The enduring legacy of Shannen Doherty's Brenda Walsh On '90210' was teaching women that it was perfectly okay to be mad (2024)

For those of us who grew up in the monoculture era, it’s easy to point to the TV teen drama that imprinted on us when we were most susceptible to it and know we share that with most of our generation. People who were just a little older than I am might identify The White Shadow or Fame. Just a little younger and their touchstone might be Dawson’s Creek or Gilmore Girls. For me, it was Beverly Hills, 90210.

One of the earliest hits of the ascendant Fox network, 90210 set a new standard for aspirational television, revolving as it did around the rich and gorgeous teens who resided in the titular zip code. But, in the series premiere, a humble brown hatchback rolls into the West Beverly High parking lot to take its place among the Beamers and Corvettes: this ride belongs to Brandon Walsh, a recent transplant from Minneapolis enrolling at West Bev with his twin sister, Brenda. As the Walsh siblings went through culture shock acclimating themselves to their new city, 90210 made superstars out of every member of its young cast. Only a few achieved icon status. One of those was Shannen Doherty, who died on July 13, 2024 at the age of 53.

At first, Doherty’s Brenda is as unassuming as that hatchback. A brunette among California blondes, Brenda’s peach baby doll dress is a dorkily Midwestern choice for a chic party at a classmate’s mansion. Brenda’s fast friendship with Kelly (Jennie Garth) is frequently interrupted by spats stemming from Brenda’s envy of Kelly’s confidence and style. But much as Brandon’s car magically transforms, after the pilot, from a hatchback to a boat-length ’70s sedan, Brenda changes from gawky normie to teen queen. She starts dating Dylan (Luke Perry), indisputably the coolest boy in school. She develops an interest in acting, which she satisfies by preparing a storytelling set for one of those “performance-oriented coffee houses” and creating a sassy waitress character to play at her friends’ go-to diner hangout. She experiences health crises — a pregnancy scare (just stress) and a lump in her breast (benign) — and, having confronted potentially life-changing events, comes through just a little more mature than her peers.

As the series goes on, the most important change Brenda undergoes is becoming its angriest character. Brenda will lose it at the slightest provocation — smacking the sh*t out of Andrea (Gabrielle Carteris) in a drama-class scene when Brenda gets jealous of Andrea’s special/creepy friendship with their teacher; slu*t-shaming new transfer Emily Valentine (Christine Elise) on basically no evidence; bitching out Kelly when she assumes Kelly’s going to break Brenda’s paralyzed cousin’s heart. Though adult women’s rage drove plots in both daytime and primetime soap operas — a category 90210 definitely drifted into after its first season — pop culture of the era tended to portray teen girls as dimbulbs or doormats. Brenda’s most important legacy may be teaching me, and all her (especially female) fans, that it was okay to be mad.

Since starting her acting career at 10, Doherty had worked steadily, as a series regular on Little House On The Prairie and Our House, and in movies like Girls Just Want To Have Fun and Heathers. But 90210 rocketed her into a previously unimaginable echelon of fame such that her public partying and scandalous breakups made national news; magazine covers featuring her smoldering with Perry and Priestley gave way to covers about her image problem.

So after 90210‘s fourth season — in which she abandoned enrollment at the University of Minnesota because she couldn’t get along with her roommate, threw her fiancé’s engagement ring in a swimming pool, and sparked casting couch rumors after landing the lead in California University’s production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof — it wasn’t a huge shock when Doherty got fired. But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that stories about why women’s careers in show business didn’t go the way we may have hoped for them might be more complicated than we can ever know. Some child actors may always bear scars from growing up in the industry. Some people who turn into punchlines for being “difficult” may have asserted themselves the only way they knew how. Some people who are angry have good reason.

Doherty definitely had good reason to be angry about her cancer diagnosis: she alleged that her management company had let her health insurance lapse, leaving her uninsured in 2014, when early intervention could have potentially precluded the need for her to undergo a mastectomy or chemotherapy. After going into remission in 2017, she announced in 2020 that she had a recurrence of her breast cancer. In the summer of 2023, she shared on Instagram that it had spread to her brain; in November of that year, it spread to her bones. In the middle of her battle, Doherty used her platform to call out SAG-AFTRA leadership about basing health insurance coverage on income, since members like Doherty have a harder time working when they’re extremely ill.

Doherty never lost her passion for her work, though: even while being treated for the cancer that had spread to her bones, she launched a podcast, Let’s Be Clear, and told People, “I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better….I’m just not — I’m not done.”

That cancer ultimately took the life of Doherty on Saturday, July 13, 2024, one of the wildest and most chaotic days in recent American history (Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Richard Simmons both died yesterday, and gunfire rang out at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania in what appears at this time to be an assassination attempt). In a statement to provided to People on the morning on Sunday, July 14, Doherty’s longtime publicist Leslie Sloane wrote:

“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease. The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace,” Sloane continued.

In the first episode of Let’s Be Clear, Doherty addressed her infamous reputation as a wild child: “Growing up on TV in the 90s as a woman was very different than it is currently, and I like to say that some of us sort of paved the way….I didn’t placate the men in my business, and I certainly didn’t placate my bosses. I fought them.”

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, andPreviously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines inThe New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others.She co-hosts the podcastsExtra Hot Great,Again With This(a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown ofBeverly Hills, 90210andMelrose Place),Listen To Sassy, andThe Sweet Smell Of Succession.She’s alsothe co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, ofA Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code(Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.