Baywatch was one of the most successful and long-running TV shows in history, and it became
a franchise, with multiple spinoffs, made-for-TV movies, and even a semi-tongue in cheek feature
film starring the Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Here's the inside story of one of the biggest and most universal phenomena in pop culture.
One of the creators of Baywatch, Greg Bonann, worked as a lifeguard himself patrolling the
beaches of Los Angeles County throughout the '70s and '80s.
One day he mentioned to fellow lifeguard Michael Newman that their job might make for good
TV.
Newman recalled on E!
True Hollywood Story,
"[Greg] goes, 'If that show CHiPs could make it, we could make a show about lifeguarding.'"
Bonann unsuccessfully pitched his show for 10 years.
Then in the late '80s, while still working the beaches, Bonann rescued the children of
Stu Erwin, an executive at TV production company, MTM Enterprises.
Bonann pitched Erwin his series, and while Erwin passed, he helped the lifeguard refine
his story.
"Looks like we've got a few stubborn die-hards out there"
A few lucky connections later, the idea was developed into a show called Baywatch, by
co-writers Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz.
It was then pitched to CBS.
That network said no, but NBC approved a two-hour TV movie which would also serve as a pilot
called Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier.
Airing in 1989, Panic at Malibu Pier ranked among the top 10 most popular shows of the
week, leading NBC to order a Baywatch series set to debut that fall.
But early Baywatch was less a breezy swimsuit spectacle and more of an '80s action drama.
It also wasn't that popular, finishing at Number 60 in the Nielsen ratings, edged out
by My Two Dads and Father Dowling Mysteries.
NBC's Baywatch run ended after a single season.
Cast member Billy Warlock told Esquire,
"We didn't get canceled on NBC because of performance, we just didn't have the money."
"Let us know if you start to lose it, Mitch!"
"Hah.
Watch and learn, grasshopper, watch and learn"
Around that time, European Baywatch distributor Freemantle asked for another season of episodes,
claiming that overseas demand for the show was strong.
Co-creator Douglas Schwartz consulted his uncle, Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island creator
Sherwood Schwartz.
Having had major success syndicating reruns of those shows, Sherwood suggested the Baywatch
team buy back the rights to their show, get a new production company, and enter into the
lucrative syndicated TV market.
"I'll check the schedule"
By late 1991, Baywatch was ready to go all over again.
As an unproven startup, the first few seasons of Baywatch had to do things a lot cheaper
than they had with NBC.
Freemantle offered $300,000 an episode, banking in particular on the show's advertising revenue
potential in Germany, where David Hasselhoff was a huge star for both TV and music.
U.K.-based TV network ITV threw in some money too, provided that Baywatch feature no gun
use and never depict violent acts against women or children.
Still, producers had to cut costs, including star David Hasselhoff's salary.
"Don't put me in the middle of this"
Hoff agreed to a 50 percent reduction in his acting fee in exchange for an executive producer
credit, which made him eligible for a chunk of the profits should the show find lasting
success.
According to Fox Business, Hasselhoff wound up earning about $100 million for his involvement
in Baywatch.
Other, lesser-known stars of the show didn't make much, however, taking home per-episode
paychecks in the $2,500 to $5,000 range.
Obviously Baywatch was popular otherwise it wouldn't have run for more than 200 episodes
over more than a decade, launched the careers of multiple people, and inspired a movie of
the same name.
But what is a little surprising, is how staggeringly popular the show was at the peak of its run.
By the mid-'90s, each episode was viewed by 1.1 billion people on average, across more
than 142 countries, and translated into 15 languages.
With the world population just under 6 billion at the time, that means roughly one in five
people worldwide tuned into Baywatch.
Broken down into male and female viewers, one might assume that the swimsuit-clad audience
was overwhelmingly male.
But according to the L.A. Times, about two-thirds of Baywatch viewers were women.
The reason, according to co-creator Greg Bonann, is that its female characters were…
"Positive role models [who were] athletic, professional, intelligent, and able to make
any rescue a man can make."
"Hey are you ok?
Is something wrong?
Nothing a vacation wouldn't fix"
Baywatch was never a critically acclaimed show, but it was fine with its place in the
TV landscape as a source of eye candy.
A near-constant stream of pretty people in skimpy outfits running on the beach made Baywatch
memorable as a show slight in content but heavy on the visuals.
"Yeah, it's a tough job"
Douglas Schwartz helped shape that aesthetic, both as a co-creator of the series and a director
of 43 episodes and three made-for-TV Baywatch movies all while qualifying as legally blind.
Diagnosed with extreme "tunnel vision," Schwartz told the New York Times,
"My vision is 10 degrees; most people see 180 degrees.
But everything I could see was in-camera."
According to Schwartz, he's the only legally blind person to ever be admitted into the
Directors Guild of America.
Baywatch made stars out of many up-and-coming performers, notably Pamela Anderson as lifeguard
C.J. Parker and a pre-beard, pre-Aquaman Jason Momoa.
But only a handful of actors could be a part of the show at any given time, leaving plenty
of famous and talented people off the beach.
"Oh my God it's Hulk Hogan"
As the story goes, Scream star Neve Campbell auditioned but didn't fit in, while future
A-list star Sandra Bullock canceled a scheduled audition.
Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher was almost cast, according to co-creator Michael
Berk, while '90s pop singer and dancer Paula Abdul nearly replaced original cast member
Erika Eleniak, ultimately losing the role of C.J. Parker to Pamela Anderson.
David Hasselhoff secured the lead role of lifeguard chief Mitch Buchannon, but he almost
passed.
The former Knight Rider leading man read the pilot script, and initially rejected the role,
recalling in his memoir, Don't Hassel the Hoff, that he told his agent it was quote,
"basically Knight Rider in a bathing suit."
"It's basically Michael Knight running down the beach in a bathing suit, with beautiful
women, saving lives in the ocean"
He obviously changed his mind and got the gig, after producers rejected other '80s TV
stalwarts like Tom Wopat, Lorenzo Lamas, and William Katt.
Jeremy Jackson portrayed Hobie Buchannon for nine Baywatch seasons, but he wasn't the producers'
first choice.
He began his stretch at just nine years old, winding up with the role after another, slightly
older actor had almost landed the part: 15-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio.
Michael Berk told The Hollywood Reporter,
"We actually had DiCaprio ready to be cast."
So what happened?
Hasselhoff happened.
Hobie is the son of his Baywatch character, Mitch, and Hasselhoff thought that if a teen
was portraying his son, it would make him seem substantially older than if a child were
to take the part.
Douglas Schwartz added,
"He had a lot of concerns of that type."
But producers ignored Hasselhoff's concerns when, in season two, they brought on Pamela
Anderson best known for her work on Home Improvement and in Playboy.
"Oh my God, Mitch, I'm sorry, I was just so surprised to see you standing there.
Not as surprised as I was"
Hasselhoff objected to Anderson's casting, claiming that Baywatch was a family show,
and no place for a Playboy bunny.
He also thought Anderson could be, well, distracting.
Schwartz said,
"She had these enormous breasts and David thought he would be upstaged by everyone looking
at her breasts.
Which is what happened."
Apart from hot lifeguards in red swimsuits, the most memorable images from Baywatch are
its countless slow-motion shots of heroic lifeguards and women in bikinis running across
the sand to a soft rock soundtrack.
By the time that show went into production in the late '80s, the slo-mo influence of
Chariots of Fire was still being felt.
And apparently, it influenced Greg Bonann, too.
Michael Berk told Esquire,
"Greg had just gotten back from shooting the Olympics, [namely] sprinters in the 100-yard
dash in slow motion."
"Alright, come on, get, let's go, huh, show's over, go back to doing what you were doing"
It was a stylistic choice for sure, but it was also a practical measure and a cost-saving
technique for producers.
Hasselhoff wrote in his book,
"They'd say to the second unit crew: 'We're five minutes short go shoot another montage.
Grab the most beautiful extra […] and shoot her running down the beach in slow motion.'"
"Looks good, though, don't you think?"
Lost isn't the only primarily beach-set show with a huge cast.
Over its 11 seasons and more than 240 episodes, more than 50 actors were a part of the main
cast of Baywatch.
That made for one of the biggest casts in TV history, partially because the show was
in production for so long.
But there were plenty of other reasons for the show's revolving door-like personnel changes.
Douglas Schwartz claimed that sometimes people were cast simply because of their agreeable
appearance, telling Esquire,
"Carmen Electra, Traci Bingham, and Michael Bergin were all examples of that.
They would look good in a swimsuit, they can do the action, they could swim.
They just, as actors, were not strong enough, so we wouldn't give them big storylines."
"Hi.
I'm Kelly Garrett"
The producer claimed Yasmine Bleeth was, quote, "doing drugs at the time," and when it started
influencing her work, Baywatch parted ways with her.
Electra quit because she said the show wasn't a good fit for her.
And Pam Anderson eventually walked away, too, in order to focus on raising her two sons.
Baywatch shot primarily on location on real California beaches with all of their benefits
and risks.
The pilot movie, Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier, filmed in January 1989, when the water
off the coast of Southern California was a chilly, if not dangerous, 49 degrees.
Even worse, according to Hasselhoff, the water was loaded with garbage, feces, and hypodermic
needles.
Production was halted and moved to Hawaii when cast members contracted a stomach virus.
Still, for the first episode, the ocean wasn't as clear and refreshing as it looked on TV.
According to The Hoff, in order to prevent cast members from getting extremely sick from
various toxic elements, he wrote,
"[We] were doused in disinfectant by medics every time we came out of the water."
According to Hasselhoff's autobiography, Baywatch producers saw about 40 hopefuls for the role
of C.J. Parker before eventually hiring Pamela Anderson.
And unbeknownst to producers, she happened to be dating cast member David Charvet at
the time.
"Maybe I should have run into his arms like a romance novel and kiss him in the sand with
the waves crashing over us."
Pam and David eventually split, and Anderson eloped with Motley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee
in '95.
Charvet, meanwhile, left the show in '96, but not before a romantic, onscreen, kiss-filled
goodbye between his character and hers.
That scene filmed on a day when Lee just so happened to be visiting set and he didn't
handle it very well.
Douglas Schwartz told Esquire,
"[Tommy Lee] was so upset that Pamela was kissing David Charvet that he destroyed Pamela's
dressing room kicked in the door, smashed her mirrors and her windows and things like
that.
We had to have security escort him off the set and then he was barred from ever coming
on the set again."
In '96, Lee and Anderson's explicit homemade video leaked to the public.
According to the New York Times, reps for many outlets that aired Baywatch called for
Anderson's removal from the series, and producers worried about losing ad revenue, and of potential
cancellation.
But the opposite happened: In the aftermath of the tape, Baywatch scored its highest ratings
ever.
After nine seasons, Baywatch started getting stale, so in 1999 it rebooted itself as Baywatch
Hawaii, moving both the setting and filming to the beautiful island state.
The move was moderately successful, with producers squeezing two more seasons out of the aging
franchise.
"If I'm lucky, if I'm real lucky, I'll find what I'm lookin' for, I'll find me"
Who knows if it would've lasted even longer had the original plan to make Baywatch Down
Under not fallen apart.
At the time, it was cheaper to film in Australia than California, and production took advantage
of the lower costs, filming a two-part episode in Sydney as a tryout before making a permanent
move.
Local residents strongly objected after members of the production overstepped their bounds,
allegedly escorting a surfer off the beach and forcing out noisy skateboarding teens.
Area citizens also feared that in the future they'd have diminished access to the beach,
and they didn't want to deal with the possibility of looky-loo tourists.
Baywatch producers also demanded $200,000 from the Australian government to offset costs,
arguing that the show would ultimately add $18 million annually to the local economy.
"If you're gonna stay, you better try these.
Ah.
Very nice"
After more than 1,700 residents showed up for a heated public hearing on the matter,
the production backed off on its long-term plans, but only after a contingent from Hawaii
offered a better deal.
Where did that leave Baywatch?
"11 seasons, 245 episodes and um the number one watched show on the planet"
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