As a viewer, my first encounter with Shannen Doherty was on a gentle little NBC drama called Our House.
The series aired 1986 to 1988 and starred Wilford Brimley, who specialized in playing grumpy old coots. In this series he played a grandfather who, after his son dies, takes the rest of his son’s family in under his wing. Soap star Deidre Hall played the widow.
Among the children in the cast was teen actress Doherty. Chad Allen played her brother. I don’t really remember anything about the series, except that Doherty made a strong impression as a very fresh and promising young actress.
Casting agents clearly thought so as well. Doherty, 15 when Our House began, already had the final season of Michael Landon’s Little House on the Prairie among her credits, as well as guest star appearances on Magnum, P.I., Airwolf and Landon’s Highway to Heaven. The exposure led to a showy role on the feature film “Heathers” as well as the series that would make her a tabloid sensation a few years later: Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-2000).
Doherty died Friday, July 13, in Malibu, Calif., after a long illness from cancer. She was 53. Her life was a Hollywood roller coaster, starting with reports of habitual lateness and other unprofessional behaviour on the set of 90210. One of her costars, Jennie Garth, did not have good things to say about Doherty.
Others, however, stood by her in later years. 90210 costar Jason Priestley tweeted that he was “saddened to hear about the passing of my friend Shannen. She was a force of nature and I will miss her.”
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Doherty departed the series in 1994, less than halfway through its ten season run. That series’ powerful and prolific executive producer, Aaron Spelling, nevertheless hired her back for another of his dramas, Charmed, in 1998. Doherty played a witch for the first three seasons, but was soon characterized as a rhymes-with-witch amid reports of friction between her and costar Alyssa Milano. Once again, Doherty made an early departure off a long-running series.
By this point Doherty was helping to sell a lot of tabloid newspapers. A couple of short-lived marriages were played out for readers. Doherty even had bad luck with houses; one burned down.
The bad girl rep eventually became a career liability. In 2005, she was cast in the pilot for a UPN network sitcom developed especially for her: Love, Inc. When the show was tested, however, audiences had a negative reaction to Doherty. Despite having promoted the series at the upfront and the initial press tours, she was replaced by another actress, Busy Phillips. (The series bombed anyway.)
Health problems became a growing concern for the Memphis-born Doherty. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 1999. In 2015, breast cancer was detected. Knocked into remission, it re-emerged a few years later, more aggressive than ever, resulting in a Stage 4 diagnosis. Doherty went public with her fight, raising awareness for the importance of early breast cancer examinations. Eventually, however, she lost her battle with the disease.
At a certain point Doherty’s career options became very limited. By 2006, she was down to playing herself as a celebrity relationship-ender on the Oxygen network series Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty. There was a Television Critics Association press tour session to promote the series. I spoke with her after the formal press conference, and was struck, face-to-face, by the toll her career, health battles and personal misadventures had taken on her face. Just 45 at the time, she looked all of it and more.
I admired, however, that she was there, on her own two feet, taking her swings in a room full of people who were not always very kind to her. During the session she was pointedly asked what made her some sort of relationship expert.
“You learn through life’s experience, which is sometimes almost better than a degree to be honest,” she said, acknowledging her own rocky relationship history.
A follow up question about whether she even cared about what others thought of her at this point cut a little deeper.
“I’ve answered this question so many different times,” she began.
“The only thing I can do in my life is be myself and live it the way that I want to live it, whether people accept it or not. Do I think that there’s a big misconception about myself out there? One hundred percent. Did I participate in that in the beginning? Yes, I did. Did I play into it? Unfortunately, yes. I will take responsibility for that. Was I 18 years when most people are just graduating high school, going into college and going to frat parties and hanging out and having fun? Yeah, I was kind of doing the exact same thing. It’s just that I was under a microscope and on TV, and I didn’t realize what it was going to cause. I didn’t realize what it was going to do. Do I regret what I did when I was younger? 50 percent of it I regret; the other 50 percent, no, because I am who I am today because if it. I learned so much.”
Doherty was then asked whether Hollywood was a town that forgives or “whether these things just linger and go on and on.” Did she have to fight hard to alter that perception?
“I can’t fight what people think about me. I can’t,” she answered. Then she got honest in a way not usually heard at press tour.
“You know, I tried it. I tried it with all of you in this room; I’ve tried it with everybody out there. I’ve tried. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve tried desperately to be given a second chance with the media, and it has not been given to me. And at this point, I sort of have to walk away and go, you know what, I’ve got to live my life and I’ve got to do what makes me happy. And if people don’t want to let go of stuff that happened 10 years ago, then that’s their thing. It can’t be mine.”
Let’s leave the last word to Priestley at the end of his tweet: “Sending love and light to her family in this dark time.”
