Shannen Doherty is featured in the new issue of Details magazine (the one with the Gossip Girl guys on the cover) wherein she talks about shark attacks, her ex-husband and (of course) her return to the world of 90210. Here are a few of Shannen’s Details magazine photos which were shot by Michael Evanet for the mag:
Not long ago, Shannen Doherty, the once and future Brenda Walsh, took a day off from shooting the short-lived TV show North Shore in Hawaii and went on a shark-diving trip with a couple of friends. Hundreds of yards offshore, Doherty descended into the water in a protective cage. Members of the boat’s crew chummed the water, sharks gathered—and Doherty freaked. “I couldn’t breathe, I started having an anxiety attack, I couldn’t stay out of their reach,” Doherty says, shuddering. Her Irish brow crinkles into slight worry lines that make her look her age, which is 37. “They were slamming into the cage—they looked so frickin’ mean! My leg slipped a little through the bars, and a shark swam up against me and rubbed off a layer of my skin.” Doherty is telling the story in a restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway, in Malibu, a few hundred yards from the beach. She still owns nine or ten surfboards but hasn’t been on one—or even swum in the ocean—since the shark encounter. “I tell myself the least I can do is give the ocean back to the sharks,” Doherty says. And then she giggles. “No, that’s just a bullshit rationalization—I’m just terrified now.” … Shannen Doherty may not have been a nice girl, but she is a sweet woman. Then again, there is nowhere to go but up after you’ve singlehandedly defined the modern American mean girl. The journey began with her performance in 1989’s Heathers, as the quiet yet lethal member of the troika of button-nosed title characters. But Doherty went hard-core after she was cast on Beverly Hills, 90210, which made its debut in 1990. As Brenda Walsh, she played a virginal daughter of Minnesota relocated to the zip code of the entitled and wealthy. Brenda was initially a likable, naïve beauty, but her equanimity didn’t last long: she soon morphed into Elizabeth I in Guess jeans, adopting a kill-or-be-killed attitude toward all of teendom. Kurt Cobain’s refrain “Here we are now, entertain us” might have captured the nineties Zeitgeist, but so did Brenda’s Season 2 bon mot, “To be a bitch or not to be a bitch—that is the question.” “I don’t think Brenda was a complete brat,” Doherty says. “She was fueled by her insecurities: not being from Beverly Hills, not feeling safe in that environment. And then the love of her life was stolen from her. That can really injure a young girl’s esteem.” Alas, poor Doherty was playing the role of a lifetime as her TV and real-life personae began to merge. There was boy trouble and more boy trouble. Doherty’s relationship with Dean Factor, heir to the Max Factor makeup fortune, ended when a restraining order was filed against her after she allegedly tried to run him down with her car. (Her memorable line: “If I really wanted to run him over, I wouldn’t have missed.”) Then there was a teen-angst-worlds-colliding liaison with Judd Nelson. Next Doherty met George Hamilton’s son, Ashley. They married after two weeks; the union lasted all of seven months. Her chaotic personal life exacted a professional toll. Amid rumors that she was consistently showing up late to the set, Doherty left Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1994, after the fourth season. She lay low for a while, except for a winning turn in Kevin Smith’s Mallrats in 1995 and an appearance in Playboy. Then, in 1998, Aaron Spelling cast her in Charmed—as an actual witch—opposite Alyssa Milano. Just as the “Shannen is back” story line began to gel, she quit, reportedly because she was at odds with Milano. But that was seven years ago. Since then Doherty has, much to her relief, fallen off the tabloid radar. “I have a great life now,” Doherty says. She owns three horses and rides them obsessively, and her parents live a five-minute drive away. “If you could see me with my horse Picasso, how I call his name and he sticks his head out of his stall and then licks me from the neck up—that’s what my life is like now,” she says. “It’s really kind of boring.” An obvious question arises: If Shannen Doherty is so happy with her placid life, why is she raising Brenda Walsh from the dead?
And the Details article, which you can read HERE, goes on to answer that question. The one question that isn’t answered in her interview is how the magazine stylist managed to convince her to wear that horribly outdated leather vest for the shoot? It looks exactly like the sort of outfit that Brenda Walsh would’ve worn back in the day … and mebbe I just answered my own question. I’ve yet to grow tired of all the Brenda Walsh/90210 hoopla but it can’t last much longer … especially since this week’s ep (which aired last night) was the last ep of 90210 to feature Doherty for some time. How much longer can she milk this role? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
After the jump, check out a few new outtake photos from Shannen’s feature in Radar magazine along with some outtake portions of her interview with the mag … (more…)
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