Shannen Doherty has decided to return to 90210 to pay tribute to her late castmate Luke Perry. Although she was initially reluctant to step back into the shoes of Brenda Walsh on BH90210, a reboot of the Nineties teen soap opera Beverly Hills, 90210, the actress came around to the idea after Perry’s death in March.
“For me, I felt like it was honoring him and his memory and what he meant to the audience and the fans and to all of us,” the actress told Entertainment Tonight. “As his on-set family, I felt like it was an important time for all of us to come together to honor him.”
Doherty appeared on the original 90210 from 1990 to 1994 then reprised her role as Brenda in 2008 and 2009 for an arc on the CW’s reboot, 90210, which primarily focused on a new crop of teens. The BH90210 reboot was announced in February and billed as a meta take on the teen soap that would feature storylines inspired by the performers’ real lives and relationships as they tried to plan the show’s revival. While many of the other original cast members committed to the miniseries, neither Doherty nor Perry were slated to appear.
Perry died a few days after the reboot’s announcement, succumbing to a massive stroke. He was 52.
Doherty said that the show would deal with Perry’s death — and the fate of his character — in the first episode of the rebooted series. “Luke was such a sort of quiet, subtle, yet dynamic human being that he had a very strong and lasting impact on people,” she said. “So, naturally, we would have to deal with it.”
“He’ll be honored in a very respectful way,” Brian Austin Green also said, according to ET. “But to everybody that’s ever met him or knew him, he was an amazing person and he was a blessing for people to have in their lives. And I feel so blessed I got to do what I did with him. That I had the experience that I did.”
