TV Twins Shannen Doherty and Jason Priestley Lament ‘Sexual Undertone’ of Their ‘90210’ Characters
Beverly Hills, 90210 fans have long questioned the weird dynamic between twins Brenda and Brandon Walsh — and so have Shannen Doherty and Jason Priestley, who played them on the teen drama.
“Brenda and Brandon were always so interesting, because we had an interesting relationship,” Doherty, 52, said during the Monday, January 22, episode of her “Let’s Be Clear” podcast, where Priestley, 54, appeared as a guest. “There was this sexual undertone of Brenda and Brandon that to this day is hysterical.”
Doherty, who played Brenda on the first four seasons of the show, recalled a fan at a convention asking her to sign a photo of the Walsh siblings. “I was like, ‘This is inappropriate for brother and sister,’” Doherty said with a laugh.
She went on to mention a 1992 Rolling Stone cover that she and Priestley did with the late Luke Perry. “I’m like, straddling you,” Doherty quipped. “So bizarre. There were a lot of bizarre things that happened with us.”
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Priestley, who appeared on all 10 seasons of the series, agreed with his former costar’s assessment, saying, “It’s pretty funny.”
While Brenda and Brandon were twins who each had their own love interests on 90210, some fans have pointed out that the duo were a lot more lovey-dovey with one another than brothers and sisters usually are. (Reddit, for example, has a lot to say about this.)
Doherty previously addressed the Walsh siblings’ unique bond at 90s Con, again referencing a strange promo shoot that the duo did together. “He's, like, behind me, and we're all, like, sexy, and I'm like, 'Oh, no, this is wrong. This is crazy,’” she said in September 2023. “But we were always sort of an inappropriate brother and sister ... so it was fantastic.”
Priestley previously denied during a 1993 interview with Howard Stern that he and Doherty ever dated in real life, but he later revealed that several unnamed costars hooked up with each other while the show was airing.
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"Various combinations of people slept with each other over the years," he wrote in his 2015 self-titled memoir. "Nobody ever got attached. We never let it get in the way of what we were doing. I will let you know that nobody ever got — work always superseded everything."
In her podcast on Monday, Doherty also opened up about the circumstances that led to her firing from Beverly Hills, 90210 after season 4. Doherty explained that she was in a “really horrible marriage” at the time “that made it really hard for [her] to consistently be on time for work.” (Doherty wed Ashley Hamilton in October 1993 and filed for divorce in April 1994.)
“It wasn’t anybody’s responsibility but mine, but I certainly wish that I had been sort of sat down and sort of looked at and said, ‘Listen, the end result is going to be this, you are going to get fired because none of us are willing to put up with it anymore,'” she continued “‘And I understand that you have an issue in your personal life, but that also can’t bleed into work, you also have to get your s–t together.’”
