(Warning: This post contains spoilers for the finale of “BH90210”)
Fox’s “BH90210,” ended Wednesday, revealing that the show’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” reboot got picked up to series — meaning that in-universe fans of Donna (Tori Spelling), David (Brian Austin Green), Kelly (Jennie Garth), Brenda (Shannen Doherty), Brandon (Jason Priestley), Steve (Ian Ziering) and Andrea (Gabrielle Carteris) will find out what the characters have been up to since the drama ended almost 20 years ago. (Well, six of them, because Christine Elise told the cast right before they appeared at the network’s upfront presentation that the show needs to cut one of the actors from the project for budgetary reasons.)
But in real life, fans of the meta-revival itself will have to wait to see if Fox orders a second season of “BH90210,” so they can find out what happens next with the “heightened” versions of Spelling, Green, Garth, Doherty, Priestley, Ziering and Carteris and their “90210” characters, who would live on via the reboot inside the show.
While we don’t have an answer for you yet on a renewal, we can tell you that Spelling and Garth — who co-created “BH90210” with Chris Alberghini and Mike Chessler — have plans for Season 2, even though the show has been marketed as an “event series” from the start.
“From our perspective, it was definitely not a limited series,” Spelling told TheWrap. “It was a great opportunity to be back home again on Fox, and because of the timing of when we came in to pitch to Fox, they loved it and wanted to get it fast-tracked and on this summer and they thought it would be a fun summer treat. So it was the time slot that they had available. And also what they thought would be great for the fans. So it was six episodes, but that was never the intention. The intention is to go on.”
Garth said that a second season would be “juicy” due to the fact the fictional reboot has now been picked up and so revisiting the “90210” characters would be a big part of another batch of episodes.
“It will be juicy, because it’ll be more about the show, the filming of the actual show and more of these people thrust into each other’s lives like all the time,” she said. “You spend more time with your work family than you do with your real family sometimes. So it would be about these people being together in that kind of environment and being forced to be there and how all that works out for everyone.”
Spelling added: “And the fans will definitely get to see, obviously, more of the show within the show, which is the straight reboot. So they’ll see us as our ‘90210’ characters. When we ended it, we’d just done the one scene with David and Donna.”
Garth says they’d also love to invite actors who worked on the original show to be guest stars on “BH90210.”
A second season would also address the many cliffhangers for the on-screen versions of the cast that were packed into the finale, including rocky marriages, possible paternity reveals and the fact one of them apparently needs to be cut from the reboot.
“The original, even though it was a drama, it was considered a little bit of a nighttime soap at moments, especially in the later seasons,” Spelling said. “So we kind of wanted to delve into that. So while we have comedy and emotion, we also have the soapy aspect of it. And Jennie has a great word for it…”
“I coined it a ‘soapedy’ because we do– we lean into the soapiness of it because that’s so much of the funny stuff because it’s not real… we have people playing versions of themselves, jumping right into storylines that would only happen on a soap on TV,” Garth added.
Spelling and Garth can’t speak for everyone when it comes to the cast’s willingness to do a second season, but they are optimistic.
“That has not been worked out yet,” Garth said. “I would think yes, but at this point I don’t really know for sure.”
“We all had a great time together, I think everyone really enjoyed the process,” Spelling said. “Everyone loved doing the comedy together, especially. Every single cast members was very aware of, ‘Wow, this is a special bond we all have.’ And you can’t recreate it, this is something special and doing this together is great. There is definitely magic and I think we would all do it again.”
See below for more from TheWrap’s interview with Spelling and Garth.
TheWrap: How did you decide which shoutouts to the original series — and its behind-the-scenes drama — to include, like the red-dress bit?
Jennie Garth: We love doing those inside.. taking something that the perception from the public is kind of blown out of proportion or is completely untrue — or maybe there is a little bit of truth to it — we love taking those moments and creating something juicy out of them.
Tori Spelling: I think for the entire cast to come back together for a scripted, dramatic show and to be able to poke fun at themselves and each other and push the envelope with those shock value things, I think it’s really cool.
TheWrap: The show has also taken jabs at the industry and other Fox shows like “Empire” and “The O.C.” Did you run those by the network?
Garth: We never really saw them as jabs, it’s kind of more about making fun of the world that we live in and that we know so well. And Fox is part of our family, so it feels incomplete to not include them.
Spelling: We’re just mentioning shows that are part of their family as well, not taking jabs at them at all.
Garth: But I think the tone of the show comes from that eye of telling the story in a different way and doing it in a tongue-in-cheek way sometimes or looking at things from a comedic angle. All the crazy things that have happened in this industry and that have happened to each of us individually and using those as platforms to tell stories, it’s just fun, we have so many things to talk about, so many stories that jump out.
TheWrap: Have you given any thought to how you’ll address Dylan’s absence on the in-universe reboot, due to Luke Perry’s passing?
Garth: No, we haven’t because we just barely got into the filming of the show-within-the-show by the end of the six episodes, but that’s something we’ll definitely be looking at when we move forward, if we move forward, for sure.
TheWrap: What can you tell us about your upcoming two-woman show, “Jennie Garth & Tori Spelling Live: A Night to Remember”?
Spelling: Well, part of the reason we came up with this concept was because we definitely knew the fans would want something “90210.” We knew we didn’t want to do a straight reboot. And the second-biggest thing is people, in real life, they love our friendship, they love that we’ve had this 30-year friendship and the banter that we have with each other and that we heckle each other. We have a great connection, a sisterly connection. And so many people commented on it and we were like, “That’s why we wanted to create a Tori and Jennie in the show and everyone else playing themselves.” So we decided to continue this process and all the things we couldn’t write in the script we can continue with the stories in real life and make it a real girlfriends’ night. And people can join me and my BFF on stage and bring their BFF and we’ll have cocktails and games and stories and it’s a very interactive thing. It’s fun.