It’s no secret that there were relationships going down on and off screen at the Melrose Place apartment complex in the ‘90s, and revisiting the iconic drama has the stars back in their feels for their costars — especially Courtney Thorne-Smith.
“It was so sweet watching the pilot and, at first, [my character] Alison was so rude to Billy [Andrew Shue] and I’m thinking, “Can you not see him? What are you blind?’ I must have been to not be nice to him,” Thorne-Smith told Us Weekly during an exclusive interview with her castmates and new podcast cohosts Laura Leighton and Daphne Zuniga. “He’s so charming, and I’m charmed by him. [When watching the episodes,] I get to remember falling in love with him at that time. Because he and I dated [and] it was too sweet to watch and go, ‘Oh my God, I remember me, Courtney, watching Andrew do that as my character is watching him.’”
iHeartPodcast tapped Thorne-Smith (Alison), Leighton (Sydney) and Zuniga (Jo) to rewatch Melrose Place, which ran on Fox for seven seasons from 1992 to 1999, for the “Still the Place” podcast. The three women plan to have all of their costars on the show, beginning with episode two with Grant Show, who played Jake.
“We all dated Jake at some point,” Thorne-Smith confirmed to Us of Alison, Sydney and Jo. “[Watching the pilot], I thought, ‘How did I go to work and talk to him? How did I stand in front of him and talk to him?’ I must’ve planned it in advance, like, ‘Hello, it’s nice to meet you!’ And then gone back to my room because he was shockingly handsome.”
Leighton confirmed that her real-life husband, Doug Savant, who played Matt, will obviously be a guest on the podcast.
“They are such a perfect fit. … I have just a couple people in my life that fit like Doug and Laura,” Zuniga said of the duo, who celebrated 26 years of marriage in May.
“We just love each other and it’s great. We have shared values. We got great kids,” Leighton noted of daughter Lucy and son Jack. “It’s amazing.”
Launched as a spinoff of Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place became known for soapy story lines that often pushed the limit.
“I think none of us remember most of the details. We’re watching it one by one, just like we’re suggesting for our audience,” Leighton told Us. “We’re reliving it and we’re really re-remembering as we go back. And that sometimes we think we remember certain things and then watching it again just brings up a whole different, ‘Oh, that’s not at all the way I thought it was.’ It’s been so fun to revisit it that way.”
One of those infamous story arcs that will still pack a punch in 2024 is Alison going temporarily blind after Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross) blew up the complex — and lying about when her sight returned.
“I actually can’t wait because I use that as a lesson for my son. I said, look, ‘If you drink, you can be drunk and your friends can knock on the door and try to save you and you’re too drunk to answer it. And then it blows up and you go blind.’ So with him as a teaching moment,” Thorne-Smith joked to Us.
For Leighton, Sydney’s season 3 story line comes to mind. “I was in a cult. I was put in a box. There was something about a box underground!” she said.
The cult was one of Sydney’s many eras, as the actress accurately puts it. “Sydney had so many phases of hair. I mean, she would morph into whatever it was that was going on in her life. There was the era of the sixties hair and the flip because she was a secretary,” she explained. “There were all these eras so you can sort of mark the time and the season by what her hair was.”
“What I do remember about doing the show was that I was always excited to read the new script,” Zuniga added. “I’d be in the makeup trailer getting ready for what we were shooting. And it was like, ‘Oh, the scripts are out. Oh my God, what am I gonna do now? It was always kind of exciting because they were just so out of the box. You never knew what they were gonna write.”
“Still the Place” can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.
