BAYWATCH: AN ORAL HISTORYWhere Are Pam & Co. Today? (2024)

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The opening of Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier, the two-hour movie that led to a full first season on NBC, which cancelled the show after 13 episodes. Then came the theme song.

Erika Eleniak: Sometimes you had to do a more pronounced run: Okay, we're using this for the main titles. There were moments of that. But only moments. Hopefully you're just doing your thing.

Alexandra Paul: You had to really know how to run in slow-motion. You couldn't run really fast, otherwise your cheeks would go up and down too much.... You run slower — you have to have a look on your face that says, Yay, you're a hero!

Michael Berk: The way that we came up with the slow-motion running was Greg had just gotten back from shooting the Olympics — sprinters in the 100-yard dash in slow-motion. That ended up becoming a staple.

Douglas Schwartz: But all of a sudden, we had a hit movie and then in May of 1989, after the movie aired, NBC picked it up for 13 episodes.

Billy Warlock: It was the highest-rated show NBC had had in six years — Friday night at 8 o'clock.

Michael Berk: In the original pilot, we wanted to have a version for Europe that had nudity in it. We cast a girl named Hope Marie Carlton who did a topless scene, and the show opened with the lifeguards all gathering around with binoculars trying to see a photo shoot on the beach. So there were two nude scenes in that pilot that never saw the light of day.

Erika Eleniak: When we signed up, it was very much a different show, very by the book to even get and keep our sponsorship — including regulation swimsuits. It was a serious look at lifeguarding, like there are doctor shows, lawyer shows, cop shows. And when it was on NBC, that was the most conservative on air at the time. It did its thing for a year. A lot of people don't know it actually wasn't canceled by NBC.

Billy Warlock: We didn't get cancelled on NBC because of performance. We just didn't have the money. It was a big show. We had people in the water, extras on the beach — it was the biggest thing I had ever seen.

Michael Berk: Baywatch had started getting distributed in Europe by a very small company called Freemantle — it now produces American Idol — that said, Can you guys produce new episodes of Baywatch? We said, No, the show's been cancelled. They said, Well, there's a market for it.

Douglas Schwartz: My uncle, Sherwood Schwartz, who was the creator of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island, said, Doug, this is the golden opportunity that you will probably never have again. Baywatch can be your Brady Bunch. Go and buy back your rights. See if you can put it into first-run syndication, because you have something the other shows don't have — a hit show in foreign television.

Michael Berk: We ended up buying the rights to Baywatch back for $10.

Douglas Schwartz: Except now we owned it 100-percent. Then it took us the rest of 1990 to put the money together and get it in syndication. We went to David Hasselhoff and offered to make him an executive producer if he would lower his salary by 50 percent — because we had to get the budget down.

Michael Berk: He didn't want anything to do with it at first. But through Hasselhoff's popularity in Germany, we were able to get $300,000 an episode from continental Europe.

Billy Warlock: David Hasselhoff is a genius businessman. You don't know this about this guy. Do not judge the images of David Hasselhoff of late — the eating the burger on the floor and the crazy stints.

(David Hasselhoff, through a spokesperson, declined multiple interview requests for this story. When asked about his personal challenges during a brief interview with Esquire.com at his birthday party in Las Vegas in July, he said, "My biggest challenge in life is women.")

"So Leo Could Have Been Hobie, but… He Would Have Been on Baywatch"

Billy Warlock: The first day on the set in the first season of syndication, one of the shots is a guy staring up a girl's legs, up her rear, and, if you will, through her thong. And I'm like, Whoa, what are you doing, man? And [the cameraman] was like, Well, we don't have a network, we can do whatever we want. And I was like, Uh, oh.

Michael Berk: When we got the show into syndication, we started to redo the bathing suits. We made the hip cut much, much higher. Each suit was fitted specifically to that actress. We had an interesting situation with Erika.

Erika Eleniak: I was really still interested in pursuing a serious career. A theatrical career. That's what I wanted to do.

Michael Berk: She was very natural, and when we went into syndication she went out and got a boob job. We never asked to — we never asked anybody to get a boob job, even though several of them did, including Nicole Eggert. But Erika, after she got the boob job, started to want to wear her jacket over her swimsuit all the time. She became self-conscious.

Douglas Schwartz: Erika Eleniak and Shawn Weatherly were — in the first NBC season — our big blond bombshells. Shawn didn't like getting up early in the morning and getting in the cold water, so we let her out of her contract on the condition that we could kill her in a shark attack.

Michael Berk: Billy Warlock wanted more money to come back for season two, and by then he had started a relationship with Erika Eleniak — they were boyfriend and girlfriend — so Erika wanted more money, too, but we really still didn't have the budget.

Billy Warlock: I didn't want to just have to take my shirt off and run up and down a beach.

Erika Eleniak: I hear such funny things about why I left or how I left. I've heard that it was money. I've heard that it was my own self-body image. Where the show was going and the direction that they wanted to take it was not where I wanted to go.

Billy Warlock: I don't believe I made the wrong decision.... Monetarily, yes, I made the wrong decision. Absolutely.

Michael Berk: It was a stand-off, and we basically didn't blink and decided to recast their parts. The distribution company was panicked because they were our hot young actors and they were getting in all the teen magazines.

Traci Bingham: The show was also catching heat that there were no people of color on the show. There was like two- or three-thousand women, I heard, that had gone out for a role.

Michael Berk: We saw the girl from Desperate Housewives, Teri Hatcher. We auditioned the girl — and almost cast her — that starred in those Scream movies?

Susan Glickman: Neve Campbell came in, but she wasn't right for it, physically. Sandra Bullock definitely was scheduled to come in, but I think she passed on it before she actually came in. The other one who came in — and she swears it wasn't for this, but I think it was — was Alicia Silverstone. A lot of the good actresses just weren't right for Baywatch.

Michael Berk: We also cast Kelly Slater, who was a big surfing champion. And Kelly was a huge hit on the show, but his surfing buddies gave him such a hard time that he ended up getting embarrassed by it. So he only did that one year.

Susan Glickman: The funny thing is Leonardo DiCaprio came in and read and was brilliant and fabulous. Then they decided that David didn't want to have a son that was that old — he was about four years older than Jeremy, I think. So Leo could have been Hobie, but that wasn't in the cards. If he had been two years younger, his whole career would have been ruined. He would've been on Baywatch.

"It's Not Just Because of the Size of Her Breasts"

Traci Bingham: The first day I saw her, it was kind of like Marilyn Monroe had just risen from the dead and there she was on the sand.

Erika Eleniak: My gosh, the show benefited so much when I left. My swan song was Pamela Anderson's introduction, and they couldn't have asked for a better goddess to fulfill what they wanted and needed.... It was so perfect for them when Pamela came, because she would say, I'm an exhibitionist, I am out there, I love it. It's me, it's what I do. And nobody does it better.

Susan Glickman: She had been making like $10,000 an episode on Home Improvement as the Tool Time girl, but she only had one or two lines an episode and she was covered up by a smock with work tools.

Michael Berk: Alexandra Paul came in to audition for the C.J. role, the same role as Pamela Anderson, and we didn't really have a part for [Paul], so we created the part of Stephanie Holden.... But they kept saying to us, No, you can't cast these other people. You've got to wait for Pamela Anderson — she's special. Finally, she showed up for an audition after missing half a dozen auditions.

Pamela Anderson: Baywatch had always pursued me since Playboy, and they said I was famous before I walked in the door, for never showing up. They didn't really think it was going to be a big character. They just thought, Oh, we'll give her something. We'll kind of take her own life into it. My grandfather was really a big influence in my life and the whole, you know, crystals and incense and poetry — that hippie, bohemian kind of girl was me. So they wrote it for me and it ended up being good. It ended up being great for me.

Michael Berk: I had asked Pam what her special talents were, and one of the things she said that she did was play the saxophone. So when we first meet Pam Anderson, she's a river-rafting guide. She's playing the saxophone on a rock by the river.

Alexandra Paul: There's a reason why Pamela became a superstar. It's not just because the size of her breasts. It's true she has a very, very sexy aura, but she also worked really, really hard.

Pamela Anderson: You get there at four or five o'clock, you get your makeup done, the sun is rising, the dog is on the beach, you're having your breakfast; everyone looks the best in the sunrise. I loved being active — running in the sand, working out, being in the ocean. A lot of the people that came on to the show before or after me weren't really comfortable in the ocean, and I grew up on an island, Vancouver Island, and I'd swam in a lot colder ocean than California, so I was like, This is easy! This is great! Are you sure you want to pay me for this? With David Hasselhoff, too — both of us never complained about doing our water work, and we were the only ones I think not to complain.

Douglas Schwartz: Pamela loved being on Baywatch. She was dating Tommy Lee at the time. Her life was always in upheaval and drama personally, so Baywatch was her refuge. She was dating Tommy Lee, she would marry Tommy Lee — she would divorce Tommy Lee — so it was always about men.

Michael Berk: We cast David Charvet not knowing that he was Pamela's actual boyfriend at the time.

Douglas Schwartz: One day Tommy Lee was on the show and he 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. So we had things like that.

David Chokachi: Charvet might have even come back to say goodbye — maybe even guest starring. It was kind of both of us, I think, but I'm not sure exactly which one set him off. But that kind of carried over when we'd have kissing scenes and Pam would be concerned because Tommy would be freaking out or he would be coming down to the set trying to find out where we were shooting. He made her life difficult for a bit.... I think he redecorated Pam's trailer at some point.

Traci Bingham: I remember one day she came to set and she just didn't look happy. She just wasn't in it — like the lights were on but nothing was there.She had been crying her eyes out in her trailer, and then we found out about the situation with Tommy Lee. Nobody knew.

Pamela Anderson: It was a lot. It was like having three children, and he admits that, too. And I was a child myself. I don't think I was the most mature person. I didn't know what was going on. It was so crazy at that time, with our love affair and the attention we were getting — we got so much — that neither of us knew really knew what to do with it all.

(David Charvet did not respond to multiple interview requests. Tommy Lee, through a spokesperson for Mötley Crüe, declined comment on his visits to the Baywatch set.)

"We Were on Every Continent but Antarctica"

EJim Pozarik/Getty (top); Courtesy of Michael Berk Collection; Brad Elterman/Getty (Jeremy Jackson)

Pamela Lee, Yasmine Bleeth, and Lee Nolin (below) were on the show together from 1995 to 1997, its highest ratings period.

David Chokachi: At the time there weren't a ton of shows reaching overseas. For a while it was just Baywatch that was really penetrating the international market, so we had some rock-star status.

Traci Bingham: I could say that, yes, I've made over a million dollars because of Baywatch. Not necessarily my salary on Baywatch, but because of it. The endorsem*nts, the other bookings I've gotten, not to mention all the jewelry and clothing — I used to have a gifting room because of all the things that were given to me. It was like being on Baywatch was a cash cow.

Michael Berk: They got paid very little — it was sometimes $2,500 to $5,000 an episode because basically we had to keep the budget down. The philosophy was that Baywatch was a star-making vehicle.

Alexandra Paul: Let's just put it this way. A contemporary of mine was on Melrose Place. She was getting paid ten times more than I was on her first year.

Jeremy Jackson: When Pamela first came on the show, I was making more than her, but of course her fame skyrocketed pretty quick so she was getting a lot more money into her second and third year. But… I think I made around $3 million. By the time I was sixteen, I had made $3 million in my career. From about fourteen — when I learned how to steal my own money — to twenty, I burnt it all. There was a special account set up that I wasn't supposed to be able to access, but I took the checks out of the mailbox and I would go to the bank and cash them. I remember I made friends with the lady at the bank. I would walk out of the bank with $12,000 cash in my backpack and get in a car of sixteen-, seventeen-, eighteen-year-old high-school guys, and we would go straight to the store — buy everybody new clothes, new skateboards, new everything. We would call a limo, be driven around all weekend, buy drugs, buy prostitutes, buy our way into clubs, and the money would be gone in a week or less — or a weekend, sometimes.

Krista Allen (Jenna Avid, 2000-2001): A lot of my friends that have come from Baywatch… they've made such an incredible name for themselves because they've owned that — because they're amazingly talented businesswomen, and they know how to market themselves. I never knew how to do that.

Traci Bingham: Because of Baywatch, the money I made was kind of ridiculous — absolutely ridiculous. My manager would just pull a number out of her ass and the clients would pay up. I remember going over to Europe and for one hour to sign autographs — one hour — I got $340,000. In cash! So imagine doing that twice a week for four months?

Gena Lee Nolin: I value a buck, and when they're giving you $300,000 to lay down and look cute and pretty for a commercial in Korea, you gotta just go, Holy crap, this is unbelievable.

Pamela Anderson: I remember being at a charity poker tournament — Michael Jordan was there and he goes, Pamela, what are you doing? You should have your own perfume! You should have your own drink! You should have everything! I was looking at him going, What?

Alexandra Paul: We were coming in at five, and [Hasselhoff] would have flown in from Europe the night before having done a concert, but he was just indefatigable — just really always going, and yet he still had a beautiful attitude and was always ready to work. Never complained.

Kym Johnson (Hasselhoff partner, Dancing with the Stars, 2010): Some of the best moments, he said, was when his daughters were babies and in between takes he'd be playing dad — at the peak of his career — holding his babies.

Douglas Schwartz: We started with five or six countries in Europe. By the time we were on our roll, which was by 1995, we were the No. 1 show in the world. We were on every continent but Antarctica.

Alexandra Paul: Suddenly America realized how successful it was — a billion people a week watched our show.... People stopped looking askance at me like, Why are you doing that show?

Nicole Eggert: I was 18 or 19 years old when I signed on, but I thought it was going to be a lot more action and more like a cop show. I didn't get that it was going to be about implants and makeup and hair. It didn't even cross my mind.

Susan Glickman: We had the TV in our office on one day and The Price is Right was on and there was this gorgeous blonde pointing at things and we both went, Wow, we've got to get that girl in. And that's how we found Gena Lee Nolin.

Gena Lee Nolin: You're told to look good and to show Tupperware, and that was my job. Coming from that to being like, Oh my god, you're a superstar — it's almost overnight, and it's overwhelming beyond belief. I think that the girls are obviously a little more popular than the guys on the show, so as the other blond coming in, they had a lot of the rivalry between Pam and I, and people were following me home and snapping pics of me eating a hamburger or whatever.

Michael Berk: We encouraged her to do Playboy.

Gary Cole (Playboy): I remember that we asked Gena Lee Nolin to do it on two or three occasions. I always liken myself to the guy at the dance who keeps going around and asking girls to dance and they say no, but if you keep doing it long enough, somebody finally feels sorry for you and finally does it.

Gena Lee Nolin: I said no forever — even through my Baywatch days — and of course after all those years of saying no, the price just went up and up and up. And I was like, Are you guys kidding me?

Pamela Anderson: I think I've done like 14 American [Playboy] covers. They've got so many pictures of me, I probably better not do it anymore, just let those pictures — they'll be around forever. I've pushed that one.

Gary Cole: We quickly kind of formed an alliance with them so we worked back and forth: They hired girls that were playmates and put them in the show, and we approached girls that they had in the show to do pictorials. It was one of those lucky partnerships that was advantageous for both sides.

Brande Roderick: I think that [Hugh Hefner] really liked that there were very strong female characters. It showed beautiful women in the light that they can be... authoritative.

Pamela Anderson: The Playboy merchandise guy wanted me to do a line of spandex or bedazzled everything, and that's not how I dress or how I want to — so I felt like I couldn't ever really have control over a brand. I didn't really have much success at it. I still don't think I have.

Douglas Schwartz: Every Friday on Baywatch, we had swimsuit day. We had so many manufacturers that wanted their swimsuits featured on Baywatch so we'd get these shipments of bikinis in, so we had a producers lunch and we had all of our swimsuits modeled by Playboy playmates. That was always a fun Friday. Everybody would want to come to that.

David Chokachi: People were clamoring to get pictures of Pam, so security was always an issue down there, and it was kind of a pain in the ass. They wanted to make up stories so they would be photographing us coming in and out of each other's trailers. So for her there was a lot more pressure than any one of us.

Michael Berk: She was really thin and having all kinds of problems, but she was such a pro, would show up on time, do her lines, be offstage to read with the other actors. Nothing but good things to say about Pam.

Gena Lee Nolin: It was scary. It's a public beach that we're filming on, so there was tons of paparazzi, especially when Pamela would be working, it was absolutely mayhem.

Douglas Schwartz: We also had stalkers on Baywatch, so we had to protect the women. There was one point where we were escorting most or all the women off the set back home and picking them up and bringing them back again because we became so famous that we'd have hundreds if not thousands of people on the beach watching us film.

Alexandra Paul: We didn't have all the celebrity-focused media that we do today, so being mobbed was different than it is now. It was probably the next season that it began to be where I was uncomfortable going into places like malls or airports just because people would stare and things. It's inevitable. I remember that Pamela would be followed by one photographer — on weekends, she'd get up to do appearances and things, and I went home to my boyfriend and my cats ten minutes away.

Pamela Anderson: I had two babies on Baywatch. I remember, it was time to breastfeed and I'd be in my bathing suit and I would just see my boobs expand and go down. I'd look at an episode and be like, Oh my goodness! It was just time to take a break from that and move on, but it wasn't because I thought I was some big brand. I just — I always wanted to be a mom. Once I had two, and, you know, my crazy marriage, I was like, I can't do everything. So I quit.

"If You Didn't Look Right, They Were Going to Get Rid of You"

Susan Glickman: They hired too many girls that weren't right. They were nice and attractive, but they weren't in the same league as Pamela. The producers just decided, We don't know what's going to hit, we have the money, so let's just hire a handful.

Traci Bingham: Donna [D'Errico] — when Pamela left, she thought she was Pamela. Carmen Electra was there, I thought, to replace her....

Carmen Electra: I don't think I was hired as a replacement. I think that we all were. One of the producers either saw me on Singled Out or saw an interview or something that I had done, and they called me into audition. I didn't have an acting coach at the time — it was just spur of the moment.

Kelly Packard: There was a room of Pamela Anderson-looking women. I was like, Why am I in there? They're not going to hire me. Turns out I was the only one there for my part — all those girls were there for the part that Carmen Electra ended up doing.

Michael Bergin (J.D. Darius, 1997-1999): Calvin Klein looked into who was going to replace Marky Mark. I shot two days with Kate Moss, and overnight I became a sensation. My manager sent this poster to the casting directors. It was hard to even get in the door, but I got in because she sent them that poster.

Douglas Schwartz: We made the mistake as producers sometimes of casting people because of their look. 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.

Traci Bingham: If you weren't on you're A-game and you weren't in shape and you didn't look right, they were going to get rid of you or they would write you out of scripts, which meant they were going to get rid of you.

Susan Glickman: You can see the theme of what we looked for: gorgeous girls who can slightly act, who have some acting ability.

Traci Bingham: One of the producers had brought me into my trailer because he wanted to see me in person. He asked me to put my red suit on, and he wanted to look at me in the swimsuit. I don't know if it was a sexual thing or a sexual-harassment type of deal, which I felt it was because he was looking at my breasts. He wanted to know what the deal was with my breasts. He wanted to know if I was padding my suit. He kind of, like, touched under my breasts. I felt sexually harassed by one of the producers.

Douglas Schwartz: Greg never had fame. He was just a lifeguard making 12 bucks an hour being a lifeguard — that's what he did. We gave him an enormous opportunity to be an executive producer and director on his own television show, and he was never really appreciative — fame went to his head.

Traci Bingham: Playboy actually approached me before I was on Baywatch. I was getting ready to do the spread. They had asked me not to do it while I was on the show, and I said, Are you joking? And this is the same producer that wrote that book, maybe the same producer that may have been sexually expressive, if you will. This producer, Greg Bonann, I thought how could you have a show like Baywatch — everyone on Baywatch has pretty much been in Playboy — and you're telling me you don't want my Playboy spread to come out while I'm on the show? He wanted me the classy black girl: Just shut up and put up and do what we say. Before the show ended, I did pose for Playboy and many times after.

Michael Berk: We encouraged her to do Playboy. Traci did Playboy. Traci was never not allowed to do it.

("Skimpy suits tend to reveal breasts and buttocks," Bonann writes in his book, to which he referred all personal questions after declining multiple interviews and written questions. "We are depicting the real people found on our beaches.... Unlike many other shows, we give our women characters something to do besides standing around like mannequins.")

Traci Bingham: Everyone was vying for the spotlight. We had competition for that because everyone was worried about their jobs because at one point the cast was grouped to 14 to 16 series regulars. So everyone was threatened, everyone knew that if you didn't get a lot of TV time and you weren't perfecting your role, you were going to get fired. Because at one point they were firing everybody.

Michael Berk: We had made the mistake of casting too many people the year before — people were getting confused. Donna D'Ericco looked a little like Gena Lee Nolin and people couldn't tell the characters apart sometimes. There were a lot of blondes at one time!

"It Had Just Gotten Toxic"

Everett Collection

"Some people had their fame, some people have gone on to get their fame, and pretty much everybody else has been snuffed," says Jeremy Jackson, below. "Snuffed out and snubbed."

Jeremy Jackson: I was ten. I was ten years old when I started. I quit just before my eighteenth birthday. I was partying so much, I passed on a lot of really big movie offers, and rather than cleaning up my act, I decided to say screw it all and go further into the dark side. I started snorting a lot, drinking a lot, using. Kind of the classic Hollywood teen-idol story. It was kind of actually a big blowup on the set where I quit in the middle of a filming day.

Kelly Packard: I really felt bad for Jeremy because he didn't have a ground to pull on.He kind of got lost and that is so easy to do, especially on a show like Baywatch.

Jeremy Jackson: I wouldn't get high while I was working, but on this particular day Iwas pretty much going through withdrawals and coming down. I was really tired and Icouldn't perform and people were noticing and people were asking, Hey, dude, are youokay? What's wrong with you? And David was getting really frustrated with me becauseI wasn't remembering my lines and I was just not there. He kind of called me out onit: What's wrong with you, dude? Are you smoking pot or something? It was prettyembarrassing. So rather than tell the truth or admitdefeat or whatever, I just said, f*ck you, I'm out of here. f*ck all you guys, I don't needyou. And I just went full-blown with the party-guy, wild, drug lifestyle.

Douglas Schwartz: That became a big problem again with Jeremy. It was the same thing with all the child actors that you hear about — he had a singing career, he was a dancer, he had done an album....

Jeremy Jackson: I was going through puberty. There was a little bit of emotional abusegoing on there about me growing up, looking different, getting chubby, getting a bignose, breaking out. I was kind of being battered a little bit emotionally.

Gena Lee Nolin: I remember just being so terrified of the whole experience andafter the first year, I went in to the producers and I said, I quit.... They wouldn't letme quit. They're like, Nope. Michael Berk said, No way, you're not quitting, we'regoing to figure this out. And sure enough I came back the next season and mycharacter was extremely popular.

Douglas Schwartz: Gena Lee Nolin was afraid of acting and neurotic and crazy, and yet she was popular we would try to bring her up in her acting skills.... We had one issue with Yasmine Bleeth, who was doingdrugs at the time, and so we were dealing with Yasmine not showing up andhaving difficulties, again with men. That's why we let Yasmine go off the show:because it was too difficult to deal with her after awhile.

Traci Bingham: Yasmine Bleeth and the whole cocaine thing, who does that?Really? To the point where she's so out of the business now. Completely M.I.A.

Michael Berk: Yasmine basically retired. She ended up getting into some drugproblems but meeting a guy in drug rehab,and she's basically retired. I know she gets offers that she turns down. She wasan actress at the time she was a little girl, she was very smart with her money, and I think she invested well.(Calls to phone numbers listed for Yasmine Bleeth and husband Paul Cerrito at residences in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, were not returned. Of the other principle actresses, Donna D'Errico declined to be interviewed. In an e-mail, D'Errico told Esquire.com of her plans to climb Mount Ararat to search for Noah's Arc. "That is a very personal and religious journey for me," she wrote. "I don't want people to always just see me in the context of having been on Baywatch." The trip was reportedly canceled over safety concerns.)

Carmen Electra: People may have gotten fired and some people quit. I thinkthere was just a lot going on, and I remember calling my agent and I just didn'tfeel that it was right for me. And so I quit.

Douglas Schwartz: We had other actors that just couldn't act. People were shocked that we let Carmen Electra go off the show, but we just couldn't cope with directing her in another episode.

Carmen Electra: I had some personal things going on in my life as well. My mom was sick with cancer. She'd been two years, maybe a year and a half, with cancer — a brain tumor. I remember it was a weekend and Singled Out was done for that season, and I was mainly just shooting Baywatch and we were getting SCUBA-certified, so we had to go in on Saturdays and take SCUBA lessons.My mom called and I guess her tumor came back after chemo and surgery and everything, and she wanted me to come home. I could've gone because I had Friday off, and I went in and asked — I was just going to go for two days — and they said no. That really hurt my feelings a lot.

Michael Berk: We had what I guess became like Black Friday where we actuallyhad to fire — we didn't pick up the contracts of six or seven of those actors.

Jeremy Jackson: The show had really lost its substance and some of the producerswere just really more interested in bringing on lots of new super-hot chicks, kind of tryingto find the new Pam and it had just gotten kind of toxic.

Susan Glickman: Casting directors can only advise and present people, but ifthe producers and directors decide they want to hire somebody else, it's theirprerogative.

Traci Bingham: Everyone was just cut off the show, and then it moved to Hawaiiwhere, to me, it wasn't Baywatch — it was just a bunch of new people running onthe beach in a yellow suit. To me, once Pamela left, it wasn't Baywatch anymore.

"We Ended Up Losing the Battle"

Michael Berk: Hasselhoff negotiated a spin-off, his own series. But Baywatch is still on the air, and David wanted to be a James Bond — suave guy in a tuxedo driving a Ferrari. So basically I came up with the idea of making Mitch Buchannon moonlight as a private detective and we would call it Baywatch Nights. David didn't want the girls in bikinis or in red bathing suits to be in Baywatch Nights because he wanted to prove that he was the guy that gave the ratings, not Pamela Anderson's boobs.

David Hasselhoff: My biggest challenge in life is women.

Michael Berk: We were looking for a female lead and it was actually Hasselhoff who was on a plane who heard this girl talking, turned around, she had a great voice, and it was Angie Harmon. So Baywatch Nights lasted two years, and when it was cancelled, Baywatch never got that other time slot back — we were losing our channels, our ratings were down, we were losing revenue, and we had to cut budgets. It was right around then we started exploring going to Australia, which ended up taking us to Hawaii.

Billy Warlock: They just tried to milk the cow more and take it to another place.

Michael Berk: We got into a big argument. Greg Bonann wanted the Baywatch Hawaii actors and actresses to wear yellow bathing suits. Doug and I wanted to stay wearing red because that was the iconic color. We ended up losing the battle.

Brande Roderick: I was at another audition for a pilot for a volleyball show and it was the same casting directors as Baywatch. After I went in they said, Oh my gosh, you could be perfect for Baywatch.

Krista Allen: It was such a sense of validation that you might be attractive. It didn't require a lot of skill other than learning to run on the beach in slow-motion.

Michael Berk: When we came back to Baywatch, David was so used to being in control. Greg was living in Hawaii — and Doug and I were not — and he had more control over the show. He and Hasselhoff got into such a battle of power that at the end of season one there was an episode where Hasselhoff dives underwater for a rescue and there's an explosion at the bottom of the ocean and all the lifeguards are on the boat looking down waiting for David to come up and Hasselhoff surfaces. And he's safe.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/dlyGOtKV1y0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0&showinfo=0&start=21[/youtube]

Douglas Schwartz: You find David Hasselhoff's — Mitch Buchannon's — wet suit floating with rips and it was clear that he had blown up into bits and pieces, not just good enough to be dead but in bits and pieces. And that was how David Hasselhoff was no longer on Baywatch — he never even knew it until the episode aired.

Michael Berk: Greg re-edited that episode — did not have Hasselhoff resurface — and killed him. Hasselhoff didn't even know it. It was his own stunt guy that said, Guess what? We've been killed off. It didn't go over well.

Kym Johnson (Dancing with the Stars): He's used to being the best at what he does.

Brande Roderick: He was such a nice guy to work with, very childlike in that he liked to have fun and was always smiling and in a happy mood.... I guess the first season he lived in Hawaii, but the second season he did not work on Baywatch Hawaii.

Krista Allen: Baywatch Hawaii was certainly not as popular as the Baywatch that came before. Baywatch Hawaii was cancelled in the second season, so if you look at it that way, definitely there wasn't this big defining moment of me as a Baywatch babe, you know?

Michael Bergin: Literally my bags were packed and I was going back to Hawaii for a third season in Hawaii — I was making $300 an episode the first year, $5,000 the second year, and then $7,500, pretty much the way everyone's contract was structured — and found out that it got cancelled. I was shocked.

Brande Roderick: Here we were doing press for the show that we loved and were excited to work on and we got the call that it wasn't coming back. It was tough because we knew we had to go back to L.A. and begin auditioning.

Susan Glickman: Maybe people were burned out of Baywatch.

"I Was Ten Times What I Was on Baywatch"

Everett Collection

Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding aired in 2003.

Douglas Schwartz: We never really had an ending or finale on the show, so I personally called each actor myself until we had 16 actors and everybody was in the reunion movie.

Michael Bergin: You didn't know what cast members were going to be invited to the Baywatch reunion movie, but it was great to just be out there and be on set with Pam Anderson — although she was only there for two and a half days.

Carmen Electra: Time had passed. Everyone was just so relaxed and it was great. It felt really good. I was really glad I went back.

Nicole Eggert: I was a totally different person, so going back and seeing everybody again and being able to be my character one last time without feeling so bitter about it — to me, it seemed fun. After my daughter, I was in the best shape of my life anyways. I was ten times what I was on Baywatch, so, yeah, it was kind of good to be able to go back comfortable in your skin, knowing you look good, knowing you look better.

Jeremy Jackson: I actually dated Nicole when we wrapped the Baywatch Hawaiian wedding — for over a year. But she's older than me, she has a daughter, and I was just still doing my party-guy stuff.

Michael Berk: Obviously Hasselhoff really never got cast in another acting roles. He did some Broadway, singing stuff, some reality stuff and all that. Pam went on to do VIP. Most of the others really didn't continue. Nicole Eggert's done a lot of low-budget movies.

Traci Bingham: I've done pretty much every reality show that you can think of. I was a reality-show queen on crack. I did Celebrity Big Brother in Europe, Surreal Life, Celebrity Big Brother. Those are the ones to do, because however long you stay on, you're making more money each time you win a competition.

Kelly Packard: I got a paper in the mail — residuals for Baywatch, probably about 20 episodes, and each one was like 22 cents. Is it anything to live off? No. I hoped and prayed that Dancing with the Stars would call me, but they ended up getting Pam. And I am not going to be Pam.

Pamela Anderson: I think reality TV has kind of just taken over — who starts dancing in their forties? I feel like I've just arrived in Hollywood, singing and dancing. I'm taking voice lessons. I mean, I should have done this a long time ago.

Douglas Schwartz: I think a lot of them turned to eating. I was shocked to see Nicole Eggert and Erika Eleniak when they gained all their weight on The Fat Club with Dr. Drew or whatever that show was.

Nicole Eggert: It's so strange when you lose a parent — it just knocked me on my ass. I had always just been thin, but when you're stressed, your body will put on weight.

Erika Eleniak: Celebrity Fit Club — that was right after I had my daughter. Literally, when they contacted me, she was six weeks old.

Nicole Eggert: I didn't even really realize that I had put on that much weight and that people were talking about it. Really, that's what you're talking about? You're not talking about how I just locked myself up and stayed inside for nine months and was a total basket case? So Celebrity Fit Club came along and I was just like, Why not?

Erika Eleniak: I've never had a weight problem — and I don't say that lightly, but I've had plenty of other crosses to bare, believe me. And every mom in Hollywood is pregnant, so I thought, This is great — it's very timely, very trendy. So I ended up doing the show and never realized how much it really stuck in people's minds that I have a weight problem. I'm thinking, Gosh, I just got pregnant.

Jeremy Jackson: I did Celebrity Rehab. I was on prescription hormone-replacement therapy, and taking human growth hormone as a prescription. I would say right at about two or three years clean and sober is when, energetically, my life just started changing. I went back and did the Baywatch movie. It just seemed like a huge blessing and I was so thankful that, Oh my gosh, I get another chance to be on camera as a good guy, to be a good person. I'm clean and sober now.

Pamela Anderson: I don't know how I'm still around....I feel like I went from Baywatch to Dancing with the Stars and I don't know what happened in between except for I know I have two beautiful children. Everything else is a blur.

David Chokachi: We've heard rumors about this movie for so many years — hopefully they do it justice. I've heard some mixed reviews. I heard they were going to do a comedy. I was hoping that they were going to do almost like what Charlie's Angels did — a cool, action-type remake of the series. But who knows.

Michael Berk: We sold the rights to that years ago. It was at DreamWorks first, ended up with Paramount, and DreamWorks and Paramount began hiring all these huge film writers who didn't understand Baywatch to write these scripts. I was finally hired to write the Baywatch feature, so we'll see what happens.

Douglas Schwartz: Jeremy Garelick, who wrote the original Hangover, did a draft as well. We've had seven different writers, and we've been living Baywatch since 1988, so they finally gave us a shot to do it ourselves. Jeremy [Jackson] has a full part and Pamela is a cameo — there's another one for David Hasselhoff that we wrote. David wanted to be the star of the film, which isn't going to happen.

Tom Pollock (Montecito Pictures): The most recent script is by Peter Tolan, of Analyze This, Analyze That, Rescue Me — it's an amalgamation of a draft that Berk and Schwartz did and that others did, so everything will be based on the original series. Baywatch, the television series, is not a comedy per se. We're doing something that is a comedy, but it's not a spoof.

Douglas Schwartz: They're doing the final draft, but it's a big, 60- to 70-million-dollar Baywatch movie from Paramount Pictures.

Tom Pollock: You'd really have to ask Paramount, but we intend to start in 2012 for release in 2013. That's my best guess.

(A source familiar with the film's negotiations told Esquire.com that Tolan's revision of his script, centered on a young protagonist joining "the most elite lifeguard school in the world," would be submitted to Paramount Pictures in the next two weeks. "Paramount has said they want to make this movie this year," said the source, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the project as it moved closer to production. The newest version includes "possible parts" for Anderson and Hasselhoff, and while additional cameos have been discussed and may be added if the film gets made, the source added that roles for Jeremy Jackson and others were not currently included.)

David Hasselhoff: It will get folks more excited about the series. Baywatch will build momentum again, and boost its popularity — it's beginning again!

Pamela Anderson: You know, I didn't like the Charlie's Angels movie. I don't like it when they try and make a movie out of television. I love that Baywatch kind of worked as this almost bad kind of kitschy TV. I'd hate to see it get ruined. I know they've asked me to do something with the movie, and I don't think I will. No, actually, I wouldn't. I don't want to play someone's mom, you know? I don't want to go on a Baywatch movie and just play an older woman who — I'd rather leave the dream alone. When I was on Baywatch, it was a time capsule.

Nicole Eggert: They opened a Baywatch restaurant in the Bahamas quite a few years back, I went to the opening of that. And then the David Hasselhoff roast was pretty fun — it was fun to see everybody and good to see him laughing at himself, which is so important.

David Chokachi: I went white-water rafting in a remote part of Chile two years ago, and we were in this tiny fishing village clearing customs, and the customs guy was like, Hey, you're Cody, aren't you? I was like, How in the world is it that years later, in this tiny town, they're still into it?

Brande Roderick: Even though Baywatch hasn't been on for years, young kids today still know what it is. They might not have seen the show or watched it, but they've seen the girls in the red and yellow bathing suits. I can't think of anything that's iconic like that.

Alexandra Paul: I recognize that in my obituary, that's what they're going to put up there, the first thing. I'll still always have Baywatch right after my name, no matter what else I do. Some of us can break out of it maybe, but so far I don't think any of us have — and I'm okay with that. Do I like that it defines my career? I don't hate it. If I had been on ER, that would have defined my career. Is that better or worse? I don't know. I wish no one thing defined my career, but if it's going to be the number-one show in the world, okay, I'll take it.

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Additional reporting by Wayne Bernath