Shannen Doherty was feeling "trepidatious" about taking on a role in the Beverly Hills, 90210 reboot, until Luke Perry's death prompted her to sign up for the show.
The actress starred alongside Brian Austin Green, Jason Priestley, Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Gabrielle Carteris and Ian Ziering in BH90210, which was cancelled after a six-episode run last summer.
However, Shannen was unsure about whether or not to revisit the franchise when she got offered the gig.
"I didn't want to do it. I have my reasons for not wanting to do it," Shannen told Sarah Michelle Gellar as the actress interviewed her for Entertainment Tonight. "One of them is I've played the character so many times and I've done so many versions of 90210 that it felt like we had exhausted that avenue. I believe less is more sometimes. You want to leave people wanting to see a show, as opposed to being like, 'Oh my God, I hope that never comes back on the air.' So, I was just a little trepidatious."
However, as she was gearing up to make a decision in early 2019, her former co-star Luke Perry died, and she was told that her breast cancer had returned as Stage IV.
"Someone very important to me passed away and I got my diagnosis, and it was all sort of within a couple of months, and it just made me give pause and rethink it," Shannen continued. "And yes, it was a way to honour Luke - which was important to me - but it was also a way to honour my cancer family by saying, 'Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, nobody's gonna know, but at least when it comes out that I have Stage IV, I will have been able to say, 'Yes, but I worked throughout it.'"