Shannen Doherty‘s death hit everyone hard. Not only was she beloved by fans and friends alike, she was also so damn young — just 53 when she passed.
But one person it hit harder than most? Jennie Garth!
The Beverly Hills, 90210 co-stars weren’t the best of friends. In fact, for many years they had a rather bitter, if inert, feud going. Thankfully they mostly patched things up towards the end, with Shannen saying earlier this year that they’re “all good now.” (Though not good enough to drop the ban from Jennie going to her funeral, apparently!)
Related: Holly Marie Combs Says Shannen ‘Promised To Haunt’ Her Before Death
The issue wasn’t that Shannen was Jennie’s BFF. It was the fact she was her colleague. Her contemporary. Hell, they’re almost exactly the same age! So her passing scared the hell out of Jennie! And she wasn’t even the first of their crew to die. Luke Perry died after a stroke at 52, just five years back. Jennie is 52 now.
Speaking candidly on her 9021OMG podcast with pal and fellow Beverly Hills alum Tori Spelling, Jennie admitted:
“It made me feel very fearful, especially just with Luke dying and now Shannen. I just feel like, I don’t know, it could be any of us [that] could go at any moment. That kind of feeling … yeah, that’s scary.”
Sounds like she was chilled to the bone! Not an unreasonable reaction — we’re sure most folks even in their 30s have had someone their age — a friend, a family member, someone they went to school with — pass away. It always feels like someone walked on your grave, right?
Well, it turns out Tori isn’t as spookable as her co-host. She expressed:
“I didn’t feel fear at all when she passed. I just felt sad. I felt sad for the second chapter she had, and I was so excited for that chapter for her and wanted her so badly to have that.”
Makes perfect sense, of course. But no new fears about her own mortality??
Well, not really. Tori explained she’s “always been a fearful person” in general — and about death in specific, we guess? So more death didn’t change that. Wow.
But Shannen’s death hit Jennie hard, especially how sudden it felt, just like Luke’s — even though she should have been braced for it after the lengthy and difficult cancer battle. Shannen was first diagnosed with cancer in 2015, then went into remission in 2017 before it returned in 2020. Frankly, Jennie admits she “never thought she would succumb to cancer” after fighting it off so long:
“It’s crazy that we could be shocked knowing that she was sick and knowing how hard she was fighting, but it still felt shocking.”
She added:
“It was just shocking and makes you pissed, mad, sad, all the feelings because and then [you’re] like, ‘What the f**k?’ Because she’s the one person that you didn’t see this happening [to].”
It’s clear Jennie saw Shannen as someone far tougher than she ever was. She described how she actually really admired her late co-star:
“I learned a lot, you know, about how to stand up for myself, how to fight for things that I believed in. I also saw that she was saying what she needed to say, and I thought, ‘I want to be like that. I want to be a person that uses my voice and says what I need to say.’ So she did inspire me.”
As for how they’ll handle Shannen’s passing with things like 90210 podcasts and fan conventions? Jennie says she hopes everyone will keep coming together for the fans and one another:
“I know that it made us feel better to be together after Luke passed away. There was some comfort in that.”
Tori told Jennie of their group of friends:
“I can’t imagine this lifetime not getting to know all of you and not going through that experience that, as we say, Jen, no one can understand. And I’m OK with that because I wouldn’t have wanted to share it with anyone else besides all of you.”
Awww!
[Image via FayesVision/MEGA/WENN.]
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