Dylan was heard earlier than he was seen on 90210, when for some cause he is hanging out in a tech-lab-type room (at all times exceeding society’s expectations, that one) the place two jocks present as much as harass the nerdy Scott Scanlon (Douglas Emerson). After they threaten to erase what Scott’s doing on the pc (designing a ground plan for “the right dance membership,” for the report), you hear the invitation to get wrecked from off-camera: “Contact that board, my pal.”
And round spins Perry, wanting awfully fresh-faced in hindsight however on the time quite calm, cool and manly. He proceeds to inform the bullies with a slight smirk that he is “feeling a bit hostile,” and that is all they should know. They slink away. Scott’s adoration is secured and Jason Priestley‘s Brandon Walsh, nonetheless the brand new child on the town from healthful Minnesota, is duly impressed.
“Your pal’s fairly cool,” Brandon tells Scott, wanting as if he cannot consider what he is simply witnessed.
“I’ve by no means seen the man in my life!” Scott marvels.
Nor had most individuals, however inside a pair months “the man” had change into “Luke Perry,” his identify as laden with heartthrob which means as “Tom Cruise” or “Brad Pitt“—solely “Brad Pitt” as we all know him, and particularly as he was within the Nineties, was nonetheless just a few months away, with Thelma & Louise and his abs not arriving in theaters till Could 1991.
“After the pilot, we felt there ought to be somebody who’s a bit harmful, a bit on the sting, and we got here up with the Dylan character,” government producer Aaron Spelling, who was the one who insisted to the studio that Perry change into an everyday solid member, told Rolling Stone in 1992. Added creator Darren Star, “When Luke walked into the audition, it was like ‘Wow, that is the particular person.’ He appears precisely like James Dean to me, however it is not a acutely aware imitation—he is actually being himself.”
