Tiffani Thiessen spills the beans on the Bond girl moment that neverwas
Tiffani Thiessen hosts the new clip show “Deliciousness” on MTV, with a focus on “food fails that happen in the kitchen or restaurants or people drinking too much and making bad choices that are caught on video,” she said.
“It’s a spinoff of a very popular show on MTV called ‘Ridiculousness,’ which my husband is a huge fan of, so when I told him I was doing this he was super excited,” she said of husband Brady Smith, an actor and artist from Houston. “It’s like a goofier version of ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos,’ that same sort of feel. You can binge watch it, it doesn’t take a lot of energy. It’s one of those shows where you can sit on the couch with a cocktail or a glass of wine with your loved ones and laugh your butt off.”
Because we’re all spending more time at home cooking thanks to the pandemic, she said, “I have a feeling we’re going to have a plethora of great food fail videos coming for future seasons.”
Thiessen became a household name as a teen on the original “Saved By the Bell” (she also returns in a small role in the reboot) and later on “Beverly Hills, 90210,” both iconic shows for Gen-Xers and millennials.
It was during this period in her career that she began contemplating a shift, but things didn’t work out the way she hoped. When asked to share a worst moment, this is the story she told: “People think we’re model perfect, and a lot of time I think this business showcases just the good stuff, but there are many, many difficult things.”
Myworstmoment
“I’ve been in this business since I was young. I started doing commercials and modeling when I was 8 or 9. I was a kid; my daughter’s 10, and sometimes it’s crazy to look at her and think, ‘Wow, that’s when I started doing what I still do now.’ And then the bigger things started coming when I was 14 and 15. I had done guest-starring roles, but my first big break was of course ‘Saved By the Bell,’ and I had just turned 15.
“This experience I’m going to tell you about, it hit me hard. So hard that I decided to take a break for a little bit.
“I auditioned for a James Bond film, and I wanted this job more than anything for two reasons. One, I thought it was going to change my career in a great direction. And two, I was a massive James Bond fan. Massive. Like, I thought every James Bond film was amazing, and I thought every woman that got to be in a James Bond film was the coolest. So I was like, that’s what I want.
“It was a classic Bond girl role: Beautiful women who are sexy and smart and they get to be badasses. It was everything I wanted to be. Pierce Brosnan was the James Bond. So I get the opportunity to audition and go back for many callbacks, and then I tested. It was between me and two other actresses, and I didn’t get it. Of course, I didn’t get it. Denise Richards got the role. The movie was ‘TheWorld Is Not Enough’ (1999). And it hit me so extremely hard because I wanted it so bad.
“And I learned something from that. Since then, I’ve tried not to want anything so badly. There’s a lot of disappointment in
this business because you are auditioning most of the time against a lot of people. Generally, you don’t get the part; based on the percentages, you’re probably not going to get it. But I wanted this so bad, which made it so much harder.”
This happened just as Thiessen was finishing her run on “Beverly Hills, 90210.” A Bond movie would have been a departure from that and “Saved By the Bell” — playing a fully adult character.
TV to film
“I saw it as my jump into film. And back then, if you remember, TV actors didn’t really translate into film all that much. But (“90210” producer) Aaron Spelling told me something a long time ago, this was when the show was a huge hit: More people onWednesdays watched ‘90210’ than had seen ‘Forest Gump,’ which was the big movie at the time. And it was really amazing for me to wrap my head around that analogy. That more people were tuning in each week to a TV show than had gone to the movie theater to watch a huge movie. That was crazy to me, but he was right.
“Even so, I thought this James Bond film would be my transition. The transition that we all talked about as TV people at the time. So I had a lot wrapped up into it.
“I was devastated. And I remember getting in my car and driving to the beach, and I literally sat there by myself. I think I was there for hours, just needing to be alone. I’m very much a person who processes big things on my own.
“I had been able to take rejection before this and handle it pretty well. This was the first time that it didn’t sit well with me, and I was having a hard time with it. I’m a pretty strong person and I feel like I can take on a lot. And this is the first time I felt weak.
“So I kind of took a break. I got invited to a friend’s wedding in Montana, and I ended up spending the whole summer there. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m coming back.’ Of course I did. But I wasn’t even thinking about my career. I was thinking, ‘What if I just stay in Montana and start making jam or open a restaurant?’ My mom was so cute, she was like, ‘OK honey, whatever you need. I know you’ll be back.’
“But it was serious. I almost bought property there. I wanted to be as far away from Hollywood as possible. I didn’t want to put makeup on; I wanted to feel like no matter what I looked like or what I did, it didn’t matter, that I was just in the woods somewhere living a normal life.
“I eventually came back to California because my family is here. Hollywood is my home, it’s where I grew up. And my best friend was literally like, ‘I know this was hard for you but for whatever reason, this was not the movie for you.’ And he was right. I just needed that time.”
The takeaway
“Learning how to stay focused on something that you want, but know that it’s not always up to you, even though you may give it 110 percent. There is a path that sometimes you can’t change. There’s something very freeing about that. If it’s not working out and it doesn’t go my way, it’s not that I didn’t give it my all, it’s that it wasn’t meant to be.
“So I came back from Montana and I kept at it. And I’m still doing it all these years later.”