Melrose Place Secrets & Scandals! 8 Shocking Firings, Jaw-Dropping Lawsuits & The A-List Stars Who Didn’t Get The Part
Mar. 1 2017, Updated 10:32 a.m. ET
From 1992 until 1999, Fox had viewers clinging to their TVs watching Melrose Place, a nighttime drama that showed off sex, scandal and sin in Los Angeles; now RadarOnline.com takes a look back at the show, and the top eight secrets and scandals that surrounded it.
From 1992 until 1999, Fox had viewers clinging to their TVs watching Melrose Place, a nighttime drama that showed off sex, scandal and sin in Los Angeles; now RadarOnline.com takes a look back at the show, and the top eight secrets and scandals that surrounded it.
Blonde bombshell Amy Locane was cast in a main role as Sandy Louise Harling the first season, but did not come back thereafter. Her life took a nasty turn in 2010 when she fatally struck a woman with her car while driving drunk in New Jersey, and received a 3-year prison sentence for a vehicular homicide conviction, which she served from 2012 until this past June.
Kelly Rutherford, who played Megan Lewis Mancini in the series' later years, has run into all kinds of legal and financial troubles over the past few years due to an international custody battle with ex Daniel Giersch. She pushed the envelope last month in not returning her two children, Hermes and Helena, at a scheduled drop-off, getting ripped by a New York Supreme Court judge who ordered the kids go back with their father.
Hunter Tylo was initially cast in the role of Taylor McBride, but was canned after she got pregnant, as producers said the actress breached a change-in-appearance clause in her contract. She successfully sued Aaron Spelling's companies Spelling Entertainment Group and Spelling Television Inc., winning almost $5 million -- twice what she was suing for -- in a 1997 judgment. With Tylo out, the door was opened for future Real Housewife Lisa Rinna to slink in and nab the coveted role.
Tylo wasn't the only one whose looks impacted their status on the show: Actor Stephen Fanning lost the lead role of Billy Campbell after packing on too many pounds, with replacement Andrew Shue immediately reshooting his scenes after getting the gig.
The show was actually a spin-off of Beverly Hills, 90210, which was wildly-successful on arrival following its fall 1990 debut. The storyline bridge between the two franchises was heartbreaker Jake Hanson (played by Grant Show) dating 90210 vixen Kelly Taylor (played by Jennie Garth). Garth was in the show's first three episodes. A 2009 reboot failed to turn the needle, and was nixed after one season.
A shocking laundry list of future stars tried to get roles on the show before catching other breaks in Hollywood down the line, per iMDb. Among them: Paul Rudd, Julianna Margulies, Calista Flockhart and two names whose own shows are often looked at as even more synonymous with the decade: Baywatch's Pamela Anderson and Friends star Courteney Cox.
Producers had to scramble in rewriting the season ending following the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that resulted in 168 deaths. The original conclusion, according to iMDb, would have seen Dr. Kimberly Shaw (played by Marcia Cross) use explosives to blow up the complex the show took place at. Biding their time, the storyline stayed the same, but the season ended with Kimberly detonating a device, putting off the visuals of the explosion until the next season premiere in September, five months after the American tragedy.
When the show reached its end in 1999, staffers bottled and sold water from the swimming pool on the then-burgeoning auction website, eBay. An archived ad from the unique piece of Hollywood memorabilia read, "All your favorite stars have swam and soaked in this pool for years. Now that the show is going to be gone forever, you can still have a piece of history."