This is let's be clear with Shannon Doherty.
Hello, let's be clear, listeners. I'm Tory Spelling, and I'm Shan's lifelong friend and former co star, and today I'm truly honored. It's like quite an honor to do this, to be guest hosting Shan's podcast, not only as her friend, but also as one of her super fans. And I
truly was the Academy Awards happened recently. I'm sure all of you definitely saw as I saw, as the world saw that it was heartbreaking that Shannon was left out of the in memoriam segment at the Academy Awards, and I have to say it was shocking, truly shocking, because to me, I discovered Shannon as a fan on the big screen while she was so iconically known for her TV roles, which I want to honor her and go through her career today, but it's really the big screen
where her career just thrived and she just like lit up the big screen going back to when she was a kid. So I know that was heartbreaking. I saw the headlines, I saw the fans that were so outraged on her behalf. I couldn't believe it my heart. Honestly, when the in memoriam stopped and she hadn't been included, my heart dropped. It sank, and it sank because I
was like, what, it's such a miss. And I know, I know there's so many people in the entertainment industry and they can't quite fit them all in the in memoriam. And I don't know what the rules are there, how people are picked and not picked, But I just think when someone's so iconic to fans across the world passes and they're not remembered for their legacy and the great work they did, I just I just think it's shocking.
And it personally felt a little triggering to me because this is the third person that I love that has been left out of the end memoriam. The year my dad passed, I remember he was left out of it, and then ironically, the year that Luke Perry passed, he was left out of it. But it's not like Shannon could have been an oversight. Like I just felt for all of us watching that loved her and loved her work, it felt like not only was she robbed.
But like we were robbed. So I felt it with you.
So today we are going to give Shan the proper honoring of her career. So I'm really really excited to take you guys through her career because there might be things that you didn't even know that she did. There's something that surprised me that I totally forgot about. So Shannon's love for acting started young, doing children's theater. She did commercials, but her first role in a feature film was voicing the character Teresa Brigsby in the United Artist's
animated feature The Secret of Nim in nineteen eighty two. Now, when I was prepping and going through all of Shannon's work.
Which is so like, such a huge body of work, I had forgotten that she was a voice in the Secret of Nim That was like the animated feature for my childhood.
And I was like, oh my god, she really could do it all. She voiced that supporting role in the Don Bluth production when she was only eleven years old.
I read it to Don Bluth at a convention and we talked about what that experience was, and Don Bluth was amazingly talented and so common. The interesting thing about voiceovers is that you're in a booth by yourself recording your lines with people staring through recording studio through a glass telling you, you know, do it this way, or do it that way, or give me five readings in a row. And you don't get to hang out with the cast that much because you're all in different time schedules.
Shan would often talk about her friend and mentor Michael Landon. He hired her to play Drusilla in the TV show Father Murphy and of course as that iconic Jenny Wilder and Little House on the Prairie and Little House on the Prairie was such a huge hit for NBC. I mean it prompted several TV movies including Little House, Look Back to Yesterday, The Last Farewell, and Bless All the Dear Children.
It was really the experience on Little House that spurred that passion on for being an actor. And it was having a min tour like Michael Landon, and I don't care what anybody else's experience was, Like I know the truth about that man, and he was just unbelievable, so so so talented, so kind, so considerate, shaved me in so many ways, and it still is the best experience of my entire career.
While her television career was thriving. The big screen came a calling, and at age fourteen, Shannon appeared in the rom com Girls Just Want to Have Fun, starring Sarah, Jessica Parker, and Helen Hunt. The film debuted on Shannon's birthday on April twelfth, nineteen eighty five.
I did a couple of takes, and the director wanted me to be more excited and more of a girl that age with a crush. How she would react fantastic note he was right, but I was so confused on how to do that because it was so outside of my own personality, and I was not a girl who had experienced a crush yet. So it was really digging from nowhere essentially to come up with an appropriate reaction
that would make everybody happy with my performance. So I think sarcastically, I jumped up and down and in circles and squealed. If you watch it, you'll note the scene it's at the dance off.
When I watched that years.
And years later, because I don't like watching anything that I am in, but people kept on talking about Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I thought, Hi, I should probably watch it. People really liked it. I cringed when that scene came on. My face turned red. I wondered how I could buy up every DVD. How I could, because that's probably how long ago it was that I watched it. I was accumulated and embarrassed by my performance, and I deeply apologized to the director Chuck that I had that performance.
It was really bad.
From that point on, Shannon remained busy on the sets of several shows and TV movies and all while receiving her education through homeschooling and set teachers. But it was one movie in particular that solidified her place in Hollywood, and that was the iconic nineteen eighty eight teen drama Heathers.
I don't think I was eighteen yet, and my mom was on set with me.
I remember thinking that the.
Other girls were really beautiful and that I was awkward looking, and I had a little bit of insecurity about that. But I really kind of hung out with my mom because, you know, except for Winona, everybody else was older than me at that time.
So it's so interesting because Shan had like such a good girl in her the way she was raised, and it was hard for her to curse like doing Heathers. She had said that it was hard for her to have to say curse words, and she felt that way in real life too, even though she had the rebellious side of her and she could be really fun and silly and curse like with her friends. That was always something that I guess, in a way just stayed with
her and was ingrained in her. And she was very proper in certain ways, I don't want to say conservative, but definitely had really good morals, I would say, and at conventions in the past, that's an iconic line in the movie Heathers is fucked Me gently with a chainsaw, And fans would often come up with posters from Heathers at conventions and other things and want her to write it.
And while she always wanted to please the fans, I know that part of it made her uncomfortable just going back to even putting a curseword like in writing and writing something like that.
So I just thought that was so sweet.
And I just remember in high school, like all my friends and I this is before I even could have dreamt of like working with and being friends with Shan, Like, we would all say like, fuck me gently with a chainsawn. We thought we were so cool. Like she was the coolest heather That's just my personal opinion. In fact, I was so obsessed with the movie Heathers that I remember telling my dad when he had shown me. Originally it
was called Class of Beverly Hills. It was the script, the pilot script for nine o two and zero, and he was looking to cast Brenda and Brandon Walsh, and.
I brought him.
A picture of Shannon and I was like, this is Brenda Walsh.
You have to put her in.
And it was just because I was such a huge fan. I just loved her so much.
I thought she was so great.
And I mean, my dad would always take my word on something. It's not like he would put someone in it just to put them in it. Like obviously he did his due diligence and had her come in to read and everything. But you know, she was it obviously because she was amazing and she was supposed to be Brenda Walsh always. But it's just so interesting that I was like, oh my god, this is the it girl.
I had the privilege of working with Shannon for four seasons on Beverly Hills nine O two and zero, when her beloved character Brenda Walsh became a household name.
I definitely went through a lot of growing pains on that show. There was beautiful moments for me, and there were really hard moments for me. I recall when tensions started happening on the set, and it was always awesome to me that the boys got along so well and it wasn't necessarily the same with the girls. I was pretty exhausted, and I was going through a lot of my own growing up and it just seemed that I was really getting the brunt of why is the show
about Brenda and Brandon? Well, because it's about the Washes. I didn't write the show, but I think I give us more allowance now to forgive ourselves and to forgive others for being friggin' kids.
And it's important to note that when Shannon left nine o two and zero, she was literally at the height of her career and she could have chosen a number of projects at that point, but she definitely was a true trail blazer, and she chose to make the indie movie Mall Rats with a then up and coming director named Kevin Smith.
They were like, you know, there's this movie, but you have to audition. I was like, Okay, let me read it. And then I read it and they're like it's Kevin Smith and he did Clerics, and I'm like, okay, let me watch that.
And I was like, yeah, okay, a audition. It was like the monologue. It was crazy, but I did it. The best dialogue I've ever gotten, to say.
Mal Rats was not a box office success when premiered in nineteen ninety five. In fact, Shannon felt that the indie flick hurt her career in film, but Shannon's loyalty to director Kevin Smith never wavered, and with time, mal Rats ended up becoming a cult classic. Shannon loved playing Renee in the film and hoped to one day reprise her role in a mal Rat sequel. Next, Shannon played the starring role in a movie based on a true story called Gone in the Night.
I felt a deep responsibility to the family to portray their story accurately. There was just a lot of pressure that I felt doing that movie. And it's also one that I'm really, really really proud of. I think it turned out wonderful. The cast was amazing. Yeah, that would go down as a piece of work that I'm extremely proud of.
A few years later, we heard Shannon seeing in a TV movie called Friends Till the End.
After that movie came out, I had a couple of meetings with some amazing record people, and it was something that I discussed. But ultimately, I think I was incredibly insecure about my singing voice, and I was also insecure about how people would receive that from me because there was so much other stuff going on with rumors about me that adding to it. I think I just got I think I got scared. I chickened out of doing anything with singing. I might regret it a little bit, but not too much.
Shannon continued making magic on television when she played prou Halliwell in three seasons of Charm, which is also where she learned to direct.
When I direct something, I do a lot of shot list and I like to have storyboards done, and I usually base the aesthetic the look of it on a particular painting. So for instance, the last episode I directed of Charmed, it was based on a salvad Or Dolly painting. That was the color scheme, the esthetic, the mood, everything else.
And then I just like to be overly prepared because I don't think that people have to work sixteen hours on a TV show a day, So I like to know how I can condense things, how I can put people in two shots, how many cameras can I actually use, still be on budget, hopefully come in under budget, and get people out at a normal hour so that they can go home and have family time.
Shannon worked with her fair share of major leading men, from Mel Gibson to Bruce Willis. She appeared in several films from director James Colin Bressick.
The Bruce Willis movie it was called The Fortress. That also was a really kind of fascinating experience for me, and I just remember this scene with him that was written one way.
It was written.
As I'm a general and I'm an actual bad guy and he's the good guy hero, as Bruce Willis always is. And it was just me sort of saying, you know, this is this is how it works, buddy, essentially, And in that moment of filming it, Bruce and I had
a very different connection. For me as an actor, I can tell you that I've had a couple of really like raw moments, you know, I mean, you hope that all of them come across as like raw, honest moments, but personally very raw, honest moments that are captured on screen, and that was one of them. Those are the moments that I always look back and I'm like, oh man,
that's when I was my best. Is when I'm like the most raw and sort of broken down because there's no there's no wall, there's no pretense, you're not self conscious, you're not any of those things.
You're just like in the moment. And it's something that I strive for as an actor.
And while I have mentioned some of her biggest career accomplishments, Shannon's legacy is so much more than her IMDb page. She was a loving friend and a fierce warrior when it came to standing up for what she believed in. She wasn't afraid of anything or anyone, and yet she had such a kind heart. She was sensitive underneath what she put front as a tough exterior, and her dignity mattered to her more than any career accolade.
Being my own cheerleader has been a tough one for me that I have not mastered. And yeah, you know, you hear stories, and I hear this from a lot of people, or I used to hear it from a lot of people of Oh, I was warned about you, and I was told that you're difficult or you're this, And it's so hard for me to realize that there's a whole like narrative and agenda that's out there about
me that has almost nothing to do with me. As you know, I'm pretty sensitive and I tend to take a lot of things personal, and it hurts me that there's, you know, something out there about me that is not true or isn't one hundred percent of the truth, or there's you know, two sides to every story. There's this, there's that I can't worry about, like the random ten people that are pissed that I'm saying something I've got to worry about, Like am I being honest to me?
She fought constantly for female voices in Hollywood.
We still obviously a very long way to go, because I think that, particularly in my business, I think there's still a lot of like massage, Like I think that how women are treated in this business. And I think I've said it that I don't think that things have changed nearly enough, but.
At least there's some change.
She fought for cancer thrivers around the world. She fought for animal rights with all her passion and soul, and I can't think of a better legacy for such a beautiful person.
I'm familiar with Helen Back a couple of times. I've been through Helen Back.
Now, you know, at the end of the day, people have to learn their own lessons in life, and shit happens in life and it's okay to talk about it, and it's.
Okay to share it.
All I'm really trying to show all of you is who I really am, like who I've always been, and who I am deep down.
Let's be clear, Shannon Doherty deserves recognition for her contributions the board. I just want to wrap up this tribute by saying thank you. Thank you to all of Shannon's listeners. Thank you so much for helping me celebrate her incredible career. We love you, Shanon, and we miss you every single day forever.