We still can’t believe Luke Perry is gone.
And near as we can tell, the shock is still settling in with his Beverly Hills 90210 costars, who became quite close over the years — few more so than Jason Priestley, as evidenced by an interview about the show from back 2013.
Related: Riverdale and 90210 Costars React To Luke’s Passing
Thus far Jason has not commented apart from sending out a thank you to an ET Canada reporter who posted about his “teenage dream” interview:
Here is that interview in full, an adorable six+ minutes with Luke and Jason, aka Dylan McKay and Brandon Walsh, looking back on the wildest moments of their young careers:
Perhaps the most Luke Perry moment happens about the 4:50 mark, when Roz Weston asks about the height of their fame — and how dangerous it got! Weston brings up an incident he shared in common with young Justin Bieber, having to be hid from screaming fans in a laundry basket and spirited out of a crowded place to avoid fans literally rioting.
When Jason turns and asks Luke what it feels like to know he was “the Justin Bieber of 1991,” the man just gives his best deadpan, smoky-voiced, cool as a cucumber Dylan voice:
“Real good.”
Ha!
Luke then confirms the story in more detail, recalling:
“My car’s over there. There’s 20,000 people between me and it. The best way for me to get there now, Missy, is to jump in this thing, you pile that stuff on top of me, and let’s just go.
I never intended… There just happened to be a bin there. I jumped in it, threw the stuff on, she just started pushing.”
Jason points out this was at a time when PR people would intentionally put them in these situations for publicity:
“That was back in the days when they would ask us to go to shopping malls and make appearances.”
Luke remembers:
“They stopped doing it after that.”
As Brandon laments:
“After that happened, shopping malls were off limits for all of us FOR YEARS. I didn’t step foot inside a shopping mall, because that’s where teenage girls would congregate and hang out.”
As for Luke’s relationship with fame? When Roz asks if he “hates” being famous, he says, in his perpetually humble, down-to-earth way:
“I try not to give it that kind of power, that kind of energy. I think I’ve come to terms. It exists, it’s on the table, I know. But I just don’t wake up thinking about it.”
We don’t get stars like this much anymore.
Thank you to both Roz and Jason for sharing the memory.
[Image via ET Canada/YouTube.]