CAST FROM THE PAST
Former child star’s personal film reveals what it was really like to be famous in the ’90s
SOLEIL Moon Frye said she never intended for “Kid 90” to expose so much. Now streaming on Hulu, the raw, revealing documentary sees the “Punky Brewster” star examine her teen years through her old diaries, video footage and even voicemail messages — interspersed with recent interviews with her fellow ’90s child and teen star pals including Brian Austin Green, David Arquette, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Balthazar Getty.
Some featured players survived an often unforgiving industry — others met tragically untimely ends.
“There were so many memories that I had buried away,” Frye, 44, told The Post.
“The way I remembered our lives had been so joyful, full of light and love and bliss. And then there was also a great deal of pain,” said Frye, who’s currently starring in the new “Punky Brewster” revival streaming on Peacock.
“When I set out to make the documentary, it wasn’t focused on me at all. And then as I peeled back the onion more and more and dug deeper, it became this deeply personal coming of age story . . . I was surprised every step of the way.”
Frye, who became famous at 7 for playing the plucky lead in the NBC sitcom “Punky Brewster” (1984-1988), filmed many of her teenage partying antics long before Gen Z made that practice ubiquitous — and as “Kid 90” shows, her social circle included just about every young person in Hollywood of the era.
“There were like, 12 kids in the business, so we all knew each other,” “90210” star and Punky pal Brian Austin Green, 47, said in the film.
Personal revelations in the documentary include Frye’s body image issues as a teen (when she was cruelly dubbed ‘Punky Boobster’) leading to her breast reduction surgery at 16; losing her virginity to Charlie Sheen (she dubs him her “Mr. Big”), her relationship with House of Pain rapper Daniel “Danny Boy” O’Connor (“It was confusing. We were dating other people, but then we’d kiss but we were also best friends,” Frye said onscreen) and losing friends tragically too soon, such as actor/ model Jonathan Brandis, who died by suicide in 2003.
“Jonathan and I would have this funny thing where we would fill up each other’s voicemails,” she remembered.
“To hear those messages was a gift — and also it was incredibly painful. It was also so beautiful discovering footage that I didn’t even know was there, like him coming to visit me after the hospital [breast reduction surgery]. I certainly asked myself, ‘Could I have been there more for my friends. Did I do enough?’ ”
Digging into the darker parts of her teen years for the documentary was “incredibly therapeutic,” she said. “There was a lot of contemplation and processing.” There were also plenty of detours down memory lane that were fun. Over the four years she spent making “Kid 90,” she also reconnected with old friends who appear in it, she said. “Brian [Austin Green] and I had not caught up a whole lot over the years . . . We shared so much of our lives together. I would read from a diary to Brian and we’d be completely picking on each other the way we did as kids, like ‘Oh is that how you remember it? Really?’ ” Frye said she didn’t consider editing out the more intimate parts, and she also did not notify everyone who appears in “Kid 90” in advance. (Other well-known faces who appear in old footage include “Saved by the Bell” dudes Gosselaar and Mario Lopez as well as Mark Wahlberg.) “I hadn’t spoken to everyone [in it],” she said. “But I was always filming and my camera was always exposed, so everyone knew that I was documenting everything. I really felt like I needed to be as honest as possible . . . The videos and the diaries were chronological blueprints that my teen self — I felt — had left for my adult self to really find her way back to the person that she once was.” Frye teased that she’s got enough footage to do follow-ups to “Kid 90.” “Let’s just say there’s more of everyone . . . There’s so many great moments of so many people growing up — hundreds of hours of video and audio recordings. It really is a treasure trove. So I’m like, ‘We need to make many of these!’ ”