Back to the 90210.
On the latest episode of their “9021OMG” rewatch podcast, Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth addressed Hilary Swank’s short stint on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
Swank, 51, joined the series in Season 8 as Carly Reynolds, a waitress and single mom who falls for Ian Ziering’s Steve Sanders. But after just 16 episodes, Carly and her son moved to Montana and she was written out of the show.
Spelling, 52, noted on the podcast that she doesn’t think Swank’s performance was the cause of her firing.
“I didn’t think the writing was great in this episode,” Spelling said about the Season 8 premiere, which aired September 1997.
“No, no, I didn’t, either,” added Garth, 53.
Podcast producer Amy chimed in and also defended Swank’s acting.
“It’s not that she wasn’t good. She actually is good,” said Amy. “It’s that they wrote her so ridiculously. Like, she comes in hot. She’s kind of awful from the start.”
But Amy noted that Swank’s exit from the series allowed her to get her Oscar-winning role in the 1999 film “Boys Don’t Cry.”
“Because she gets let go from this show early, and that’s why she got ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ because she was free to audition,” Amy shared.
Swank previously opened up about her departure from the teen drama show on “Conan” in 2014.
“I was on ‘90210’ in the eighth season when no one watched it anymore, and Luke Perry was long gone, so I was fired off the show at that point,” the actress told Conan O’Brien. “And I was devastated.”
“I’m thinking, no one watches this show anymore, and I got fired off of a show that no one watches,” Swank added, noting that she initially signed a two-year contract for “Beverly Hills, 90210,” but was fired after one season.
“Two months later, after I got fired, I got ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’” she recalled. “I looked it as a silver lining. Like, it’s always such a reminder, when something bad happens, there’s something else that could be looming around the corner. But revenge can work, too.”
In an interview with Guy Raz last year, Swank admitted that she felt “discouraged” about her firing because it made her feel that she was “not good enough” to be on the show that was “way past the heyday” by that point.
“But I think the funny thing is… it was a beautiful reminder that fate doesn’t work in such mysterious ways,” Swank continued. “And if you trust — really trust — what’s happening when one door closes… I got ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ two months later.”
