Nicole Eggert left Baywatch after she was promised a role in a spin-off that never materialized.
The actress explained on Monday’s episode of the Still Here Hollywood podcast that while she was starring in the 1980s sitcom Charles in Charge, the show’s executive producer Al Burton was in contact with Baywatch executives.
At the time, they wanted Eggert to lead the spinoff, which was described as “a ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’-style show on the beach.”
“He said, ‘I want Nicole to be in it,’ and David Charvet and the rest of the cast,” she told host Steve Kmetko. “And they wanted to invite us to do a spinoff.”
“It’s going to be something of a ‘coastal high school training to be a lifeguard,’ and it’s going to be its own thing.”
The 54-year-old actress said that when she joined “Baywatch” at the start of Season 3, the syndicated series “became the No. 1 show in the world.”
However, due to the success of the series, plans for a spin-off were also scrapped.
“They were like, ‘A spinoff? Nothing! This is working, we want it to stay that way!'” Eggert recalled.
“So after two seasons, I respectfully bowed out because it really wasn’t what I signed up for,” she explained.
Eggert, who was only 20 years old at the time, admitted that he made a hasty decision in leaving the series.
“I had this crazy idea in my head that if I left the show, I would be freeing myself from the stigma that the show put on all of us as actors, which is now commonplace,” Eggert said.
She added, “But when you’re 20 years old…if you could go back and talk to those 20-year-olds…with crazy ideas.”
Eggert, who is currently recovering from breast cancer treatment, agreed that a canned spinoff was “a great idea” and “would have been a great show.”
“And then we got Elizabeth Berkley,” Eggert said of the “Save by the Bell” actress. “We had a great cast.”
Baywatch aired for 11 seasons from 1989 to 2001 and starred David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson, Gregory Alan Williams, Alexandra Paul, Jeremy Jackson, Parker Stevenson, Billy Warlock, Erika Eleniak, and Yasmin Bless.
The show spawned a spin-off, Baywatch Nights, which aired for two seasons from 1995 to 1997, followed by a movie released in 2017.
Fox’s upcoming Baywatch reboot, starring Stephen Amell, Shay Mitchell, Noah Beck, Brooks Nader and Libby Dunn, is currently filming.
