Jennie Garth went through a series of emotions during a candid conversation about her Beverly Hills, 90210 character Kelly Taylor’s relationship with Dylan McKay (played by the late Luke Perry) — including drawing a comparison to her own personal life.
“Kelly and I had a lot in common,” the 48-year-old actress admitted on the “Beverly Hills, 90210 Show” podcast on Tuesday, February 16.
While discussing how on and off Kelly’s relationships were with Dylan, Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) and several other love interests over the series’ 10-year run, Garth quipped, “Maybe that’s why I had so many divorces. Bring them together, take ‘em apart. I live for the drama!”
The actress has been married three times. During her time on the ‘90s series, she was married to Daniel B. Clark from 1994 to 1996. In 2001, she married Peter Facinelli, with whom she welcomed three daughters: Luca, 23, Lola, 18, and Fiona, 14. Two years after the pair finalized their divorce in 2013, Garth married Dave Abrams. Us Weekly broke the news in November 2017 that they were taking time apart, but the twosome later reconciled.
Garth was one of the four original stars of Beverly Hills, 90210 to remain on the show for all 10 seasons. (Tori Spelling, Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green also appeared on every season.) During the 2000 series finale, it’s implied that Kelly ends up with Dylan after Perry returned to the show for the final two seasons following his exit in 1995.
“I think they had a really unique and special connection,” Garth said on the “Beverly Hills, 90210 Show” of Kelly and Dylan. “I like to think that they ended up together.”
During the podcast, Garth also got visibly emotional as she discussed Perry, who died of a stroke at the age of 52 in March 2019.
“It’s nice to watch it back. It’s so weird for me to watch [scenes] because I don’t remember. I have, like, some serious traumatic memory loss and I don’t remember doing it and I want to remember so bad,” she said after host Peter Ferriero played a Kelly and Dylan scene from season 3. “Because that looked like it was a great time with him and I wish I could remember it.”
Garth subsequently started crying.
“Even my own children, people that are very close to me, my inner circle, know how much Luke means to me and meant to me,” she said. “I don’t ever like to really talk about [our personal relationship], you know, it’s a very special place inside of me and I don’t like to share it with people. … He was a very important person in my life.”
Garth previously spoke about Perry during an episode of her “9021OMG” podcast with Spelling in November 2020.
“That character you saw a lot of who Luke Perry really was,” Garth said of Perry’s Dylan. “They were very similar in their makeups. With Luke, you loved him the minute you met him, you were just engaged by his charisma, but it wasn’t over the top, it was just like this really calm, easy vibe that he would give off to everyone and I think that Dylan did that too. And that’s why America and the world fell in love with him.”
