Tori Spelling is still coming to terms with Shannen Doherty‘s death.
During the Monday, July 29, episode of her “Misspelling” podcast, Spelling, 51, said she needed to take a break after Doherty’s passing earlier this month.
“I want to thank everyone for your patience. I know we’re all out there dealing with grief, loss, humanity, love and fairness — all at our own time. I’m trying to make sense of things we can’t make sense of,” she explained. “As everyone knows, I lost a good friend. The world lost an important person just about two weeks ago when Shannon passed.”
Spelling has since been battling with complicated emotions, adding, “While it was expected, I think the unexpected hit all of us quite hard. I guess it’s humanizing to know that that’s not how life works and then it’s up to us to sort that out.”
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Us Weekly confirmed on July 14, that Doherty died at the age of 53 following a years-long battle with cancer. Spelling walked her listeners through the initial days after she found out about Doherty’s death.
“It was really tough for me when I found out the news. I was sleeping with two of my children in their bed on the Sunday morning that I found out. My phone was on silent — but it kept buzzing and it kept going off. I checked the time and it was 7 A.M. and I knew immediately,” she detailed. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, somebody’s passed. Somebody important has died.’”
Spelling made the choice not to engage with anyone until she felt ready. “I felt mad. Not for myself. I felt mad for the life that wouldn’t continue and the life that had so much to offer,” she said. “Not just herself but everybody around her.”
Spelling and Doherty starred together on Beverly Hills, 90210, which ran from 1990 to 2000. The duo played Donna Martin and Brenda Walsh, respectively, on the series, which also starred Jennie Garth, Jason Priestley, Ian Ziering, Brian Austin Green and the late Luke Perry.
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The cast reunited on screen in 2019 for BH90210, which was a six-episode series filmed after Perry’s death at age 52. While discussing her friendship with Doherty, Spelling admitted they faced their fair share of ups and downs.
“How could I summarize someone I’ve known for 36 years? It’s over half my life. [This was] someone I grew up with and someone who was my best friend. Someone who at some point I had misunderstandings with and didn’t have contact with and lost years for things we would later go back and talk about and realize it was silly,” Spelling shared. “We acknowledged we had lost time — years and years that we could have been together.”
She continued: “But ultimately we got that time to go back and say, ‘None of that matters.’ What matters is that core friendship that we had and we were able to get back to that.”
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Spelling used Monday’s podcast episode to pay tribute to Doherty.
“I think the big takeaway in the last two weeks is I’ve really been going back in time privately and thinking about the enormous effect that Shannon had. Not just on a generation and generations to come,” she concluded. “It’s going to keep going. She will live on in her work and in the people that loved her and the things she stood for.”
