What It Was Really Like to Meet and Interview Shannen Doherty for an Us Weekly Cover Story

Shannen Doherty was late. Uh-oh.

This was back in August 2008, when the actress — who died at 53 on July 13 after a lengthy cancer battle — was set to do an interview and photo shoot for an Us Weekly cover story. For Beverly Hills, 90210 super-fans like myself, the story marked a momentous occasion: Fourteen years after she filmed her last episode of the seminal 1990s teen drama, she had agreed to reprise her Brenda Walsh character for The CW reboot, 90210.

Take it from a person who still owns a copy of the original Peach Pit menu and a commemorative floor tile from the set: This development was a miracle. Doherty had famously departed the original series in 1994 under inauspicious circumstances, as her co-stars and producers openly complained about her behavior and tardiness. Whatever. Headstrong Brenda fearlessly stood up to her parents and had overcome the ultimate betrayal after her sexy brooding boyfriend, Dylan (Luke Perry), cheated on her with her best friend, Kelly (Jennie Garth). Icon. The end.

But now, at an isolated ranch high above the beaches of Malibu, Doherty was nowhere to be found. We heard rumblings that she was stuck in L.A. traffic after shooting 90210 all day. But this was before high-tech iPhones and Waze — nobody really knew. I paced around the dirt road with my reporter’s notebook and tape recorder in-hand, fearing that her reputation had preceded her.

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She finally arrived at the location looking visibly exhausted and on-edge. But we had an extensive interview to do. We sat in chairs across from each other and I started with my questions. To be more specific, I dove in head-first with the only topic that mattered.

Doherty seemed measured while detailing why she had signed-on to 90210. This was a thank you to her fans for supporting her, she explained. “I just needed to make sure Brenda was done with all that high-school drama,” she added. Yes! Good! Then I started picking at the scabs of her youth. Did she and Garth really get into a fistfight back in the day? Why did Tori Spelling call her “arrogant” in her memoir?

This is where a body-language expert would have told me to immediately stand down. Doherty crossed her legs, looked straight past me and snapped that this was going to be a short interview if I kept pressing her about the past. Desperate to get a money quote, I ignored her plea and inquired whether she knew Spelling and Brian Austin Green had once coupled up. “Didn’t I just say I would never comment on another cast member?” she seethed. “Don’t ask me about the cast. Just don’t.”

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I knew I had screwed up. As a Hail Mary, I decided to play show-and-tell with printed-out old photos that spanned her impressive career. Seeing a cast shot of her on Little House on the Prairie in 1982, Doherty broke out into a wide grin and spoke lovingly of her late TV dad, Michael Landon. She also dished on her roles in Heathers (“I’m really proud I did that”) and Mallrats (“We’d throw food and skateboard in the halls.”) She squealed when I held up a screen shot from the 1985 movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun and then marveled at Sarah Jessica Parker’s real-life dance skills back in the day.

We were soon interrupted so she could do her photo shoot, during which Doherty’s mood considerably lightened. At one point she even spoke baby talk to a staffer’s rottweiler. Upon wrapping at dusk, she hugged each and every person and thanked them for their patience. Then she asked me to walk with her.

I couldn’t concentrate on the small talk because I was too consumed with my own observations: She is so petite! She is giving off friendly Brenda vibes! I think? The image forever seared into my brain: Doherty draping a sympathetic older sister-like arm around my shoulder and saying softly, “You can ask the rest of your questions now.” FWIW, she denied that she ever showed up past her call time on the set.

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I had always felt a kinship with Brenda Walsh. But on that summer afternoon, Shannen Doherty was the one who left me awestruck. Here was an actress proud to have never dyed her hair blonde or fixed the gap in the teeth. She declared, “I was raised to have a lot of confidence and believe in myself.” She wanted a child, loved riding her horses and longed to move back to her native Tennessee. At the literal end of the day, she proudly insisted that she had zero regrets because “You just have to move forward.”

Now her fans can only look back on a spirited, hard-fought life and mourn. Like Perry before her, she’s gone far too soon. Just 53. Doherty had spoken openly about her cancer for years and seemed so determined to persevere that the July 14 announcement came as a shock. She leaves behind a treasure trove of cool films and beloved TV reruns to satisfy an entire generation in perpetuity. And to one devoted viewer in particular, she’ll always be the actress who arrived late and yet provided an indelibly memorable time.