Most of the original cast of Saved by the Bell have gone on to do other notable Hollywood
projects, but what happened to Elizabeth Berkley after Bayside High? Let's grab a milkshake at The
Max and discuss why Hollywood won't cast the actress anymore... and why that might change.
We're going to go ahead and get this one out of the way because you already know it. Showgirls.
The movie has done star Elizabeth Berkley absolutely zero favors since it's release in 1995.
"It's worse than dog food."
During a 2015 Rolling Stone retrospective on the film's 20th anniversary, director
Paul Verhoeven said Berkley was cast for being the only actress they auditioned who
could dance but was also, quote, "willing to show full-frontal throughout the film."
Verhoeven had never seen Saved by the Bell prior
to casting Berkley and admits that he should have, saying:
"It's probably true that casting her in a part so different from how American
audiences knew her affected the box office. But I didn't know that series,
and I had no idea what kind of character she played in it."
Nobody really wanted to see Jessie Spano as a stripper. Combine that with an NC-17 rating,
and those of you who may have wanted to see it weren't old enough to get in.
When all the receipts poured in, Showgirls made $37 million off an estimated $40 million budget.
The film has become one of those "it's so bad it's good" cult classics over the years, and
it even has a documentary, You Don't Know Nomi. The doc's director Jeffrey McHale told Forbes:
"Showgirls succeeds because of the unique nature of its failures, that's what makes it so special."
"That's why we're still talking about it, because we haven't quite figured it out yet."
Although critics hated her performance, everyone involved in creating Showgirls
says Berkley wasn't the problem. Director Verhoeven told the Los Angeles Times:
"If somebody is to blame it's [screenwriter] Joe [Eszterhas] or me. I think she did
exactly what we wanted and what we thought would be good. And apparently, we failed."
He added that Berkley's performance was so good
that the public couldn't separate her from Nomi Malone, saying:
"Her performance that everybody is so against is based on a character. The hate towards her
character—an edgy, nearly psychotic character—is actually a compliment to her performance."
Eszterhas concurred, saying:
"It would be unfair to write Elizabeth off in terms of this picture. I think
people should be a little more compassionate."
For her troubles? Two Razzies for Worst Actress and Worst New Star
and a measly $100,000 salary for the role.
In the words of Jessie Spano, Hollywood is full of sexist pigs.
"I'd like to present them with the double swine award."
The world never really seemed to get over the fact that Berkley stripped down for Showgirls,
because this was back in the early '90s when a sex tape could crumble, not create, an empire. As the
star of the film, Berkley bore the brunt of the consequences; not the male screenwriter, director,
or producers, even though they admitted that the film's failures were mostly their own doing.
As Paul Verhoeven explained to the Los Angeles Times:
"I never thought this continuous bashing of the movie and of Elizabeth would happen.
We're sitting with these ruins in front of us. I realized [...] that there would
be backlash and anger, but I never thought the movie wouldn't do well.
So I never accounted that she would be put in such a bad position and I feel terrible about it."
Berkley addressed the backlash she and the film faced during an outdoor screening of
Showgirls at Cinespia's Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2015, saying:
"1995 was such a different time, where taking risks like that were
not embraced. They were laughed at. They were shamed publicly. To be a
young girl in the center of that was something that was quite difficult."
Since the big screen didn't exactly pan out for Berkley, she channeled her performance skills
through a different medium: the stage. In 1999, Berkley co-starred with comedian Eddie Izzard in
a London production of Lenny, a biographical play about controversial comic Lenny Bruce.
Critics delivered mixed reviews on the play overall, but the Independent
praised Berkley's performance as Bruce's stripper-wife Rusty as, quote, "impressive."
Though the production was only a limited engagement for a few months,
the demands of a stage schedule, from actual productions to previews to rehearsals,
was enough to likely have prevented Berkley from working elsewhere, especially in Hollywood.
During Berkley's 2005 run in the revival of Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox on Broadway,
the actress actually called then-Variety chief theater critic Charles Isherwood to
get off her back… but it wasn't for his bad review. In reference to an appearance Berkley
had made at an awards ceremony, Isherwood identified her as the star of Showgirls. The
actress had had enough. Isherwood described the call for The New York Times, saying:
"Ms. Berkley explained that subsequent to that cinematic debacle,
she had been rehabilitating her career by pursuing work with respected and talented
artists. [...] She was not merely Elizabeth Berkley, star of a scandalously bad movie."
"Thank you."
While Isherwood noted that, quote, "bad movies happen to good actors all
the time," he explained that, unlike more established actors, Berkley didn't have a,
quote, "[reputation] to fall back on," but said:
"Ms. Berkley's desire to live down her past mistakes, rather than dine out on them,
seems admirable -- noble even -- in an age when celebrity [...] is
probably a more marketable commodity than talent."
Two years after Titanic dropped, Berkley's then-boyfriend sued Leonardo DiCaprio for
$45 million. The New York Daily News reports that in 1998, Berkley dated actor and musician Roger
Wilson, who claimed that DiCaprio ordered his entourage to physically attack him
in a Manhattan hotel parking lot. Wilson alleges that DiCaprio knew Berkley was his girlfriend
but kept asking her over for dinner anyway, so he confronted him. According to his lawsuit,
Wilson was then "surrounded by at least eight men as DiCaprio looked on."
The lawsuit claims Wilson was "blindsided" by the attack and "suffered a broken larynx and
other injuries." DiCaprio denied the attack and was eventually vindicated in court,
but that took a while. The lawsuit was dismissed six years later in 2004.
Paul Callan, the Inception star's attorney, said:
"For Leonardo DiCaprio, it was an entirely frivolous lawsuit.
He was named because he is a prominent celebrity."
DiCaprio's publicist hoped the lawsuit's dismissal would discourage
others from attempting to, quote, "[make] money on false claims."
But by the time the lawsuit was dismissed, Berkley had long moved on from Wilson
and was married to fashion designer Ralph Lauren's nephew,
Greg Lauren. Did having her name attached to a lawsuit against a megastar close a
lot of Hollywood doors for Berkley? We'll never know, but we're sure it didn't help.
"I know what I'm doing with my life. I got a plan."
Berkley has kept relatively busy with television roles for almost 20 years,
thanks to brief stints on NYPD Blue, The L Word and CSI: Miami, as well as single-episode guest
spots on shows like New Girl, Melissa & Joey, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, among others.
She also starred in numerous TV movies, including 2008's Black Widow, 2011's Lucky Christmas,
and the 2003 Lifetime classic Student Seduction. The problem is that none of these were starring
roles on long-running series or theatrical movie releases. So, if viewers missed an
episode or two of any of these shows, or just weren't home for a TV movie airing, she wouldn't
have made a mark in their consciousness, even if her performances were fantastic.
Berkley's roles on the big screen have been similarly small. Although she's had
parts in movies like Roger Dodger, Any Given Sunday, and The First Wives Club,
she really wasn't given too much opportunity to make that big of an impression on audiences.
These projects, while absolutely respectable for any working actress, unfortunately failed
to get Berkley the buzz she may have needed to get a blockbuster shot anytime soon.
What's old is always new again. That's especially true in Hollywood,
where they will eventually reboot everything that's ever been made at some point. In 2020,
it was Save by the Bell's turn. The series reboot hit NBC's streaming service, Peacock, in November
of that year. Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley returned as A.C. Slater and Jessie Spano, baby!
"If someone had told me then
that I would see him this many years later, back as that character, I wouldn't have believed it."
But they aren't the only original cast members coming back. Per The Hollywood Reporter:
"The single-camera comedy that explores what happens when California Gov. Zack Morris
[...] gets into hot water for closing too many low-income high schools and proposes the affected
students be sent to the highest-performing schools in the state — including Bayside High."
Time out. You know what? Never mind. Berkley took to Instagram with the message:
"I'M SO EXCITED.... here we gooooo!!! @mariolopez.... are you ready for grownup
Jessie?! Jessie and Slater are back for more fun. We are thrilled to have
Emmy winning 30Rock writer @TraceyWigfield bring the sequel to life on NBC/Universal."
"Are those caffeine pills? At first, they're so exciting. And then,
it gets even more exciting. And after that, it gets so scary."
Here's hoping Berkley can flex her acting chops to Hollywood casting directors everywhere.
Elizabeth Berkley will always be associated with Showgirls. And you know what? We think that's
awesome. How bad can it be if Quentin Tarantino loves it? The legendary director once said:
"The thing that's great about Showgirls, and I mean great with a capital great,
is that only one other time in the last 20 years has a major studio made a full-on,
gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie."
On the 25th anniversary of its release, the so-called "masterpiece of s---" got
the documentary treatment with 2020's You Don't Nomi. Jeffrey McHale told Los Angeles Magazine:
"The following, and the cult and queer fandom that it has, basically allowed space for it to
be revisited and reevaluated. People are tuning in and checking it out again. Maybe back in the day,
it was harder to digest the satire that I think Verhoeven was aiming to achieve, but people can
step away and look at it a little more objectively now. [...] I don't think we're done with it."
In a 2001 interview with TV Guide, Berkley described Showgirls as, quote, "kind of like
an ex-love that I don't even think about often anymore." But if your very first feature film
goes on to become a cult classic, do you really have anything to be ashamed of? We think not.
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