Melrose Place star Grant Show admitted that TV fame was “dehumanizing” in a rare interview more than 25 years after the show ended.
“They don’t see you as a human being anymore,” Show, 63, told the Still Here Hollywood Podcast w/Steve Kmetko on Monday, November 3.
Show played bad boy Jake Hanson on the Darren Star-created soap opera from 1992 to 1999. The hit series, about a group of single professionals living in Los Angeles, was a spin-off of Beverly Hills, 902010 and put Show on the map as a worldwide heartthrob.
YouTube/Still Here Hollywood Podcast
In the interview, Show said he couldn’t have anticipated the fame that accompanied playing Hanson, resident bachelor of the Melrose Place apartment complex who wore a leather jacket and drove a motorcycle.
“It’s fun to be on a hit show,” said Show. “But you know, there are other things that happen that you don’t see happening — you start to lose your ability to just kind of, be out in the public.”
“There’s a thing that happens with fame, that I saw happening — not just with myself, but with everybody — when it’s that kind of fame, you kind of lose your humanity. Not yourself but the way other people see you,” Show continued. “They don’t see you as a human being anymore.”
Fox
The star observed parasocial relationships developing among fans.
“They see you as … ‘Jake’ or the character you’re playing, and they have a relationship with you that is really one-sided,” he explained. “And for them to continue that relationship that they have — they have to disregard that you are a person other than that thing that they’re seeing. And it’s very dehumanizing.”
The Criminal Minds star attributed so-called “bad behavior” among celebrities to that kind of disconnect.
YouTube/Still Here Hollywood Podcast
“It’s almost like, ‘Well, you’re going to take my humanity away from me? Well, screw you, I’m going to do whatever I want to do,’” he said. “I don’t think it’s conscious but it kind of sneaks up on you.”
Show conceded that some of his own past behaviors (on which he didn’t elaborate) as a young actor in Hollywood, were not admirable.
“I think I was a pretty decent human being most of my life,” said Show. “But I look back on some behaviors that I had. It was like, ‘That was really not good. And not ‘me’ either.”
This story Former ‘Melrose Place’ Star Grant Show Looks Unrecognizable as He Laments About Bad Boy Fame first appeared on Globe. Add Globe as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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