I Grew Up Watching Shannen Doherty on 90210, and I’m Grateful to Her for Making Waves in Hollywood
Women often don’t get their fair due in life. Sadly, actress Shannen Doherty passed away on July 13 from breast cancer at the tragically young age of 53; she was originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. Much like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder, do difficult women ever get their fair due?
Doherty had a robust television career that began at the young age of 10, but it didn’t fully take off until she was cast on the ’90s hit show Beverly Hills 90210 nine years later in 1990. On 90210 Doherty played Brenda Walsh, a small-town Midwestern teenager who had just moved from Minnesota to the big city Babylon of Los Angeles with her parents and twin brother, Brandon Walsh (played by the totally babelicious Jason Priestley). Any Gen-X’er or elder millennial will tell you that Beverly Hills 90210 was must-see TV before must-see TV. It was how you knew you were cool. Viewers tuned in to see what would happen next with good-girl Brenda Walsh and her hunky bad-boy boyfriend Dylan McKay (Luke Perry). Doherty also played Prue Halliwell on the CW show Charmed, which ran from 1998 to 2006, though her memory remains strongly tied to those shimmery beginning years of Beverly Hills 90210.
Accusations of being “too difficult” plagued Doherty’s reputation from the years of 90210 and through Charmed and probably limited her career, though it was still impressive in many ways. Rumors of being oppositional with writers and fellow castmates on 90210, as well as rumors of repeated tardiness on the set of Charmed, helped to alienate Doherty from many would-be opportunities for work. While Doherty had admitted there was truth to the rumors around her, they were also inflamed by a kind of hatred for Brenda Walsh, which seemed to typecast her and follow her in a negative light throughout her career. Fans were often annoyed by her goody-two-shoes character on 90210 and unfortunately, the annoyance fans felt at Brenda Walsh became a motivation for a kind of conflation with Shannen Doherty herself—unfairly so.
Doherty did have disputes with writers and castmates on 90210 and she has admitted to having an issue with being habitually tardy to the set of Charmed. The issue is not that these are all wildly false claims, as Doherty herself had admitted they weren’t. The issue is that there is no grace allowed to women in Hollywood, and really in the workplace in general. As Doherty herself had said about her tardiness on set, she was going through a divorce at the time and was an “emotional mess.” They simply opted to assume her lateness had to do with some kind of inherent character flaw, or with her just being a “bitch,” and proceeded to dismiss her altogether just because she was a woman who needed help.
Actors like Bill Murray, Christian Bale, and Robert De Niro are all known for being challenging to work with. Actor Mel Gibson called his wife a “cunt” on tape and used racial epithets and then got to continue making movies. Even former presidents get to say “grab ’em by the pussy” and not suffer consequences to their careers. When women are so much as late because they are going through hard times in their personal lives, they are written off as problems. And there are direct consequences to being a woman and a problem—consequences that unfairly impact one’s career. Meanwhile Christian Bale gets to be a complete asshole and verbally berate a lowly film crew member and that’s just an acceptable part of manhood. Robert De Niro is renowned for loathing the interview circuit and more often than not refuses to answer questions or gives short, curt answers to late-night hosts who are just trying to make people laugh. He is, in essence, very difficult. And yet he never gets called an asshole. He is still one of our most celebrated and beloved actors at 80 years old. When women take up space, which is what Doherty did, we are reminded it is not okay to have needs or to ask for anything. Good girls don’t make waves. I’m grateful to Doherty for never pretending to be one.
top image: Photo by Jean Baptiste Lacroix WireImage
