Through Beverly Hills and valleys and back on top
Canadian has suffered his share of setbacks since his 90210 days. But Priestley has put his life and career back together
“That’s the power of television. You come into people’s homes every week and that creates a familiarity and a false sense of intimacy. They think they really know you, but they don’t.”
Jason Priestley survived a decade of adulation during his stint as the hunky Brandon Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210, not to mention several near brushes with death during his years as a race-car driver.
It’s no wonder that tackling the thorny role of lawyer Jack Lawson in David Mamet’s controversial play, Race, for an April 11 opening at Canadian Stage holds no terror for him.
In fact, it’s fascinating enough to have him appear on the legitimate stage for the first time since he trod the boards of the West End in London, starring opposite Edie Falco in Side Man in 2000.
“I’ve always been a huge Mamet fan,” says Priestley over breakfast before starting a day of rehearsals under the direction of Daniel Brooks. “The chance to do this was a giant rush for me.”
Adrenalin rushes, both good and bad, have been a steady part of Priestley’s career ever since the Vancouver-born actor made his debut with a guest shot on Air Wolf when he was 17 years old.
He’s known the iconic fame that comes with starring on a long-run, groundbreaking TV series, as well as the dizzying sense of dislocation that follows when that fame is taken away.
But Priestley has survived a broken back, a struggle with alcohol dependency and the vicissitudes of 25 years in show business to emerge at the other end as a sane, grounded guy who likes where he is at the age of 43.
“This business can be brutal, but you’ve got to learn to ride it and not the other way around,” he says. “Today, I can act or direct in any medium and that’s just how I like it.”
And just in case you think his star power might have diminished, think again.
His February appearance on an episode of How I Met Your Mother caused seismic ripples, especially when the dream confection he described on the show (a chocolate Tim Hortons Timbit stuffed into a strawberry vanilla doughnut) was promptly turned into reality by that venerable Canadian institution. In many ways, Priestley has never left his North Vancouver roots where he describes himself as “a pretty regular kid who grew up in a regular middle-class household. “The only thing different was that my mother (Sharon Kirk) worked in the theatre, so I was exposed to it from an early age. “From an early age, I knew I wanted to pursue a life in the arts and so I was acting in plays all throughout high school.” When asked whether he got cast as the handsome leading man or the troubled teen, Priestley grins. “Well, both actually. We did Rebel Without a Cause and I played Jim (James Dean’s original role.)” While cutting his teeth on the Canadian TV series being shot at the time ( 21 Jump Street, Danger Bay), he was also laying down the preparation to make his big move. “By the time I graduated from high school in Vancouver, I already had a whole support network set up for me in Los Angeles, so I just moved down. I fell into the scene pretty easily. It’s a strange place but it forced me to grow up a lot faster.” How fast? Priestley still remembers “the night a friend of mine invited me to a poker game and he picked me up at my tacky furnished apartment and drove me to Malibu. “The next thing I knew I was sitting in Charlie Sheen’s house at a big table, playing poker with Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell and a bunch of other guys, and I thought ‘I guess this is what happens in L.A.’ But I broke even that night.” He marked time for a bit and landed in a sitcom called Sister Kate, but then the big break came. “They asked me to do the pilot for this show called Beverly Hills, 90210. We shot it. It was OK and they picked it up. But we struggled through the whole first season and didn’t think we were going to make it. “Then (producer) Aaron Spelling and (Head of Fox TV) Barry Diller decided to launch the second season in the summertime. They thought it would be a smart way to capture the younger audience, while everyone else was showing reruns. And they were right.” He became a huge fan favourite as Brandon Walsh, “but I still never thought it would be a huge, careerdefining thing. It only goes to show you how little I know.” Playing the same role for so many seasons had its problems, however. “People automatically thought of me as Brandon, although I wasn’t really like him at all. That’s the power of television. You come into people’s homes every week and that creates a familiarity and a false sense of intimacy. They think they really know you, but they don’t.”
When the series finally was cancelled in 2000, Priestley went through a bad couple of years, with his alcohol-fuelled antics making tabloid headlines.
“I floundered for a couple of years. I had scaled that mountain: went to L.A., starred in a big TV series and here I am! But where was I? I needed to get refocused in my life and once I did that, it was all good.”
But in one of those ironies that life abounds with, a few months after Priestley got clean and sober in 2002 he nearly lost his life when he broke his back in a racing accident. “I actually flatlined for a couple of minutes. When I woke up in the hospital, I asked the doctors what I would have to do to put my life back together and that’s just what I did.
“You know, it really didn’t change me much at all. I knew those were the risks that came with racing. Crashing is part of it. It was just my turn.”
But while Priestley’s own brush with mortality didn’t stop him from driving, the death of his good friend, Tony Renna, the following year did. “I took that as a sign that I should walk away from racing while I still could.”
These days, acting Mamet in front of a live audience is as risky as he gets, and that’s enough for him.
“It’s a really powerful play. It forces us on the stage to work really hard and it forces the audience to work just as hard.
“I like that.”