‘Beverly Hills 90210’ creator says network ‘warped’ after Dylan and Brenda had sex

Smells like teen spirit.

Darren Star, who created “Beverly Hills, 90210” before moving on to “Sex and the City” and “Emily in Paris,” recalled that the network was not happy after Shannen Doherty’s character, Brenda Walsh, and the Luke Perry’s Dylan McKay had sex.

“They had a lot of grades. Everything about sexuality was hard to deal with,” he told Vulture in a recent interview.

“Initially, they said, ‘Where are the parents? where are the teachers And I say it’s not a show about parents and teachers. It’s a show about these friends who were there for each other, solving each other’s problems.”

The teen drama ran for 10 seasons on Fox from 1990 to 2000, launching the careers of Doherty, Perry, Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Jason Priestley and Brian Austin Green.

Towards the end of Season 1, Star wrote and directed an episode where Brenda and Dylan have sex after prom. After the broadcast, there was backlash.

“When all these affiliates realized what they were broadcasting, a lot of them went bust,” Star said.

He explained: “And it wasn’t just that Brenda had sex, it was that she enjoyed it. When we came back for the next season, they asked for an episode where she had remorse.”

Star said he wasn’t happy about it. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe I have to write this.’ She had a pregnancy scare. She realized she was too young to have sex.”

In real life, both Doherty and Perry died tragically. Perry died in March 2019 aged 52 after suffering a stroke and Doherty died last month aged 53 from cancer.

Perry’s daughter Sophie, 24, shared an Instagram tribute to her late father’s on-screen love interest following Doherty’s death.

Doherty also reminisced about Perry at a “Beverly Hills, 90210” panel at MegaCon Orlando last February.

“It was shocking,” she said of his death. “I have a very visceral reaction whenever someone brings up Luke, because as a cancer survivor myself – and with really horrible stage 4 cancer – I thought I’d be the first to go. So when it was Luke, he actually sent me for a tailspin.”

Doherty admitted that “there were times” when she and Luke “weren’t that close” when they worked together on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

“But later we became extremely close,” she added. “So to lose him as our relationship was kind of blossoming as friends and our respect and admiration for each other was reaching its full potential… it was just really hard.”

Although teen TV shows are a dime a dozen today, when “Beverly Hills, 90210” premiered, “it was the biggest shoot ever,” Star said, adding, “No one has written a show about teenagers from a teenager’s point of view. .”

So when it premiered, he recalled, it was “always on the verge of being cancelled.”

“I remember (producer Aaron Spelling) talking to the network, saying, ‘Give us three more episodes.’ He was a fighter for the show,” he said.

“He was limping until the replays started going better. Then it came back in the summer and caught fire.”