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with a stressful job, I needed an outlet. I loved racing cars because, to me, it was so pure. A race is a race. There’s only one winner. It was straight-up competition all the way to a finish line, down to a stopwatch and winning or losing by hundredths of a second. There was a clarity to racing that I couldn’t find anywhere else in my life, and I cherished it.

Torrance
90501
    I ronically, Beverly Hills 90210, a show featuring the lives of kids in one of the country’s richest, most exclusive neighborhoods, was actually shot in the most unglamorous places imaginable. Mainly we filmed at a studio in Van Nuys, a suburb of the Valley known for being the porn capital of the world. Sherman Oaks, Altadena, Pasadena, Glendale, Eagle Rock—we shot everywhere but Beverly Hills!
    FOX producers had approached the real Beverly Hills High School for permission to film the show on their campus before the pilot and were turned down. So Torrance High School—another suburb out by Los Angeles International Airport—stood in for West Beverly High. During the first season and the beginning of the second season, our presence was no big deal to anyone there. We were just some random television show that showed up now and then to shoot some scenes.
    Los Angeles residents are accustomed to filming, so no one really paid much attention to us. But, as the show blew up, we started spending more time shooting at Torrance High School. By this time the students there most definitely knew who we were, and they all loved the show. Well, let me clarify that statement. Girls loved the show; guys did not.
    Our production company had only one assistant director and a trainee AD managing the whole set, so keeping people away from us while we were working wasn’t a big priority. In all fairness, it wasn’t exactly a problem at first. It was one thing to have giggling high school girls coming over and asking for autographs and pictures and stuff. It was another when the senior-year boys started hurling insults and doing their best to start shit with Ian, Brian, Luke, and me. There were quite a few girls with crushes and quite a few pissed-off, jealous boyfriends.
    One day Brian and I were in the middle of a scene when some hulking football player–type guys mouthed off nonstop as we tried to work. They were showing off for their friends, calling the actors names. I was a few years older than these guys, while at eighteen Brian was exactly their age, though neither of us came close to their size and bulk. One guy in particular would not shut up until he got a rise out of one of us. He went way past acceptable words and behavior, and I finally took the bait.
    I turned around and started walking toward him. “I don’t care how old you are, kid. You say that to me one more time and I’m going to put you in the hospital.” He started coming toward me; I grabbed his shirt, he grabbed mine, everyone on the crew jumped in to stop what was about to happen and what do you know . . . the next day we had security guards. Lots of them, all around us, all the time, from that point on. But it took a near brawl in the hallway. Nobody had even thought about security before. The rapidly increasing success of the show had caught everybody by surprise. Nobody had any idea of what we were dealing with back then; we were all in uncharted waters.
    The show had its own publicist, and there were numerous FOX and Spelling publicists all over the place, but I felt that I needed someone who was minding my personal agenda. I wanted to capitalize on the increasing success of the show, of course, but I was already wary of getting typecast as Brandon. I made sure I had someone working primarily to keep me established as Jason Priestley, actor, not Brandon, though I would never get completely away from questions about the show. Eddie Michaels, my publicist, was young, just a few years older than me, but smart and aggressive and