Jason Priestly It’s been almost a decade since Brandon Walsh made his way into our living rooms each Wednesday night through our TV screens. And it’s been almost two decades since Jason Priestley became a household name. Numerous movies, TV dramas, sitcoms, voice-over and directing projects later, Jason is back on the small screen co-starring in Lifetime Television’s Side Order of Life, Sunday nights at 8 p.m.
However, he hasn’t forgotten his roots and isn’t averse to talking about them. How does Jason feel, with the renewed interest in Beverly Hills, 90210 since its DVD release, about the fact that some people will always see him as Brandon Walsh? Does he ever get tired of talking about 90210 and answering questions about it?
Jason responds: “I guess a certain amount of people still see me as that. There is no way around that. It was one of those seminal television shows that people related to strongly. It was a big part of my career. So many of the good things in my career I owe to that show. You can’t bite the hand that feeds you. You also have to be respectful of people. If someone loved the show and loved watching you on that show, that is their opinion and you shouldn't take that away from them. “You liked watching me on the show? Well, thank you! You know?”
Episodic television
Jason has been in other TV shows since 90210, including Tru Calling and Love Monkey, the latter of which was critically lauded but short-lived. So what made him decide to come back to episodic television? Jason answers: “Television is never far from me. I seem to work more in TV than in film. I love television and the pace of television. I am a worker bee kind of guy. I like to work, work, work, not sit in my trailer for hours waiting for my call.”
Jason continues: “There are a lot of opportunities in television to tell bigger stories than you can in 90 minutes of film. Also, I love the pace. I'm a guy who grew up always being on a team of some sort, whether in sports or on a show. We are all a big team of people putting this show out, and we all rely on one another.”
Not that he doesn’t love to make movies, he clarifies, he just likes to keep up the pace and satiate his type-A personality whenever he can.
One movie he is particularly proud of is the 2001 thriller The Fourth Angel, which he filmedthroughout the course of a few months in 2000 with Jeremy Irons and Forest Whitaker in London. Jason says, “The experience was fantastic”. The movie was scheduled for release September 14, 2001. However, 9/11 had just occurred and in the beginning of the movie a plane is hijacked, so the movie just kind of disappeared, which is very understandable – it was just bad timing.
Great actors
“I was in London that whole year (2000) performing on stage at the West End, and then I heard about the movie, so I stayed on from July until about August or September. We had a phenomenal time. Jeremy is just unbelievable, and Forest was fantastic. There I was, shooting a movie with these great actors in beautiful London – I mean, how bad can life be, huh?”
Jason is about to discover how much better life can be. He and his wife, Naomi, have just welcomed a baby girl into the world; however, as of press time, the exact date and information had not been released. When I spoke with him about becoming a first-time father, his reply was: “I am very excited. This is life, this is what you do. You get to the point in your life where it's time to take the next step, and you start propagating the species.”
Congratulations to Jason and Naomi. By the way, if the next baby is a boy, any chance you’ll name him Brandon?
