Baywatch (1989–2001)
Trivia
NBC canceled the show in 1990 after its first season. It was immediately revived in first-run syndication, and became one of the most popular shows in the world. At its height, it aired in 148 countries, on every continent except Antarctica. After 11 years in syndication, it was canceled for the second time in 2001.
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Spoilers (3)
Most of the cast weren't even strong swimmers. Pamela Anderson hates water.
The longest-running show to never win an Emmy until Supernatural (2005).
After its California run, the show was going to move to Australia. Due to severe backlash from Australians, the show moved to Hawaii.
Neve Campbell auditioned for the series but the casting director turned her down because he thought she was too pale. Alicia Silverstone, Teri Hatcher, and Denise Richards were also passed over for roles.
The one-piece bathing suits worn by the female leads were designed by a sport swimsuit company, and inspired by real-life competitive swimming gear. According to Alexandra Paul, once a cast member was fitted for their suit, they were not allowed to gain weight. The same rule applied to the male cast.
Alexandra Paul originally tried out for the roles of CJ Parker and Summer Quinn. Being slim with small breasts did not earn her the role of the athletic eye-catcher CJ, and she was too old to play Summer. The producers liked Paul, and thought she would be a perfect love interest for David Hasselhoff. They created the role of Stephanie Holden for her.
In 1994, when the show was at the height of its popularity, NBC took out an ad in the Hollywood Reporter, admitting that canceling the show was a mistake.
Originally, David Hasselhoff (who played Mitch Buchannon) was against the casting of Pamela Anderson as C.J. Parker because he was afraid that her large breasts would draw attention away from the rest of the cast.
The show drew more female viewers than male. Statistics showed that female viewership was at a dominating 65 percent.
Michael Newman (Newmie) and Gregory J. Barnett (Jim Barnett) were real lifeguards. They were originally hired as technical advisers, but were bumped to recurring roles by the second season.
The slow mo shots were inspired by the Olympics. From the beginning, Baywatch's visual trademark was the sight of a lifeguard running toward danger in slow-motion. Michael Berk recalled the idea came from a producing partner of his who had just been shooting the 1988 Summer Olympic Games and had captured footage of sprinters at slower frame rates during the 100-meter dash. David Hasselhoff later claimed the shots were used to pad shows that were running short without having to spend more money for footage.
Michael Newman was a lifeguard when co-creator (and fellow competitive swimmer) Gregory J. Bonann tapped him for a supporting role on the show. Newman was able to do stunts, instruct cast members on rescue protocol, and share stories of real-life rescues for story plots.
California beaches can get very cold. The water was often around 60 degrees. Gena Lee Nolin and Yasmine Bleeth came down with hypothermia.
Tom Selleck was offered the role of Mitch Buchannon, but turned it down since he did not want to be recognized as a sex symbol.
The Shah of Iran's wife once told David Hasselhoff that Iranian families with satellite dishes would sell tickets to watch new episodes of this show in their homes.
According to David Hasselhoff (who played Mitch Buchannon) in his autobiography, Don't Hassle the Hoff, Tommy Lee, who was married to Pamela Anderson (who played C.J. Parker) at the time, would go crazy whenever his wife had love scenes with David Chokachi (who played Cody Madison), breaking windows and screaming until security removed him from the set.
When the show moved to syndication, the budget was cut by 30 percent. To save money, several sets were actually functional rooms for crew members to use off-screen. The lifeguard station kitchen had running water and was used as a break room. A gym set was practical enough for David Hasselhoff to pump his pecs between takes.
According to the creators Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz, NBC hated the concept from the beginning. They didn't think a bunch of supermodel-looking men and women running around half-naked in slow motion would keep audience attention, and urged the creators to turn it into a gritty crime drama. "The odds were against us," Michael Berk said. "Network executives didn't think there was a series there. 'How many times can lifeguards run out and do CPR?' We got canceled. You don't come back from cancellation! So we created first-run syndication just to survive." GTG, the studio backing the show, went out of business. Berk and Schwartz thought the show had potential after a European company called them asking if there were any more episodes to buy. They asked GTG boss Grant Tinker if they could buy back the worldwide rights. Tinker laughed at them and asked for $10, with the caveat that GTG got $5,000 per episode if the show succeeded by the end of the year, and got the show back if it failed. Berk and Schwartz put the word out that they were accepting offers for syndication. A German-owned company, reasoning that any show starring David Hasselhoff would be a hit there, immediately offered $400,000 per episode. The pair got additional funding from British broadcaster ITV, whose showing of the first season was winning the ratings war against the BBC's Doctor Who (1963) which was in it's final season. ITV asked that a condition be made that the series would be made as a family-friendly show. The series was launched into first-run syndication, and became a worldwide hit.
Huge numbers of viewers in Iceland complained about the subtitles, which sometimes covered 'vital' imagery.
C.J. Parker was supposed to be the female action character. This role was partly transferred to Neely Capshaw and Stephanie Holden. C.J. had fewer physical scenes partly due to Pamela Anderson's pregnancies.
After NBC canceled the show in the United States, British broadcaster LWT (now part of ITV) stepped in to help save the program. The series helped ITV in its ratings war against the BBC.
Shawn Weatherly replaced Pamela Bowen as Jill Riley due to Bowen's debilitating fear of water.
Erika Eleniak (Shauni McClain), Pamela Anderson (C.J. Parker), Donna D'Errico (Donna Marco), Traci Bingham (Jordan Tate), Carmen Electra (Lani McKenzie), Angelica Bridges (Taylor Walsh), Marliece Andrada (Skylar Bergman), Brande Roderick (Leigh Dyer), and Alicia Rickter (Carrie Sharp) all appeared in Playboy Magazine.
Much like her character Stephanie Holden who has a sister named Caroline Holden, Alexandra Paul has a (twin) sister also named Caroline. The producers first wanted Paul's real twin sister Caroline to play the part of Stephanie's sister, but the real Caroline was unavailable at that time, so someone else was needed for the one-off part. Yasmine Bleeth was cast in the role. Yasmine soon became a series regular.
David Hasselhoff holds the Guinness World Record of The World's Most Watched Man on Television
Each red swimsuit was tailored differently, whether the straps were skinny or wide, the legs cut higher, or some necklines more plunging than others, to accentuate the actress wearing it. "I wanted them to be real and practical and actually work in the surf," Gregory J. Bonann told the New York Times in 2019. TYR, a competitive swimwear company, helped with the original design. Added Michael Berk, "We never tried to be sexy intentionally. It was all about athletes and functionality." The coverage got skimpier as the years went by, however, and by the time Kelly Packard joined the show, "my swimsuit was so far up my butt, that I started crying," she told E!. She was duly outfitted in another suit that was previously worn by Alexandra Paul. And that wasn't the only time they reused suits originally worn by others. "They give you this red suit and inside...it says 'PAM,'" Traci Bingham told Esquire. "I thought, 'Oh my god, this is amazing-they're actually letting me wear one of her suits."
Traci Bingham's character Jordan Tate is also the name of a fictional Playboy Playmate portrayed by real-life Playmate and fellow Baywatch alum Erika Eleniak in the Steven Seagal movie Under Siege (1992).
It was in her contract that Alexandra Paul (who played Stephanie Holden) did not have to wear the trademark red swimsuit, she quickly ditched the uniform and donned the swimsuit.
Paula Abdul and Sandra Bullock were tested for roles.
David Hasselhoff was cast over Tom Wopat, William Katt, Lorenzo Lamas, Adrian Paul, and Jack Scalia for the lead role of Mitch Buchannon.
Despite being NBC's highest-rated show in the Friday 8 p.m. time slot since Knight Rider (1982), Baywatch didn't meet expectations (critically or commercially), they were canceled after 22 episodes. In a double whammy, the studio behind the production, GTG (owned by former NBC executive and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) producer Grant Tinker) was shutting down. Billy Warlock insisted to Esquire that ratings had nothing to do with the cancellation; rather, "we just didn't have the money. It was a big show." Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz's uncle, Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of Gilligan's Island (1964) and The Brady Bunch (1969), advised his nephews to buy the rights to their show from GTG. Which they did, for $10. "If we weren't successful at the end of that year, they got Baywatch back," Schwartz told the New York Times in 2017. "If we were successful they got $5,000 an episode." They asked Hasselhoff to take a 50 percent pay cut in exchange for an executive producer role. The Hoff's popularity in Germany helped them secure $300,000 an episode from "continental Europe" as part of a first-run syndication deal, Berk told Esquire and at the height of its popularity, Baywatch reached a weekly audience of 1.1 billion people in 142 countries.
In 2019, the series was digitally remastered, with over 350 new songs created to score the Baywatch montages. So far this remastered version is only available on Amazon Prime in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. In 2021, Comedy Central (U.K. and Ireland) started broadcasting the widescreen remaster starting from series 3.
Was nicknamed "Babewatch" in many countries, due to the fact that most of the female lifeguards were played by former (Playboy) models.
NBC almost fired Erika Eleniak (who played Shauni McClain) after finding out she had just posed nude for Playboy.
Producers originally wanted to use "The Boys of Summer" by Don Henley for the Baywatch theme song, but they couldn't afford the $100,000 licensing fee at that time.
Tia Carrere auditioned for a role as a marine biologist. She turned the part down to play Cassandra Wong in Wayne's World (1992).
Hobie Buchannon was named after famous surf and sailing entrepreneur and pioneer Hobie Alter who was also the founder of the famous Hobie company.
Despite its virtues, American network viewers weren't all that enamored with Baywatch when it premiered in 1989; the show finished 74th out of 111 series that year. International viewers, however, couldn't get enough. Its popularity in Germany and the U.K. helped convince co-creators Douglas Schwartz, Michael Berk and Gregory J. Bonann to resurrect it for syndication. To make the deal work, David Hasselhoff volunteered to reduce his salary per-episode in order to receive a greater share of the profits if it was a hit.
Nicole Eggert has expressed regret on numerous occasions about joining the show in the first place, but she agreed to do the reunion movie years later, she explained to Esquire, because by then "it was kind of good to be able to go back comfortable in your skin, knowing you look good, knowing you look better." What she and the producers could agree on, though, was that she did not get breast-enhancement surgery because they asked her to. "I did the breast implants on my own. That was all me," Eggert said on Oprah: Where Are They Now? in 2015. "They never asked me to do that." Still, "a year later, I had them reduced quite significantly." "We never asked anybody to get a boob job, even though several of them did," Michael Berk told Esquire.
According to producers, Billy Warlock convinced Erika Eleniak, who he was dating at the time, to leave the show with him. According to Billy, Erika Made the choice all by herself. In an interview years later, Erika gives Billy as the reason for her leaving the show.
Even the cast admitted that when they ran out of plots, the writers recycled them from earlier episodes.
In 1999, an Australian version of "Baywatch" was planned, and the cast members traveled to Sydney for filming. The plan was to have the established stars appear in the pilot of the new series, working side by side with their Australian counterparts to launch "Baywatch Down Under". After the pilot was filmed, residents of Avalon, a local village, voiced strong objections, citing the potential danger to their fragile ecosystem. As a result, the Avalon Council permanently banned all future filming. The pilot eventually aired as Baywatch: Baywatch Down Under: Part 1 (1999) and Baywatch: Baywatch Down Under: Part 2 (1999).
According to producers, actress Nicole Eggert (who played Summer Quinn) was very "competitive" with co-star Pamela Anderson (who played C.J. Parker). Midway through season four, the star arrived on set with breast enhancements. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but the crew had already filmed part of the episode with Nicole Eggert's original bust size. To hide the change, the director had to "put things in front of her and hide her for the rest of the episode." Nicole Eggert decided not to return for season five.
After Brandon Call left the series to star as J.T. Lambert on the TV series sitcom Step by Step (1991), the role of Hobie Buchannon almost went to Leonardo DiCaprio.
In Baywatch: Second Time Around (1994) when Mitch Buchannon is at home playing with his guitar, he has a fantasy that he is a rock star and imagines that he is performing in concert in front of a crowd. For the fantasy sequence, a montage footage of David Hasslehoff (Mitch) performing live on stage in Berlin, Germany was used. In real life, David Hasslehoff was a singer who was highly popular in Germany and Austria.
Pamela Anderson (who played C.J. Parker) and David Charvet (who played Matt Brody) dated before joining the series. The characters Matt and C.J had a brief romance on the show.
Billy Warlock, who played Eddie Kramer, recalled on the E! True Hollywood Story about the show that the ocean was apparently so full of garbage and other suspect substances, medics would disinfect the actors as soon as they got out of the water, spraying "every orifice you could find."
The title "Baywatch" refers to the rescue boats that have been patrolling Southern California beaches for decades.
David Hasselhoff said he initially didn't want to do the show, dismissively calling it "Knight Rider in a bathing suit." Referring to Hasselhoff's previous hit show Knight Rider (1982). The producers eventually won him over.
Even in Los Angeles, shooting the pilot movie Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier in the dead of January in 49-degree water wasn't working, so they moved the production to Hawaii. That proved much warmer, but there were sharks in the water, so guys with stun guns were called in to guard the lives of the lifeguards.
Baywatch's ratings skyrocketed after the sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee was made available online.
Dean Cain auditioned for the role of Matt Brody.
In 1996, the show was named by Guinness World Records as the most watched TV series in history, with a weekly, worldwide audience of over 1.1 billion people.
While developing the show, the producers tested a range of swimsuit colors, setting on blue. When filming started, the lifeguards wearing blue blended with the sky and sea. In red, they showed up on camera.
According to the producers, Parker Stevenson (who played Craig Pomeroy) left before Season 2 started because he did not want to have his salary cut to half after the show was moved from NBC to Syndication. He has never spoken out about why he left, but he returned during a later season (season 8).
David Hasselhoff (who played Mitch Buchannon) grew to dislike many of the end results of the show. He wanted Baywatch to be a family show, so he hated the more lewd aspects the show became famous for. To this day, he refuses to admit that Baywatch was anything but wholesome. He also thought Baywatch Nights (1995) was a dumb name, originally wanting to name the spin-off Santa Monica Nights. He would mockingly suggest in interviews that they could make new spin-offs called Baywatch Mornings or Baywatch Afternoons.
Producer Douglas Schwartz's business cards were once stolen. Afterwards, he began getting calls from actresses who claimed to have been promised a part on the show. The thief, who was later caught, was using the cards to further his social life.
In some countries, the first season was not syndicated with the rest of the show, which means some people have never seen Brandon Call as Mitch's son, Hobie Buchannon. In other countries, it is common for people to skip watching season one entirely and go straight to season two.
Whenever a cast member left the series, nine out of ten times one of their reasons for leaving would be that they didn't think the show or its writing was very good. Most notable was real-life professional surfer Kelly Slater, who played the recurring character Jimmy Slade, who openly criticized the show and demanded to be written out after reading the script for the episode Baywatch: Tentacles: Part 1 (1993), which had him fighting a giant octopus that steals surfboards.
Nicole Eggert (who played Summer Quinn) didn't realize what type of show Baywatch was when she signed on, thinking it'd be akin to something like Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). She quickly grew frustrated with the low writing quality and the absurd amount of fan-service, the latter of which caused her to develop self-esteem and body image issues. She eventually asked to be let out of her contract before the show could damage her career, though she returned later for the reunion movie. Ironically she is probably most well-known for her role in Baywatch, and a character in the film Baywatch was named Summer Quinn after her.
Jason Momoa (who played Jason Ioane) has said that the show's cheesy reputation really hurt his career and made it very difficult for him to find work for a long time. He also won't let his kids watch him on the series saying, "We don't say the B-word at home! We hide all of that mate! Never happened mate!" "We don't talk about those words, the B-word didn't happen." He also became popular with female viewers when he starred in Stargate Atlantis as Ronan Dax.
April Giminski (played by Kelly Packard) is the only female character to cross over between Season 8 & Season 9 after the rest of the female Baywatch cast were all let go during what was described as the "Baywatch Bloodbath."
When Pamela Anderson left the show, the producers went looking for another blonde bombshell to replace her. They eventually settled on The Price Is Right (1972) model Gena Lee Nolin to play the role of Neely Capshaw. The only problem was that Nolin wasn't an actress. In fact, she had terrible stage fright. To help her relax, the show's producers signed her up for hypnotherapy, which helped her calm down enough to film her scenes without panicking.
Carmen Electra crossed-over her Baywatch character, Lani McKenzie, to another series, Pacific Blue: Heartbeat (1997).
In 2009 David Hasselhoff announced intentions to start a UK version of Baywatch called UK Watch and would have taken place in either Eastbourne, Brighton, Bournemouth or Blackpool. Hasselhoff tapped UK glamour model Katie Price for the equivalent role that Pamela Anderson had in the US version. "I've been thinking about basing a new show over here. It would be called UK-Watch. And Jordan (Katie Price) is certainly feisty and has curves in all the right places," he is quoted as telling the Daily Star. However, as of currently, the series has yet to get off the ground.
One of the producers of the show, Douglas Schwartz's uncle Sherwood Schwartz, who created classic hit shows like Gilligan's Island (1964) and The Brady Bunch (1969) told Douglas that Baywatch was his Gilligan's Island and encouraged him to fight to get the show on the air.
Nicole Eggert and David Charvet were both 20 when they began playing Summer Quinn and Matt Brody, who were in high school at the start of season 3. Meanwhile, Billy Warlock was already 28 when he started to play 18-year-old Eddie Kramer in the first season.
The fourth season was the only one with no new regular characters. However, a third season character, Jimmy Slade (played by Kelly Slater), was dropped from the roster.
Pamela Anderson still has her red swimsuit and told the New York Times that she would slip into the iconic suit from time to time by taking a shower and likes to thrill her dates. Carmen Electra also told the paper that she keeps her red swimsuit famed and when people come over to the house, they get really excited; it just has this effect on people It was empowering.
The series' producers intended to make a show about the day-to-day adventures of lifeguards. But NBC wanted a murder mystery, with lifeguards solving crimes that washed up on their beach. Original cast member Parker Stevenson, meanwhile, was picturing a Hill Street Blues (1981)-on-the-water type of show. They ended up with a firefighter-cop-doctor-rescue procedural all in one.
David Hasselhoff was a big star on Knight Rider (1982), but he was in some forgettable roles during the late 1980s. Starring on Baywatch rocketed him back into the spotlight.
Baywatch was the brainchild of producer Gregory J. Bonann. He was a lifeguard who often worked with Michael Newman and came up with the series idea about lifeguards based on his experiences. Gregory pitched the idea around Hollywood for years without success until his sister married TV writer Douglas Schwartz. Douglas later teamed with Michael Berk and sold Gregory's idea to NBC.
The producers were not above bullying and harassing members of the cast to ensure that they maintain their figures. When Yasmine Bleeth (who played Caroline Holden) struggled with her weight, production staff put up a poster of her by the crafts service table reading: "If you see this woman next to this table, please make sure you shun her away".
In the TV comedy show Friends (1994), Joey Tribbiani (played by Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler Bing (played by Matthew Perry) make various references to the show. Chandler briefly renamed their pet Duck 'Yasmine', after Baywatch star Yasmine Bleeth. Matthew Perry dated Bleeth for a short time in 1996.
Both Nicole Eggert (who played Summer Quinn) and Erika Eleniak (who played Shauni McClain) appeared on The Real Gilligan's Island (2004) as Gingers with Eggert in season 1 and Eleniak in season 2.
It was Alexandra Paul (Stephanie Holden) own suggestion that the character of Caroline Holden should have the first name of Caroline after her real-life sister.
The United States retail DVD set from Fremantle Media unfortunately replaced the licensed songs from earlier seasons with songs by unknown bands; this will also affect the upcoming DVD re-release from Visual Entertainment. The German DVD set however retained all the original songs, as did the Australian release.
David Hasselhoff seemingly wanted the spin-off Baywatch Nights (1995) to have little to no connection to the main show during its early production. He originally envisioned the show as reboot of Peter Gunn (1958) but failed to secure the rights. After that, he wanted to name the show Santa Monica Nights but had to rename it to include the Baywatch brand at the producers' insistence.
Kelly Slater never really wanted to be an actor, and only did Baywatch because his manager convinced him it'd be a career boost. In a 2014 interview, he revealed that he frequently clashed with the writers over the quality of the scripts, which was one of the reasons he eventually asked to be written out of the show for good.
The closing credits theme from Series 1 which was composed by Kim Carnes had a deeply haunting quality to it and it truly reflects on the lifeguards whom risk their lives everyday to save the lives of others and lifeguards who died doing their jobs and saving others.
A key reason Baywatch was able to find new life after NBC was the dissolution of a partnership between production company Gannett and former network executive Grant Tinker. Because no entity existed to control the show's assets, producers were able to secure the rights to the series back for a perfunctory sum of $10.
According to the show's make-up artist, Joanna Balkin, the show went through 40 bottles of sunscreen a month.
While she was shooting the show, Carmen Electra's mother was ill, her schedule wasn't working out and she didn't feel it was right for her, so she only stayed for one season-but her character Lani McKenzie returned for the 2003 reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding (2003).
Kelly Packard had some minor roles on Baywatch before being cast as April Giminski.
Marliece Andrada (Skylar Bergman) and Jason Brooks (Sean Monroe) both had a minor guest role before becoming regular cast members.
In 2021, when Comedy Central (UK & Ireland) decided to run the original series, in a daytime "nostalgia" slot, in a double bill with The A-Team (1983), they decided to start with Season 3, episode 1, Baywatch: River of No Return: Part 1 (1992) which was the start of the episode run with Pamela Anderson.
Season 9 would have focused on Mitch Buchannon and Neely Capshaw adjusting to married life but the entire marriage plot was dropped quickly after Gena Lee Nolin left the series with the role being recast with Jennifer Campbell as Neely.
During the first season, many cast members worried that John Allen Nelson (who played John D. Cort), the most well-built actor on the show, would steal screen time from them and ostracized him for it. Ironically, the show would indeed focus on fan-service, and most of the original cast would be fired or demoted to glorified extras.
The 2019 remastering of the original series changed many things from the original series this includes the Season One opening being remade to "I'll Be Ready" over the original theme and replacing over 300 music tracks in the show to get around the issue of copyright. However, this caused many instances where dialogue or sound effects were also replaced if they had music in the background. In the cases where the characters themselves sing or dance to licensed music onscreen, the scene will often be cut entirely. The most notable example would be "The Runaways", which had over ten minutes of footage cut due to it being full of live performances. The remastering also switches the original full-screen episodes into a widescreen format, cropping off a fair bit of the footage in the process.
The proposal to relocate "Baywatch" to Hawaii rather than Australia was initiated by April Masini in a telephone call to executive producer Gregory J. Bonann.
Co-creator Michael Berk told the BBC in 2013 that NBC was initially less than enthusiastic about a lifeguard series, fearing there were only so many plots that could revolve around CPR. To prove the concept was viable, Berk and his partners shot a montage of lifeguard footage on Venice Beach and spliced it to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer." While that wouldn't appear to support an argument for substance, NBC bought the show.
Episodes were frequently aired out of order this caused no end of problems such as characters getting introductory episodes long after they've first started appearing, characters leave the show and keep appearing in future episodes and romance subplots are almost impossible to keep track of due to the fact that characters could break up in one episode and be together in the next among other things.
Jason Momoa won't let his kids watch him on the series saying, "We don't say the B-word at home! We hide all of that mate! Never happened mate!" "We don't talk about those words, the B-word didn't happen." He became a sex-symbol during his time on the show and later when he starred in the TV show Stargate Atlantis.
Oliver Theess was the first Pro Surfer to work on the pilot episode for "Baywatch".
The show displays its age quite readily with some of the musical guests it featured, including New Order (who were at the peak of commercial stardom at the time and were in the middle of promoting their album Republic, itself strongly influenced by 1990's house music) and The Beach Boys (who had experienced a massive commercial comeback in the late 1980's and early 1990's, though were already on their way out again by the time they appeared on the show in 1995).
In 2016, Donna D'Errico (who played Donna Marco) became a born-again Christian. She now regrets her role on Baywatch and has said that she'll never again appear in roles that require her to wear a swimsuit or other revealing attire.
Sandra Bullock was scheduled "to come in," but she passed on the role before this actually happened.
Wearing the suit-or showing off a body that could wear the suit-was part of the audition. Shawn Weatherly recalled in the True Hollywood Story (1996) unexpectedly being asked to take her clothes off, while Carmen Electra, who went right to her audition from the set of MTV's Singled Out (1995).
The show is a time capsule of mid-1990s culture, including technology such as primitive e-mail and internet and bulky cell phones, 1990s fashions, and more. Regarding the latter, the particular style of swimsuit used by the female lifeguards in particular became forever associated with the show (being often called simply the "Baywatch swimsuit"), but was only in vogue during the show's peak.
The character of C.J. Parker (who was played by Pamela Anderson) became one of the show's most iconic characters.
Pamela Anderson, who played C.J. Parker, is Canadian and David Charvet, who played Matt Brody, is French.
Even though Angelica Bridges became a prominent cast member in season 8, she only appeared in 4 episodes.
Donna D'Errico talked to Femme Fatales magazine in Sept. 1999 about why she quit the series, stating she felt it was a "very simple show" with "no high drama or acting talent involved." She said she left on good terms and David Hasselhoff understood, but she wouldn't go back to it. It was merely a rung on the ladder of her career.
Katie Lohmann auditioned for a role on Baywatch just before its cancellation but didn't receive a part on the show. However, she donned an authentic red swimsuit for a themed photo shoot.
Billy Warlock who plays 'Eddie Kramer' is seen in the beginning of each episode standing on his tower to the theme music with the letters Baywatch running across the screen.
The role of Neely Capshaw has been played by three different actresses Heather Campbell in season 5, Gena Lee Nolin in seasons 6-8 and Jennifer Campbell in season 9. Gena returned to the role for the 2003 TV movie Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding.
Pamela Anderson departed the show when she was pregnant with her second son, Dylan Lee, who was born in 1997, and her first son was born the previous year. After leaving the series, Anderson went on to reprise her role as C.J. in the 2003 (reunion) movie Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding.
David Chokachi portrayed Pamela Anderson's love interest Cody in Baywatch from 1995 to 1999. He left the show after 88 episodes to star in the TV series Witchblade as Detective Jake McCartey.
Spoilers
According to Alexandra Paul's own words, she asked for her character, Stephanie Holden, to be killed off the show.
Divorce is a common theme. At the beginning of season 1, Mitch Buchannon is newly divorced. When Craig Pomeroy returns in season 8 after leaving at the end of season 1, it's revealed that he and his wife Gina have divorced. In Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding (2003), Eddie Kramer and Shauni McClain, who married at the beginning of season 3, are now divorced.
Eddie Kramer (Billy Warlock) had a guest role on the Spin-off Baywatch Nights: Backup (1996). Little information is given about Eddie's life and Zero information is given about his wife Shauni McClain at all.
