave where social media was just hitting while we were on the show.”

• As for what question he gets asked the most, Wilds says, “Funny enough, they always ask me, ‘Is it ever coming back?’ I think it’s a testament to the work that we’ve done.”

  • I want to tell those fans, no, it’s never coming back… but honestly… nothing would surprise me at this point. 2020 has been crazy, man.

• Cohen says after a break, “Another 9021OMG moment? The show’s cancellation. Fans were shocked and the cast was devastated.” Shocked? The ratings were ATROCIOUS, even by CW standards. There were less than a million viewers in the final season. C’mon now, people.

• But Stroup calls it a “shock” and Donovan reveals, “As far as everyone knew, we were planning on doing a sixth season.”

• Grimes admits, “I was very sad, shockingly so. I sat right down on my floor in my apartment and I just cried.”

• Wilds claims a press release with the news leaked, “so our fans found out that we were canceled before we did. We were immediately in the middle of shooting the last episode. So it was a lot. It was crazy.” He describes himself as “heartbroken,” saying, “It always hurts to break up the band.”

• And while Wilds asserts he thinks “everyone” was heartbroken like him, McCord actually says she was warned “not to come to set too happy because a lot of your co-stars are upset.” Why was she so thrilled? “I was so not happy with where the stories had gone.” (There were several more showrunner changes after season 1.) “I loved Max… I actually was so pissed off at the way the show ended. You can’t make people fall in love with the wonderful human specimen that was Josh Zuckerman playing Max — I was like, ‘How can you do this?! How are you wrapping up five years of ‘90210’ and I don’t get to be with Max?! I mean, Naomi doesn’t get to be with Max!’” She then reveals that, “in true Naomi fashion,” she filmed her own alternate ending, telling the crew, “It’s the last day of filming. What are you gonna do, fire me?” She had a crew member stand in for Zuckerman. “I was like, ‘That’s the way ‘90210’ should’ve ended!’”

• Of Lannie’s happy ending, Grimes says, “At the end, for him to just finally pick her, I think that was a sweet moment for them.” She goes on to reveal, “I get asked all the time, ‘Why aren’t you and Matt married?’ That’s the number-one question I get asked.” Lanter admits he gets asked that too, prompting Grimes to laugh, “Our poor spouses!”

• It’s said part of the reason the cancellation was such a surprise was because there was already a script for season 6. That doesn’t surprise me, though, given that producers are supposed to have plans for the next season mapped out and pitch them to the network in hopes of being renewed.

• Wilds says the script was “great” and an excited McCord says it was “so good,” which doesn’t really jive with her earlier remarks. She claims it was set five years in the future, and Naomi was going to be like Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and such a “boss [bitch].” Wilds says they were going to “get into the inner workings of Hollywood, of the LA lifestyle.” He insists, “It would’ve taken ‘90210’ up a level. It would’ve been more than just a teen soap.”

• Lowndes says, “Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a reunion movie one day.” Stroup, Donovan, Steger, and McCord all say they’d be game. Steger says he’s particularly interested because “I don’t know if we really had a proper ending. That’s the one complaint I get from fans.”

• “I don’t think I realized how lucky we were,” Stroup says of their time working on the show. Wilds says, “I can’t even call them friends. I’ve got family from that show.”

• It’s noted that while Wilds has continued to act, he’s also focused on his biggest passion — music — earning a Grammy nomination and starring in Adele’s “Hello” music video. His “biggest accomplishment” is said to be becoming a dad. “There’s nothing that is even close or comparable to my daughter,” he says, sharing that he reaches out to Grimes for parenting tips.

• Grimes is a mom of one, but she jokes, “I don’t think I look like the image of Mother Earth to anybody.” Still, she now blogs and does YouTube videos about parenthood, and it’s noted she “stays in touch with former frenemy AnnaLynne.”

• McCord says of Grimes, “Out all of the people on the show, she’s the one who has reached out to pull us together through the years.” It’s also noted McCord continued her acting career with the “Dallas” revival and, most recently, a new “Power” spinoff, about which she jokes she is still “Scandalynne.” She says, “Basically, I’m Naomi in the ‘90s.”

• For Lowndes, it’s said that after writing songs for “90210,” she “kept making music of her own.” The special also mentions her prank engagement to Jon Lovitz that was really a publicity stunt for a music video. She has a new album coming out and is called “pretty much a Hallmark movie darling.”

  • That said, as I note in a post coming this Saturday, Lowndes is co-starring in a Lifetime holiday movie with Chad Michael Murray (Lucas, One Tree Hill).

  • Lowndes also talks about writing her own Hallmark movie last year and says writing is now her “biggest passion in the entire world.”

• “You can usually find me on Hallmark or Hallmark Movies & Mysteries,” says Donovan, whose latest Christmas movie premieres on Saturday (hint: It’s actually the big crux of my holiday movie post!). It’s also noted how Donovan often shows off his abs on social media… which, true. He does.

• For Lanter and Steger, it’s said they are “loving their dad lives and staying busy in the biz.” “Clone Wars” is mentioned for Lanter while Steger says he’s “writing a lot of my own content and, meanwhile, I’m still acting.”

• For Stroup, they tout “The Following” with Kevin Bacon, Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, and the Marvel Universe with “Iron Fist.” She says she’s still reading for roles, “but I’m just very specific with what I want to dedicate my time to.” She talks about her penchant for pottery and says she may eventually sell some pieces she makes.

• Cohen says, “While life has taken the cast on different paths, one thing remains the same: ‘90210’ will always hold a special place in their hearts.”

• McCord admits, “I never had gratitude for ‘90210.’ I never appreciated my time while I was there and I was really lucky. I was really, really blessed and I didn’t appreciate one moment of it. Now I’m so grateful to it.”

• Lowndes says, “We can all look back now and it was the best time of our lives. It was incredible and such a great experience and I’ve walked away with friendships for life and this connection you can’t break.”

• Wilds gets the last cast quote: “I just wanna say that I love you guys so much. I’ll thank you forever for this.”

• Cohen declares to end it, “It just goes to show, you can leave the zip code, but it never really leaves you. The ‘90210’ stars are forever linked and we just love that.” Same could be said for “Beverly Hills, 90210,” of course.

So… the whole special was a little more than an hour, not counting ads (though it took me several hours to get through it because of all my note-taking, ha). It wasn’t what I was expecting, based on what was released yesterday. I thought it was going to be more like the “Beverly Hills, 90210: 10-Year High School Reunion,” where the stars actually reunited with one another. Even with the pandemic going on, I thought it was going to be some socially distant reunion, especially since Lanter had shared that photo of him and Grimes. But as I noted above, all the interviews were filmed separately except for theirs, and it’s unclear when exactly those were done.

I think if you’re a “90210” fan, there is no reason not to love this (apart from some missing cast members like Gillian Zinser). If I was a “90210” die-hard, I’d eat this up. It was a great look back at the series, the cast, the characters, the guest stars, the wardrobe, the impact. I am surprised it was released with just one day’s notice instead of having even just a few weeks of promotional build-up. I do wonder if The CW is testing the waters for a movie sequel or something that would stream on CW Seed. Time will tell, of course.

As for whether, now having watched it, I’d like something like this for “Beverly Hills, 90210”… well… maybe? I mean, I kinda feel like been there, done that. We had “The Final Goodbye” special that aired the week before series finale (though “90210” also had retrospective for its series finale too) and we also had the aforementioned “high school reunion” in 2003. We had some of the stars reminiscing on FOX’s 25th anniversary special in 2012. And then, of course, we had “BH90210” and we all know how I feel about that. We’ve also had “E! True Hollywood Story,” the unauthorized Lifetime biopic, and the Reelz “Behind Closed Doors” special. We certainly don’t need something like this (though plenty of fans would go ga-ga for it). But would I have preferred it to “BH90210” and Jennie and Tori’s current “rewatch” podcast? Hell to the yes.

Speaking of the 9021OMG podcast, you have to wonder how Jennie and Tori are feeling today about this special coming out with the same name. Maybe they’ll talk about it on next week’s podcast. You know I’ll be listening and reacting. It’s what I do.

Shameless plug: All my old interviews with the “90210” cast are here.

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