Jason Priestley on Why ‘BH90210’ Got Canceled, and Why He Would Act in ‘Euphoria’ If He Were a Young Star
variety.comLeo Barraclough International Features EditorAt the 61st Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Jason Priestley looked back at the success of ’90s teen soap “Beverly Hills, 90210,” and explained why the 2019 reboot “BH90210” got canceled by Fox after one season.“BH90210” was described by Variety as a “soapy parody” that gave “the actors behind our favorite characters the space to play versions of themselves while poking fun at the public personas, rabid fans and roles that made them famous.” It saw original series cast members Priestley, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, Brian Austin Green, Tori Spelling and Shannen Doherty playing heightened versions of themselves, rather than their original characters.
But it was a high stakes gamble that ultimately didn’t pay off, said the North Vancouver native. “We tried something with that show.
It was a risky premise to build a show around. It was a real high-wire act to pull that show off, if we were going to be able to pull it off,” he said.“I thought that the concept itself that we constructed was interesting enough to get us all there.
And we thought maybe this could be interesting, and maybe we could have some fun with this.“And I feel like we all took a lot of time to create the story that was going to be the pilot, and there wasn’t a lot of thought put in beyond that, and what shape the show was going to take beyond that,” Priestley said.The six-episode summer event series was the highest rated scripted broadcast show of the summer, averaging a 1.4 rating among adults 18-49 after three days of delayed viewing, and around 3.5 million total viewers per episode.“BH90210” came flying out of the ratings gates with a 1.52 in Live+Same Day, but saw a substantial 38%.
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