The cast of ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ in 1997
Credit: Everett
Key Points
Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth are looking back on Hilary Swank’s firing from season 8 of Beverly Hills, 90210.
Spelling recalled the moment Swank broke the news to her on a recent episode of her 90210MG podcast with Garth.
“She comes into my dressing room, we shut the door, and she said, ‘I just got let go. I’m being fired from the show,'” Spelling shared. “And she was hysterically crying.”
The road to Oscars glory is apparently paved with disappointment and rejection.
At least it was for Hilary Swank, her Beverly Hills, 90210 castmate Tori Spelling detailed on a recent episode of the 90210MG podcast, which she cohosts with former costar Jennie Garth.
The teen soap brought in a stable of fresh faces for its eighth season in 1997, with the star of the crop being Hilary Swank. She’d made a splash as the scrappy single mother Carly Reynolds, and was only three years out from achieving the highest recognition in the field, when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in the searing drama Boys Don’t Cry.
But Swank only lasted a season on 90210 before being fired. “Now, everyone out there, please,” Spelling cautioned on the podcast, “this is from my perspective and my memory, so I’m not going to get it verbatim, what she said. But this is how I saw it go down.”
Hilary Swank and Tori Spelling on ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’
Credit: Fox
“We were all in our dressing rooms. Hilary and I had become quite close. I had gone out with her and Chad and we had hung out,” Spelling recalled, referencing Swank’s then-husband of only a few months, Chad Lowe.
“I was kind of her safe place on set, and she would talk to me about everything,” Spelling continued. 90210 producer Paul Waigner had apparently called Swank in for an impromptu meeting, which got the actress nervous. On this, Spelling had no insight.
“So she goes in and she comes back and she’s crying. She comes into my dressing room, we shut the door and she said, ‘I just got let go. I’m being fired from the show.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ Because I hadn’t heard any of this. We didn’t know. And she was hysterically crying.”
Spelling recalled Swank worrying aloud, “‘Oh my God, if I get fired off of 90210, I’m never going to make it.’ And the ironic thing is, if she had stayed on 90210, she would not have been able to audition for Boys Don’t Cry. She would not have been able to get that role, do that role, and then win the Academy Award.”
Garth sagely added, “Things always work out.”
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Things did work out for Swank, who gained entry to the exclusive club of actors with multiple Academy Awards only a handful of years after her Boys Don’t Cry win, when she won again for her role in Clint Eastwood’s boxing drama, Million Dollar Baby.
90210, meanwhile, ran for another two seasons after Swank’s exit. The series wrapped following its 10th season in 2000, with Garth and Spelling being among a small group of original stars to remain in the core cast throughout its run.
You can listen to Spelling and Garth’s full discussion on the 90210MG podcast above.
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