“Baywatch” stars talk about their love-hate relationship with the series in new documentary

The cast of the first season of “Baywatch”.

Pearson All-American Television/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

The original Baywatch was canceled 25 years ago, but still enjoys a cultural omnipresence that arguably overshadows any other canceled television series.

There was a brief spin-off and a panned movie (more of a parody than a big-screen remake), and recently there was talk of a reboot. But no side project has ever matched the power of the original: an infinitely exportable ode to a Southern California that never really existed, with its oft-reused cast of muscular Caucasians. So there’s finally going to be a documentary about it.

With the participation of numerous former cast members, including franchise face Pamela Anderson, After Baywatch: Moment in the sun hits Hulu on August 28. Many of them, including Traci Bingham, Traci Bingham and Erika Eleniak, but not Anderson, appeared in Pasadena on Wednesday afternoon to promote the project in the television press.

In seasons three and four, Nicole Eggert, Charles is in charge fame, is the only cast member of the lifeguard drama to be credited as a producer on the project. And as she told reporters, her original attempts to get the project off the ground kept revolving around a reality show about Baywatch graduates – something she wasn’t interested in. It was her colleague and later director Matthew Felker who turned her on to a documentary. “My first call was to David Hasselhoff,” she recalls. “When he wanted to do it, I just said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go for it.'”

Those gathered on stage expressed varying views on their time on the show — a show that famously picked up and kicked out actors at great rates. (After all, it was only the absent Hasselhoff who stayed on for the entire duration of the show.) Original star Billy Warlock admitted as much in a clip from the documentary that aired before the panel, saying, “Everyone was expendable.”

Bingham, the only black actress, spoke warmly about her time on the show and her casting. “It was considered an all-white show, and I think at some point the producers realized that everyone was going to the beach,” she said of her casting. “My hair and makeup were done superbly. I was treated with great care. It was a dream job.”

Electra, who also joined later in the season, used her time on stage to talk about the learning curve that comes with going from MTV personality to actress overnight. “I had a make-out scene and I didn’t realize that you don’t actually have to kiss,” she said, turning to her co-star David Chokachi, with whom she shared the scene in question. “I just went in and tongued him. Do you remember that?” (Chokachi nodded in agreement.)

But it was Eggert who seemed to best express the strange details of fame that Baywatch.

“I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the show,” she said. “It’s been an evolution, and I appreciate that and I’m proud of it, but I really want people to see who we all really are. I see a lot of articles where there’s a picture of me at 19 and in a bathing suit next to me at 52. And it’s like, ‘What happened to her?’ Let’s talk about it. Everyone (here) has a story.”

After Baywatch: Moment in the sun Premieres on Hulu on August 28th.