BH90210's Shannen Doherty Says Luke Perry's Death Made Her Join Reboot

BH90210 — premiering tonight on Fox — almost became a thing without the inclusion of Shannen Doherty, the star has revealed.

At the Television Critics Association summer press tour today, the actress admitted that the turning point for her was when her on-screen love interest, Luke Perry, died earlier this year.

“So with me, it was, as these guys know, I definitely wasn’t going to do it,” Doherty told reporters while sitting next to her co-stars at the event.

“And nothing against the show, I knew that the show would, you know, get sold and do well with or without me. But they didn’t need me, so it just wasn’t at that moment what I wanted to be doing.”

Perry passed away in March after suffering a stroke.

“And when Luke passed away, things drastically changed for me and I felt like it was a great opportunity to sort of honor him,” Doherty continued of her decision to sign on the dotted.

“And I’m really glad that I made that decision because now I get to sit up here with a lot of people that I respect and I love and we went on this amazing journey together where we also got to really sort of heal through losing somebody who means the world to all of us.”

Before Perry’s passing, there were reports that he could appear in the series an the cast talked about that during TCA.

“We had had conversations with him about it, yes, and he was fully in support of it,” co-star Jennie Garth said, while noting that his series regular status on Riverdale meant he would not be able to join the cast full-time.

But “we talked about him actually guesting on the show,” Gabrielle Carteris added. “He had been a part of some of the conversations we actually had as a group when we were at the studio.”

BH90210 is a different kind of reboot. Instead of picking up years after the events of the 1990-2000 series, this new iteration will instead focus on the cast members playing heightened versions of themselves.

Their goal? Get a reboot off the ground!

“Having gone their separate ways since the original series ended 19 years ago, Jason, Jennie, Ian, Gabrielle, Brian and Tori reunite when one of them suggests it’s time to get a Beverly Hills, 90210 reboot up and running,” reads the official logline.