01x03 - Almost Famous

[bunniefuu]

♪

Everybody set?

Action!

There was a reference

to Baywatch

in almost everything

that was a hit.

Run, Yasmine!

Run like the wind!

- I'll be ready ♪

- Oh, I'll be ready ♪

Every year, we bring in new

people and exit other people.

Jason Momoa is the one that

exploded off of Baywatch.

That's something

the creators really had

the knack of finding stars.

It was a wild time,

and I was a wild chick.

What are you going to do

about the bad writing?

I'm just going to do

what I'm going to do.

And I want chicks,

and I want fame.

We went

from admiring these people

to, let's take you down.

When people

are talking about you,

it destroyed

a lot of people.

And Jason says

they literally hunted him

like an animal,

trying to out him.

He's one of my closest

friends on the show.

So it was a secret

that we kept.

I had so much anxiety

that she would have to take me

to therapy twice a week.

This show was not designed

for someone who looks like me.

Primarily, it wasn't.

I kept asking the producers

to please give me

a boyfriend who is of color.

I was a sidekick.

Man, the sidekick

can't be sexy.

Sidekick got to be a clown.

And my beauty was

not celebrated.

We made so many mistakes

back then in the '90s.

I wasn't ready for that show.

What happened to her,

you know?

Well, life.

Life happened.

And I bet life happened

to you, too.

I'm really proud

of everything I've done

almost.

♪

Going through puberty

on Baywatch was painful.

I was too young to hook up

with the chicks

but old enough to want to.

There was, like, a slew

of bikini-clad girls.

And even though

he was, you know,

13, 14 years old,

they were already trying

to make eyes at him

and do things

Like, I really tried to keep

him away from all of that

the best I could.

And they would

definitely tease me,

like, give me a little

booby shot or whatever.

But I was too young

to, like, really

hook up with any of them.

And, you know, like I said,

I just wanted to be grown-up.

And I was like, ugh!

Just hang in there.

He had to sit back and

kind of watch the rest of us

for quite a bit, which is

probably brutally tough,

because we just had a blast.

I mean, if you're

a kid in life, right,

you just, like,

want to be cool.

You want to hang out

with the cool people.

You want to be grown-up way

before you're grown-up, right?

And that's how

Baywatch was for me.

There was all these hot

chicks, and I would usually

sneak in their trailers after

they were done

and grab

their dirty bathing suits.

Let's just say I've smelled

every on Baywatch.

And Nicole was

the big one, for sure.

We had a very intimate

moment, her and I,

that she never knew about.

Well

I know Jeremy very well.

This surprises me not at all.

And Nicole was

the one that,

I guess you could say,

I looked up to.

She would come to work late

and not give a f*ck

and say that out loud.

Like, I don't give a f*ck.

I'd be like, what?

There's nothing Jeremy could

say that would freak me out.

And I'm not even mad

at 14-year-old Jeremy.

I mean, puberty

on a show like that.

I love grown-up Jeremy

for being honest

about 14-year-old Jeremy.

Arch your back.

Come on.

Being a kid

around all adults,

it has to have

a negative effect.

We've seen

this child-star narrative

since the beginning of time.

There's always issues.

There's always problems.

DAVID: Baywatch was kind of

like, no matter what happened

in your personal life, and

there was some heavy stuff

that happened to Jeremy.

I said, I don't care.

Come here. Give me a hug.

It was awesome.

From probably 10 to 14,

I was just hoping that he

would fall in love with my mom

and be my dad, you know.

And I was probably

doing everything I could

to try to make that happen.

Now, looking back,

I'm like, I'm 39 now.

David must have been 30

when I started, you know?

And I'm like, hey, David,

we got to go surfing.

Hey, David, can you take me

for a ride in your car?

Hey, David.

Hey, David. Hey, David.

It was really kind of like

a father-son relationship.

I was never the father

that I should have been,

that I could have been.

And I regret that

a little bit,

because I could have been

there a little bit more.

But I was too busy, too busy

being David Hasselhoff.

I had my own set of problems.

I had enough going on

in my own life, being a father

and going through a marriage

that was not the best

in the world.

It was just a real weird time.

I was 16 years old.

David surprised me with

this cake and this huge box.

In the box was a smaller box

and then a smaller box

and then a smaller box

and then a smaller box.

After I opened all the boxes,

in the box

was this key right here.

It says, "Happy 16th."

Then they pulled up this

phenomenal, outrageous,

amazing sports car.

That is the actual car

Volkswagen Riot.

It's a kit car.

It's a $14,000 car.

But I never got the sports car.

And I haven't let it go.

And I refuse to let it go.

David, you still owe me

a frickin' car, okay?

Even today, 30 years later,

Jeremy, obviously much,

much older,

is still in touch with David,

and they still have talks.

When things go wrong

in Jeremy's life

and he needs

someone to talk to,

he goes and talks to David

just like he did

talking to Mitch on the show.

Looking back today,

he's still kind of a mythical

figure, even after working

with him for so long.

David would just, you know,

tour Germany at the same time

as sh**ting Baywatch.

And I think Jeremy may have

gone with him one time.

I know that Jeremy wanted

to be just like David.

He wanted to be a singer.

He wanted to be

a rock-and-roll star.

And I think David

encouraged him.

And so did we.

And I'm going to

slide on my knees,

and then I'm going to run down

there and slide on my knees.

All right?

He became a heartthrob.

Jeremy Jackson

had a pop career.

He had two hits.

One of them was "French Kiss."

The other was "You Can Run."

You can run, you can hide,

you can cheat, you can lie ♪

But you can't

run away from me ♪

No matter what the mission,

no matter what the time ♪

That's how it's going to be ♪

But you needed

a machine behind you.

You needed the machine

that gave us Britney Spears

and NSYNC and Backstreet Boys.

He didn't have a machine.

He just wanted to be

a pop star

like David Hasselhoff.

I ended up touring

all over the world with David

and performing and

doing two albums.

And I wanted that so bad.

And I envisioned it.

And I manifested it.

It happened.

So I was on Baywatch.

We'd go on tours.

I'd be in Europe.

And I'd get to the

place in the car.

And I'd think, oh, my gosh.

Like, all these screaming fans

are there for other people.

And it turns out they

were there for me.

I had to get 20 security

guards hand in hand

over the door of the car

so I could get out of the car.

And they're, like,

rocking the car, weeping.

I saw girls passing out.

I saw girls being carried away

by security guards.

I saw girls taking

their clothes off,

screaming, weeping.

And that was, like,

the coolest thing ever.

I was always

wanting to be a troublemaker,

smoking cigarettes,

drinking beer,

you know, sneaking out

at night,

getting into trouble.

I was in the way

of everything

he wanted to do at that point.

So that got pretty nasty.

So now was my

opportunity

to get whatever I wanted,

and I just took

full advantage of that.

I just started wielding

my power over my mom.

I'm just going to do

what I'm going to do,

and I want chicks,

and I want fame.

It was gnarly.

Every extreme that can

take place took place.

So those were the heights

that, you know,

once you hit that

and they're gone,

you got to re-create them

because that's

what's normal for you.

That's what's

comfortable for you.

So Jeremy was,

you know, introduced to drugs

before most kids

are introduced to drugs.

He's introduced to sex

and p*rn*graphy

and all these things way

earlier than normal kids are.

He ended up

having a girlfriend

that was an extra on Baywatch.

I was passionately in love

with a girl when I was 17.

And I gave up everything

basically for her.

I turned down movie deals

and quit the show.

And I just made my every

waking moment about her

and building a life with her.

And she was a drug addict,

and I jumped right down

the rabbit hole with her.

♪

Last night was

the black-tie event, the gala.

And there's just,

like, this abundance

of, like, amazing-looking guys

in this country.

I don't know if it's

because of the race

or it's always like this,

but they're hot.

So, of course,

we had our room full

of them last night

and

it made for an interesting,

interesting evening.

But my room is wrecked.

I woke up in my dress

and the door open.

Look.

Candy bars that I, like, stole.

Heineken over there

under the curtainI see it.

We'll try to catch up

with some of those guys later.

Make for some

interesting video.

I was born in Los Angeles, so

I spent a lot of my childhood

on the beach.

And Baywatch really,

really captured,

like, my childhood, too.

I was, like, the little girl

who dressed up as a princess

but never brushed her hair

and climbed trees.

That's who I was as a kid.

And my mother entered me

in this local beauty pageant

and I won.

And casting director

and an agent called.

And I immediately started

getting auditions.

I was an actress

since I was four years old.

I was the Coppertone kid,

Johnson's & Johnson's

Baby Shampoo.

My first acting gig was

an ABC Movie of the Week

called When She Was Bad.

It was about child abuse.

And from that, I booked

Charles in Charge

as a series regular.

You know, you have

a major ego problem.

You think Alex is helping me

because she's in love with you?

You're the one who's obsessed.

God, you just won't be happy

until you destroy my life!

That's not true, Jamie.

And then I got to Baywatch.

That season we cast

Pam and David Charvet,

we also cast Nicole Eggert

as Summer.

Look, CJ, for the last time,

I do not have

an eating disorder, okay?

Well, Nicole Eggert coming

on to Baywatch is a huge star.

She's from Charles in Charge.

She's on every young

adolescent's wall.

She takes that

unbelievably sexy photograph

for the Sugar Ray

record, you know,

that's one of those pictures

that people

remember from the 1990s.

Everybody knew who it

was in that picture.

So whatever she

was on Baywatch,

she was like an icon

of a certain type of sexuality

already in the mid '90s.

I was 19, 20 years old.

I was much younger than

the rest of the cast.

When you're 19, 20 years old,

like, I didn't have to try.

I didn't work out.

You know, it just

was, like, natural.

And I show up on set,

and they've got

this red bathing suit.

And I've never worked out

a day in my life.

I, like, smoked cigarettes.

You know, I was a mess.

And I panicked.

I couldn't believe that that's

what I was going to be doing,

you know.

I didn't realize that

I was, like, considered

any kind of sex-symbol thing.

That hadn't occurred

to me at all.

I just focused

on what I was doing

and what I was looking at.

And I had blinders on

to the rest of the world

because I hated the attention.

Like, I hated it.

Stop it.

It made me so insecure

and just so uncomfortable.

It felt like such

an invasion of privacy.

And I didn't deal

with it well at all.

So I made the decision,

you know, to chop my hair off.

I think almost every producer

went into cardiac arrest

when I showed up on set with

with the short hair.

And I was like,

no, trust me, guys.

It's cool.

When I look back at it now,

it's like, wow.

You know, that's so cool.

But my instinct was flight.

And I said, I need to

get away from this.

So I quit after

the first season.

I wasn't ready for that show.

And I think that women

have always been objectified.

So, you know

especially modeling.

People are always going

to be drawn to beauty.

That's not going to change.

Everything was about the body

in the '90s, everything.

And that was

definitely the decade

of supermodels.

♪

You really started seeing the

evolution of the supermodel,

I think, in the '90s.

"Freedom! '90" is one

of George Michael's

most iconic music videos,

primarily because he had all

of the hottest supermodels

of the '90s in it.

When you make

a living on camera,

visually, there's expectations.

It really starts with women

having this impossible

social contract in which our

main value somehow

appears to be being pretty.

I was considered

curvy back then,

and there wasn't anything

I could do about it.

I just had a behind on me.

And everybody else was these,

like, teeny, tiny,

skinny things.

There was a clause

of, you couldn't gain,

couldn't lose five pounds.

You had to stay

within your weight.

The '90s was about beauty.

And beauty doesn't

need a résumé.

Baywatch actors talked

about strict diet rules

on "E! True Hollywood Story."

We're not allowed to get fat.

That's what says

in my contract.

So, of course, they have

fat-free Fig Newtons.

That's what we eat.

That's how we keep

the Baywatch figures.

Yeah, as vegetarians.

Sucking on a baloney.

You know, we had to stay fit.

We couldn't really get

cellulite because that's

going to show on camera.

So it's a lot of pressure.

It was a lot of pressure.

You're going up

for a leading role,

there are certain expectations

about the way you have to look,

and that is it,

and that goes today.

Like,

the responsibility of beauty

is to stay that forever.

But unless you die at 25,

that's not going to happen.

To put me next

to 20-year-old me,

not only do I not want to be

that person or look like that,

it just is just ignorant.

What happened to her, you know?

Well, life.

Life happened.

And I bet life happened

to you, too, you know.

I'm sure that

Baywatch definitely had

an influence in girls

wanting bigger lips,

bigger boobs, smaller waist.

When I was 20,

I modified my body,

and I put implants in my body.

Plastic surgery

was just coming in.

I remember once when I went

back to my high-school reunion,

and one of my classmates

asked me,

is Pamela Anderson'sare

those breasts real?

The whole look

was huge boobs.

Like, the bigger, the better.

I mean, everyone

was getting, like,

all kinds of things

done to their bodies

to look like Pamela.

That was the key to succeed

on a show such as Baywatch.

I mean, Greg,

Michael, and Doug

figured out

that people like to see fake

boobs on TV

before the rest of the world

it's really that simple.

This is the suits being

sneaky and throwing in,

you know, very, you know,

low-key sexualization

into these family programs.

It was pandemonium.

We did signings.

We did every morning show.

And I was like, oh, my God.

This is insane.

Those men and women

who produced that show

did their job.

It was an international hit.

By 1993,

we had 158 countries

that were airing Baywatch

in 42 different languages

on every continent,

except Antarctica.

There were villages that

would fire up a generator just

to watch the show.

Here at the edge

of the Brazilian jungle,

yes, folks, it's Baywatch.

They ended up being

the most watched

television show in the world,

with over a billion viewers.

It communicated globally

because you can dub it.

You can put it in

other languages,

and it's still beautiful.

It's still entertaining.

It's the California Dream.

♪

That's cute.

You girls in front,

you look great.

♪

Everyone tuned in

to watch the show

because you knew you were

going to see someone sexy.

It wasn't just a sexy female.

It was a sexy male.

And it was fun to watch.

Everyone likes

to watch sexy things.

Every year

we'd bring in new people

and exit other people.

It was definitely something

that I dreamed

and aspired to do.

Once I saw the show,

I was like,

how can I get on that beach?

- Baywatch was a show

that was not character driven.

We were as interchangeable

as socks.

And then there were three

24-year-old Stacy Kamano,

19-year-old Jason Momoa,

and 26-year-old Kala'i Miller

are officially

cast members

of Baywatch: Hawaii.

I went to Hawaii

to do an open call.

And there were thousands.

It was lines out the door.

And the minute Jason

walked in

it was like,

okay, we've got our guy.

He just was a perfect

Baywatch lifeguard.

And we hired him right away.

He was 6'5"

and great physique,

was a terrific natural actor.

Jason Momoa was

God, what was he, 21 probably

back then.

Everybody loved him.

He was like a total

maniac but smiling and kind

the whole time but just

running around carefree.

Gosh, he was so young

back then.

So no beard but still an

anomaly, like a rare specimen,

even back then, you know.

And that's something

that creators really had.

They had a knack

of finding stars.

Jason Momoa, he is the

the one that exploded

off of Baywatch.

He was just drop-dead gorgeous.

And he was just a kid.

And he was so nervous,

very raw,

very quiet, very shy,

and just sweet,

really, really sweet.

He's the biggest star today,

I think Baywatch, they gave

us a lot of gifts.

They gave us a lot of beauty,

a lot of sex.

It was a wild time,

and I was a wild chick.

Yes, I was the girl dancing

on tables, having a good time.

I was the number-one bad girl,

and Courtney Love

was number two.

And I thought, holy sh*t,

that's insane.

Carmen Electra was

perfect on so many levels

for the '90s and for Baywatch.

I mean, she was a musician.

She was a dancer but also

super sexy on top of it.

I grew up in

Cincinnati, Ohio,

in the Midwest.

I started dancing at

five years old, and I went

to the School for Creative

and Performing Arts at nine.

Studied classical ballet.

I'm at heart a performer.

That's who I am.

I love to entertain.

Carmen!

I auditioned for a band that

Prince was putting together.

Prince was obviously the

most respected creator sort

of in the world of music

imaginable,

and he would create

these entire worlds.

And he could sort of

pluck you out of nowhere

and kind of turn

you into a star.

It was insane.

I couldn't even believe it.

I had to pinch myself.

Like, he really guided me

and taught me a lot.

I was born Tara Leigh Patrick.

And I remember

him saying to me,

you do not look like a Tara.

And once he gave me that

name, Carmen Electra,

it was like I had this

different persona.

So on videos produced by his

Paisley Park record label,

Prince promoted Carmen Electra.

Is it art, or is it just

a display of flesh? ♪

Contained, slangin',

and bangin' to a bass drum ♪

Silhouetted by lights,

caught up in the hype ♪

I'm doing my own thing

night after night ♪

Go, go, dancer ♪

And it gave me the confidence

to push myself to get

out there and try new things.

I remember having this thought

that I wanted to be

my own boss.

That's when I decided

to take a chance

in LA and be on my own.

It was really hard.

I ended up being homeless.

I was sleeping on couches.

But I know

that struggling in LA

and going through

those hard times

is what gave me the drive.

I can't hold them

in much longer,

so you better bring out

that man!

She eventually replaced

Jenny McCarthy

on Singled Out on MTV

and became

a real sort of personality

in that mold from there.

Hi, I'm Carmen Electra,

and I'm standing here

with a hundred sea serpents,

and they're slithering

around just to find a date.

MTV was the barometer

that you would check in

of all things cool.

If it was on MTV, it was cool.

What are they wearing?

Who's the hot person?

That's who you're

going to be attracted to

because that's the prototype,

because MTV says so.

And because, clearly,

the producers of Baywatch

are watching all things MTV,

they are like, we got to get

Carmen Electra on our show.

Carmen, that's good.

If you scoot a little bit

that way or just

MATTHEW: Baywatch was stealing

other audiences

to bring to their audience.

She looks the part.

She's fun, she's cool.

We like her.

Let's bring her

and her MTV audience.

My agents called

and said, Baywatch wants you

to come in and audition.

I auditioned with Hasselhoff.

He was right there

in front of me.

I was so nervous.

Get out of there, Mike.

I'll k*ll you.

I knew Baywatch was

the number-one show

in the world,

and that was going to take me

to a different level

in the career I already had.

I remember getting

that call in my car.

"You got the job."

And I just turned

the music up so loud,

and I was driving

in Hollywood.

And I just felt like

I was on top of the world.

♪

So many girls wanted

to be a Baywatch babe,

and there's just

a little handful of us,

and that is so f*cking dope.

I love it.

I'm proud. I'm proud of that.

f*ck, yeah, I'm a Baywatch

b*tch, and I love it.

♪

That's headquarters.

That's where we

shot right there.

Hello.

Good to see you.

I was at the beach most days.

You would drive up to set

in the morning,

and there would be, like,

50 or 60 people outside

with cameras already

outside the parking lot.

Okay, folks, we got to move

some equipment.

So I got to ask everybody

to move this way.

Back up, please.

Back up.

I'm Jaason Simmons.

I played Logan Fowler

on Baywatch.

Are you as empowered a woman

as you are a lifeguard?

Empowered enough to boot your

little butt back Down Under.

- I'd wager you're not.

- Not what?

Not as tough to get

along with

out of uniform.

♪

Growing up in Tasmania,

it's one of the most beautiful

places on the planet.

I arrived in LA when I was 20.

Came here, one-way ticket,

no money to call anybody,

didn't know anybody.

We always wanted this

bad-boy Australian character.

So there was a guy

named Jacko who

was doing battery commercials.

In one of these

and in one of these.

You know, it was right

around when Crocodile Dundee

was coming out.

So Jaason Simmons came in.

He was terrific.

He had that accent.

He was great-looking.

He had the hair.

And we kind of were developing

the character around him.

This year

our Rookie of the Year Award

goes to our exchange lifeguard

from Australia,

Logan Fowler.

He played the bad boy.

He was always seducing.

His character was

always seducing women.

And he did it so well.

Are you his GF?

- What?

- His girlfriend?

Matt and I are just friends.

I've only been here

three days from Tasmania.

Just trying to figure out how

all the pieces fit together.

So Jaason Simmons

was brought onto the show

to be this sort of, like,

womanizing lifeguard.

But the irony of Jaason

was he was pretty much

an openly g*y man in his,

you know, private life.

So, because of the stigma,

it was a huge thing

to try to out actors

or musicians that were g*y.

It was like a sport

for paparazzi.

When people are talking about

you, it can take you down,

and it destroyed a lot

of people inside.

So it does take a very strong

person to make it through.

The obsession

with celebrity had changed.

We went from admiring

these people

to, let's take you down.

People that knew

Jaason would try

to sell stories to the press

that he was really a g*y man.

He's not this womanizing

hunk on Baywatch.

And Jaason even says

they literally hunted him

like an animal,

trying to out him.

Kiss, kiss.

It was anything

to show him in a relationship

kissing his boyfriend.

You sell one of those

pictures, and you can make

hundreds of thousands

of dollars with one photo.

It was very

difficult for him.

He's one of my closest

friends on the show, and

So it was a secret

that we kept.

It was so dangerous for a man

to come out,

especially when you're

a handsome leading man,

because producers

wouldn't hire you

as a hetero guy, getting girls,

and that was the character

he was playing.

If they found out

that he was g*y at the time,

you know, it could have

blown up the show.

Can we have a word?

Just a simple little outfit,

this thing here.

Yes, it is.

Alexandra Paul knew,

and they pretended to be

boyfriend and girlfriend.

There are pictures

in the National Enquirer

of him and I holding hands

and kissing

because he needed a beard.

We did a photo sh**t

of both of us naked

that appeared on the cover

of a British newspaper.

We wanted to make sure

he was protected.

That's what he had to do then.

I had so much anxiety

that she would have to take me

to therapy twice a week

when I was on the first season,

just to get through everything

that wasn't acting.

So our relationship

became very strong.

Jaason Simmons. Aah!

At moments,

he really enjoyed the fame

because the show was just

exploding at the time.

I'm selling

this to Hard Copy.

Quick, smooch.

And Jaason, you know,

he's awkward a little bit,

especially around a bunch

of strangers.

And there's times where

I think he just felt like,

what the f*ck am I doing here?

I don't belong here.

This isn't who I am.

So you've got all

these straight people

doing dirty things in ads

with Calvin Klein.

You've got all these straight

people posing for Playboy.

But if you're g*y,

you can't be on television

without getting sneaky.

You can't judge an actor

on their sexuality.

They can be leading men.

Being g*y doesn't make

you less masculine.

I just wanted to

show that g*y people

can play straight characters.

Love is love,

and acting is acting.

This new generation

of young people don't care,

and I love that.

And I wish that that had been

the case in the 1990s

because it would have

Been so much less painful

For Jaason.

♪

Hollywood since

the beginning of time

is portrayed

as this magical place,

that anything can happen.

California's

a characterit's special.

It's like Baywatch

really amplified California

when it was airing

because we showed

the glamour of the beaches.

We showed what the life

would be like here.

To people who are not

from California,

this is the big dream

sunsets and sunrises

and beautiful people.

The thing that's

interesting about California,

specifically in the '90s,

is that on television,

we saw one thing.

On CNN, we saw

a different thing.

In the real world,

you had this racial dynamic

that was playing out.

Before George Floyd,

we had Rodney King.

And this is when video cameras

were starting.

And now someone had videoed

complete and total

horrific police brutality

on a Black motorist.

And this just sparked outrage.

Very tense situation here.

Demonstrators now toe to toe

with the police officers.

Hey, you two.

Come on.

- I'm an innocent victim.

- Let's go.

We're burning down

our gas stations.

We're burning down

our supermarkets.

You know, it don't

make no sense.

All of it was coming.

It was just a matter of time.

It was crazy.

There were fires

on every corner.

That's the first time

that I heard the word "curfew."

Everyone was on lockdown.

You couldn't leave

where you were.

I was just like,

this is insane.

Like, where am I?

And yet the one

Black star on Baywatch

turns out to have a kind of

amazing real-life connection

to the riots in the wake

of the Rodney King verdict.

I was there,

and a man came

through the

intersection in a Bronco 2,

and several bricks

hit his window simultaneously.

His front window shattered.

That's Williams

in the red shorts.

You know, people

broke the windows

on the Bronco and began

beating himyou know, pipes,

rods, bricks, fists, bottles.

And I watched him slump forward

onto the steering wheel.

I'm saying to myself,

man, if you stand here

and let these people k*ll

this man in front of you,

you can't look yourself

in the eye ever again.

It's a very tumultuous time,

particularly all the

conversation going on

about race.

None of that is touching

Baywatch.

I kept asking

the producers

to please give me

a boyfriend who was of color.

And so they said,

Alexandra, we've written

in a couple of episodes

where you have a boyfriend.

And guess what.

He's Latin.

And I said, oh, that's great.

And then I read the script,

and he's a g*ng member.

And I went back to

the producers, and I said,

you cannot make him

a g*ng member.

So they made him

an ex-g*ng member.

You were in a g*ng?

Let's just say it's kind

of hard to be a saint

growing up in the city.

We made so many mistakes

back then in the '90s.

Greg Alan Williams was

the only person of color

who was a regular

for the first, what,

six years of the show?

I'm Greg Alan Williams.

I played

Sergeant Garner Ellerbee

on Baywatch

for about six, seven seasons.

I was born and raised

in Des Moines, Iowa,

child of a single mother

from Mississippi.

My mother was my acting coach.

She wasn't a stage mom,

but she did teach me

the magic of the written

and spoken word.

What did you

do in the circus?

Fancy sh**ting, mostly.

Then I started my tricks

flat spins,

all kinds of spins,

little tricks

that catch the eye.

Sammy Davis Jr.

was the first person of color

I'd seen playing

a cowboy on television.

He was in an episode

of The Rifleman

when I was eight or nine years

old, playing a gunslinger

and doing all these

tricks with g*ns.

I auditioned for Baywatch

in May of '89.

My agent called me and said,

they want you to come to LA

and do this beach show.

I had the absolute time

of my life.

I never imagined that

I'd be part of that mix,

running and jumping

and driving ATVs.

You know, 110 brothers

auditioned for that role,

my understanding is.

Why did I get it?

One of the reasons

because I was kind of pudgy

and because I'm shorter

than Hasselhoff.

First season I came

into Baywatch,

I was a little heavy.

I do remember

getting a trainer.

And, I mean, I got fit.

I was looking good.

Somebody told me one day, now,

Greg Alan, don't get too fit.

Because I got wrapped up in,

right, this show

is about pretty people.

I need to get myself

together

because I'm part

of these people.

No, you ain't.

That was another reminder.

You can't be as fit

as the lead guy.

I forgot my place on Baywatch,

my character's place.

My job wasn't to be sexy.

I was a sidekick, sidekick.

Man, the sidekick

can't be sexy.

Sidekick got to be a clown.

Okay. I got 'em, Jaws.

I got 'em! I got 'em!

It's all

about the aesthetics, baby.

And my beauty

was not celebrated.

So Baywatch did

these promotional tours.

The show was constantly

being promoted

and reminded to the consumer,

this is the show.

These are the cast.

These are the pretty people.

In 1989, Greg Bonann called

me up one day, said,

they're going to do Christmas

promos for Baywatch.

Greg Alan, we want

you out there.

I went out to the beach

was walking across that sand.

A woman began

walking toward me.

As I got halfway there,

she said,

Greg Alan, we don't need you

in these shots.

That walk back across that

sand was the longest walk

I've ever taken in my life.

I realized that I was not

what they were selling.

Baywatch was a show

that celebrated

European beauty.

So, at that point,

I put up a wall

between myself and the show

and decided

I would have the fun

And make the money

But I wasn't going to let it

hurt me.

Those were Baywatch lessons.

Baywatch was

of great value to me.

It taught me.

It empowered me.

Every now and then, it hurt me.

♪

But so do the people

and the things we love.

I need to take a break, okay?

Ah, Jesus.

Man, I really appreciate this,

you know.

I really needed a chance

to work through this sh*t, man.

♪

♪

Some people stand

in the darkness ♪

Afraid to step

into the light ♪

Some people need

to help somebody ♪

When the edge of surrender's

in sight ♪

Don't you worry ♪

It's gonna be all right ♪

♪

♪ 'Cause I'm always ready ♪

♪ I won't let you

out of my sight ♪

♪

I'll be ready ♪

Oh, I'll be ready ♪

♪ Never you fear ♪

♪ Oh, don't you fear ♪

♪ I'll be ready ♪

♪ I'll be ready ♪

♪ Forever and always ♪

♪ I'm always here ♪

♪

♪ I'm always here

by your side ♪

♪ I'm always here by your ♪

By your side ♪

♪ 'Cause I'm always ready ♪

♪ I won't let you

out of my sight ♪

♪ Whoa, whoa ♪

♪ I'll be ready ♪

♪ Oh, I'll be ready ♪

♪ Never you fear ♪

♪ Don't you fear ♪

♪ I'll be ready ♪

♪ Forever and always ♪

♪ Forever and always ♪

♪ Forever and always ♪

♪ Forever and always ♪

-Forever ♪

-And always ♪

♪ I'm always here ♪