'Beverly Hills, 90210' turns 30: Stars reflect on best memories from the hit show
"My fellow castmates are like family to me ... they're chosen family."
The 30th anniversary of the series premiere of the cult classic "Beverly Hills, 90210" is on Sunday.
The drama starred Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, the late Luke Perry, Brian Austin Green and Tori Spelling and helped to launch their high-profile careers in Hollywood.
During its 10 seasons on air, "Beverly Hills, 90210," created by Darren Star and produced by Aaron Spelling, touched on many serious topics like sexual assault, eating disorders, suicide, drug use and more.
Gabrielle Carteris, who played Andrea Zuckerman, the editor of the school newspaper, and Ian Ziering, who played Steve Sanders, another student at West Beverly Hills High School, spoke to "Good Morning America" about the show's impact and its lasting legacy.
Carteris on the show's success: 'I still can't wrap my brain around it all the way'
"Thirty years is a long time," she said. "That was a moment in time that changed my life, shaped the trajectory of my entire life."
Carteris said getting the chance to play Andrea Zuckerman was "kismet."
"Andrea was the greatest role for me," Carteris, who is now president of SAG-AFTRA, said. "When I look back, I see that it was a role that actually spoke to a young woman wanting to be able to have influence in her life and to make a difference and spoke her mind."
"We were on an iconic show, so a lot of us are seen as those characters," she continued. "I'm lucky it was a really positive character."
Carteris' character's story was largely shaped by her real-life decision to get pregnant during the show's fifth season. The "90210" writers wrote Carteris' pregnancy into Zuckerman's storyline and received strong feedback from the move.
"The idea was that only 'lost girls,' 'bad girls' -- those were the ones who got in trouble, would get in those situations," she said of the stigma.
"I never realized how negative people were towards young women if they got into a situation where they were pregnant without a partner when they were young," she added on her reaction to the backlash. "People really attacked the character, attacked Aaron [Spelling] and the show for portraying a young girl getting pregnant, who was bright. It was a very important statement to say that you can be bright and you can be a good person."
She said that although the series was created to show "real young people and what they were going through," she still felt "90210" had to abide by what "Middle America" wanted to see on the screen.
"I'm Jewish in real-life, my character was Jewish, but I wasn't allowed to wear a Jewish star," she claimed. "I had a boyfriend who was Black, but I wasn't allowed to touch him on the show because Middle America didn't want to see it."
Carteris acknowledged that as the show's seasons progressed, she started to see a shift and more scenarios being portrayed. "They started to actually tell the stories more, instead of kind of touching on the stories and then running back," she noted.
Ziering on the show's continued support: '90210 has been the gift that just keeps on giving'
"Steve Sanders has been very good to me over the years," the actor said about his famous character.
Although the series finale of "90210" aired 20 years ago, Ziering says he still regularly encounters fans of the drama.
"Wherever I go, wherever I am in the world, people will come up to tell me that they love the show, that they love the character, they miss seeing it," he shared. "The fact that we're talking about it 30 years after it first aired is amazing."
Like many of his castmates, he didn't anticipate such a massive response to "90210."
"You hope for the best with every gig," he said. "With every job as an actor, every gig's got a closing curtain, so you know it's going to happen sooner or later. I didn't expect it to last 10 years, I'll tell you that."
One of the many reasons fans loved the show was its long seasons. Ziering said the cast did almost 300 hours of programming.
"There were some years where we did 32 episodes a year. It's unheard of," he said. "Now a network order is maybe 12-13 at the most, but we did 32 episodes for a couple years because there was such an appetite for the show."
"The fact that it continues to be popular, so many years after it first aired, is just a testament to the fact that we were doing something right," he added.
The everlasting bonds formed from the show
Both Carteris and Ziering speak highly of their former castmates and the relationships formed on the show.
In 2019, the show's primary cast members reunited for a special six-episode reboot event series, "'BH 90210," on Fox, and Carteris said it was like they "never left each other."
"I was so taken by being with everybody and seeing them -- all of us having kids. We're in a different place than we were 30 years ago," she said.
"I'm very close to some of them still -- Jason and I've been close through all the years," she added. "I love to see Ian. Brian I hadn't seen [each other] since we'd finished the show, and it was really magnificent to see him as a man and a father. He's such a wonderful person."
"It was great to be with the girls. I truly love being with them," she added. "Every day, I didn't care if things were hard or not. I loved the fact that we were all together, and I loved working with them. We were really, really close, and I will always be grateful and always be there if they ever need me."
Ziering said the reboot was "just a testament that it's touched people in such a positive way, that it's literally comfort food."
"Where there's such a yearning for comfort with all that's going on, people like to reconnect with the feel-good from yesterday," he added. "And '90210' was that for so many people."
He said he is "very grateful" for his former co-stars.
"When you work with someone for 10 years at a formative age, they become like family, and my fellow castmates are like family to me," he said. "They're chosen family, and I love them all and I care for them and I celebrate their victories. I feel the pain when there's lulls for whatever it is in life. We're still very tight-knit."
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