Tori Spelling breaks down Hilary Swank’s intensely emotional reaction to being fired from “Beverly Hills 90210” in 1998.
“We were all in the dressing room. Hilary and I were getting pretty close,” Spelling said on Friday’s episode of the 90210MG podcast, adding that her recollection was from her “point of view” and that she was “not going to take literally what[Swank]said” during the encounter.
Ms. Spelling recalled that she, Swank, and Swank’s then-husband Chad Lowe were “hanging out” together at the time.
“I was kind of her safe space on set and she would tell me anything,” Spelling said. “And she said, ‘Paul Wagner wants to talk to me in his office. Do you know what he’s talking about?’
Spelling told Swank he didn’t know what it was about. However, Ms. Spelling waited for the actress to attend the meeting.
“So she goes in, she comes back, and she comes into my dressing room crying,” Spelling recalled, adding that Swank had “just been fired” and declared that she was “going to be fired from the show.”
“I hadn’t heard anything about it, we didn’t know anything about it,” Spelling recalled thinking. “She was crying hysterically.”
Spelling then shared his fears that Swank would end up in the industry, saying, “I’m not going to get this wording right.”
“She was like, ‘Oh my God, if I get fired from 90210, I’ll never be able to make it,'” the “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood” alum said.
Ms. Spelling said Ms. Swank’s despair was “ironic” because she would not have been able to audition for “Boys Don’t Cry” if she had stayed on “90210.” She wouldn’t have gotten that role, played that role, and won an Academy Award. ”
After winning an Oscar for 2000’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” Swank, 51, went above and beyond, winning the coveted Best Actress award in 2005 for “Million Dollar Baby.”
This famous actress joined the series during season 8 as waitress Carly Reynolds. Her character, a single mother who falls in love with Steve Saunders (Ian Ziering), was dropped from the show after just 16 episodes.
Swank previously admitted he was crushed by gunfire. “I was on 90210 in Season 8, and at that point no one was watching it anymore and Luke Perry was long gone, so I got fired from the show at that point,” she told Conan O’Brien in 2014. “And I was devastated.”
She added: “No one watches this show anymore and I feel like I’ve been fired from a show that no one watches.”
Swank revealed that he landed the career-defining role in Boys Don’t Cry just two months later.
“I saw it as a ray of hope,” she said in part. “When something bad happens, it’s a constant reminder that something else might be around the corner.”
