"To be a bitch or not to be a bitch?"

Shannen Doherty's second act explored a life defined by contradictions

It started with some TNT re-runs.

At some point in the mid-aughts, the WB’s block of supernatural TV shows started airing re-runs on TNT, a cable network that at that point I mostly used to watch the same parts of Jurassic Park or The Fugitive over and over again, never able to finish the movie before dinnertime or bedtime.

My parents, who were always pretty hip when it came to the TV they watched (and the TV they let me, their middle schooler, watch along with them), started getting into re-runs of Angel, the David Boreanaz-led spinoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy’s syndication rights were on another network, so I began the strange journey of navigating online fandom for the Buffyverse without any knowledge of the titular slayer, but that’s another story for another day.

The show that was paired with Angel on TNT was Charmed, an unrelated but adjacent urban fantasy about three sisters who are also witches. I would sometimes watch Charmed because witches are cool and I didn’t yet have my Buffy fix for witches. The episodes I watched were from Season 4 or later, because Rose McGowan was on the show. I didn’t know then that McGowan had been brought on to replace actress Shannen Doherty, nor did I know that this was the second television show that Doherty was forced to leave at the height of its popularity, permanently branding her with the most ignominious label for an actress - Difficult.

Just a few years later, Shannen Doherty was suddenly everywhere in my life, thanks to the advent of Netflix. I’m talking about the Golden Age of Netflix, of course - the days of red DVD mailers. I never fully got into Charmed the way I did with Buffy and Angel, but I tried to by renting the first season. I immediately related to Shannen’s character, Prue Halliwell, who like me was the oldest of three sisters. I went through a Kevin Smith phase, and thought Shannen was great opposite my new crush Jason Lee in Mallrats. I heard that Heathers was the cooler, edgier parent of Mean Girls, and was taken by everyone in that movie, but especially actual teenager Doherty, whose character Heather Duke has the most interesting arc.

And then of course, there’s Brenda Walsh.

Going back to Angel for a minute, my mom and I both adored the character Doyle, played by the late Glenn Quinn. My mom knew him from Roseanne, but had no idea he was Irish in real life until seeing him use his real accent in Angel. She then went on a quest to watch his full, all-too-brief filmography. This included, according to IMDB, an appearance in the pilot episode of Fox’s mega-hit teen soap opera Beverly Hills 90210. My mom decided to buy Season 1 on DVD, I assume out of some fondness for the show when it originally aired.

Glenn Quinn, regrettably, is not even clearly visible in the final cut of the pilot, so that was a wash. But I, proud enjoyer of The O.C., a show clearly indebted to 90210, was hooked on this gaggle of teens played by pushing-thirty actors.¹

Shannen Doherty played Brenda Walsh, one half of the fraternal Walsh twins (the other half was the insufferable Brandon, played by Jason Priestley), Minnesota natives who are newcomers to the glamorous Los Angeles suburb of Beverly Hills. Season 1 largely revolves around Brenda and Brandon adjusting to their new environment, while also trying to inject some Midwestern authenticity into their friendships with the rich kids who are used to shallow, transactional relationships.

In the 13th episode of Season 1, “Slumber Party”, Brenda invites the other female characters, plus guest star Michele Abrams, over for a girls night. The character played by Abrams, Amanda, is a friend of Kelly (Jennie Garth), who viciously mocks the other girls for choosing to sit in their pajamas eating snacks instead of going to a frat party. Eventually, Amanda starts turning the girls against each other by asking probing questions about their personal lives. Throughout the episode, Brenda has mostly kept the peace, occasionally delivering a passive aggressive one-liner. But when Amanda delivers one put-down too many, Brenda whirls around and says, “Why don’t you just shut up?” with such force that I was startled.²

Brenda very clearly about to call Amanda a bitch here

I remember that I laughed. My first instinct was to make fun of Doherty’s delivery. It seemed so sudden and over the top, especially compared to the performances surrounding her. But even if I thought it was bad, there was no denying that it was compelling.

Shannen Doherty died on July 13, 2024, after a long battle with breast cancer. In one of the many tributes written after her death, Kate Arthur of Variety had this to say about Doherty’s unique qualities as an actor:

And then her line delivery, with her forceful, at times awkward cadence, made viewers lean in to listen. Doherty frequently looked pissed; it was easy to think that perhaps she was pissed. (link here)

In hindsight, I think my laughter during “Slumber Party” stemmed from nervous confusion. I wasn’t used to seeing a female protagonist so unapologetically…well, pissed. If a female character raised their voice like that in another show, they would be in the wrong, or they would be going crazy. But Brenda, and Doherty in real life, took no shit and didn’t care if people saw.³

Being a force of nature didn’t work out so well for Brenda or Doherty. As Linda Holmes of NPR so beautifully put it:

The line between a firecracker and an arsonist can be razor-thin in the public imagination. (link here)

Doherty’s reputation as a Difficult Woman was forged by little fires everywhere - feuds with fellow cast members, habitual lateness, talking back to producers, having the maturity and decision-making skills of someone who was under 21. Doherty was fired from 90210 after Season 4, and Brenda was written off. Years later, when she is similarly ousted from Charmed, her legacy is cemented - despite the fact that Doherty was no longer partying all night and being late to set, or that she was respected enough to direct several episodes of Charmed.

Behind the scenes of Charmed

In December 2023, Doherty started a podcast called Let’s Be Clear. The description of the first episode reads:

Forget what you've heard, what you've read, what you think you know about Shannen Doherty. This is her story and she's ready to tell it all. From her career, to her relationships, to her brave battle with cancer...Shannen is embracing her future by reflecting on her past.

In the episode, Doherty sets up the podcast as an alternative to writing her own memoir, positing that the real-time feedback of a podcast felt more rewarding than the more removed action of publishing a book. In hindsight, I grimly wonder if it had more to do the fact that books take time, time she didn’t necessarily have. But there was also a logic to a woman, famous for speaking her mind in the moment, using a medium like podcasting to finally take control of the narrative.

As I listened to Let’s Be Clear, Doherty emerged as someone whose entire persona was a patchwork of contradictions. Though she was a child actor raised somewhat on film sets in Los Angeles, she was equally defined by the first ten years of her life in Tennessee, raised as a devout Christian with conservative values. Despite being raised in a faith and environment that would seemingly encourage traditional gender roles, Doherty has never conformed to those⁴, and in fact, made calling out misogyny in the workplace part of her brand from at least the 90210 days. As the Roger Ailes/FOX News sexual harassment cases prove, Republican women aren’t immune to standing up for themselves in a sexist environment, but Doherty stuck out to me as someone who deeply understood the systemic nature of misogyny - something usually lacking in conservative analysis.

Yet, Doherty was a Republican⁵, though I imagine she was one of the genuine Republican NeverTrumpers. Speaking of systemic issues, her experience with cancer and the instability of health insurance in this country⁶ seems like it should have radicalized her; at the very least, I think it pushed her slightly to the left of the rest of her party. But one the last things she said on her podcast was that Dave Chappelle was her favorite comedian and that he was one of the bravest people out there for taking cancel culture to task. Doherty’s conservative streak is the hardest square for me to circle, as I feel compelled to eulogize her.

Shannen Doherty on the cover of TV Guide promoting the 1994 TV movie A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story

No matter how much a person may have sucked at times, or championed bad systems - though I have reason to believe Doherty did both less than most - as a cis woman of a certain age living in the world, breast cancer is painfully, palpably real. It’s something I have to think about both as something I may get, but more likely as something someone I love will get. Hell, people I love already have had it. Mourning Shannen Doherty isn’t just mourning a celebrity I never met - she is a synecdoche of everyone with breast cancer.

To end this, I want to share two video clips. Shannen Doherty befriended Sarah Michelle Gellar when Charmed and Buffy were both airing on the WB. Gellar never had Doherty’s bad girl reputation, but she was also a woman branded as Difficult because she showed up to set, hit all her marks, and then went home. She wasn’t interested in befriending her co-workers, and she stood up for herself and the crew when the hours got too long.⁷ This is an interview the two of them did during late 2020, which foreshadows a lot of what Doherty will talk about on her podcast:

It’s no secret to anyone reading this that my favorite TV show is Riverdale. When Luke Perry passed away unexpectedly during the filming of Season 3, the Riverdale writers penned a tribute episode for Perry’s character, Fred Andrews, to open Season 4. Fred, who is the kindest heart in all of Riverdale, died as he lived: being a Good Samaritan, helping someone with their car on the side of the road. They brought in Doherty to play the stranded motorist.⁸ She was the exact right 90210 cast member for the job.

In many ways, Shannen Doherty was a bitch. In many ways, Shannen Doherty was not a bitch. She was pissed, but she was also funny, vulnerable, and deeply devoted to demystifying the cancer experience, to shouting about it as loudly as she once shouted to tell Amanda the mean girl to shut up. She wasn’t perfect, but damn if she wasn’t compelling. I’ll miss her voice, but at least we have her body of work, including Let’s Be Clear, to revisit when the time is right.

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1. It should be noted, Shannen Doherty was among the younger cast members - only 19 when the show debuted.

2. You can find this moment on a shitty DailyMotion rip, timestamp 40:11.

3. I didn’t really have a good place to slot in this quote from Slate’s tribute to Doherty, but I love this description of Brenda Walsh: “Maybe that’s what people didn’t like about Brenda…the way she was always looking around her, doing the relentless doggy paddle that is adolescence, but so you could hear the shaggy breaths.” (link here)

4. Never had kids, was a working woman her entire life

5. Even in this clip, where she proudly talks about being a Republican, she manages to sneak in a light male-gazey critique of Mallrats - the woman confounds me!

6. Read more about that here.

7. In fact, Gellar and Doherty’s friendship is why I have to believe that Doherty’s time of being late to set and rude to crew was isolated to a specific period of time on 90210 - Gellar is famously professional and respectful and Does Not Like actors who aren’t.

8. In classic candid fashion, in this clip Doherty shared that Perry had been trying to get her a guest spot on Riverdale for a while, but the producers kept saying no.