Tori Spelling has named her worst on-set experience, claiming director Chris Matheson left her “shuddering” with anxiety during the 2003 shoot of Evil Alien Conquerors.
The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, 53, made the revelation on Stephen Baldwin’s One Bad Movie podcast, where she singled out the sci-fi comedy as the low point of her film career. Spelling explained that she had taken the role hoping to break free from her “Aaron Spelling’s daughter” persona, attracted by the film’s comedic premise and her character’s outlandish appearance. “All I know is I had a big, furry unibrow and furry feet, and I was one of the girlfriend. I was so excited. This is going to be great for me,” she recalled.
The experience quickly soured, according to Spelling. “From the moment I stepped on set, it was like I couldn’t say one word without the director being like, ‘Uh, Tori, can you do that again?'” she claimed. Despite considering herself skilled at comedy, she said Matheson repeatedly asked her to do “a little bit less” with her performance. “In drama, sometimes I was like, ‘Okay, if I get that note, I understand that.’ But in comedy, no one ever gave me a note. It was always like, Oh my God, that’s great. Go for it,” she continued.
Spelling alleged that Matheson would publicly single her out after every take, regardless of whether the scene involved one other actor or twenty. “By the end I knew he’d go through the first take, and then he’d be like ‘Cut!’ And I’m like, ‘Wait for it,’ and he’d be like, ‘Tori…'” she claimed. “Every time! He would say it out loud across all the other actors and everyone in the room and I’d be shuddering.”
The public criticism took a severe emotional toll, Spelling said. “I went to set every day just, like, in a puddle of… I don’t know,” she shared. She eventually asked her manager to have her removed from the film’s credits entirely. “I was like, ‘Just fire me and recast. This is so hard on me,'” she recalled. “So if you look it up, it doesn’t credit me,” Spelling added that when she watched the finished film, she felt disappointed with her own restrained performance: “I watched it. I’m fine in it. But I’m like, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done more with it.’ It was a comedy. It was just, like, a goofy comedy. He just didn’t like me.”
Matheson, 67, responded to Spelling’s account in a statement to People magazine. “I’m sorry she felt that way. I like Tori personally. I just think we have some different ideas about comedy,” he said.
In the viral moment that sparked this broader reckoning, Spelling’s podcast comments quickly circulated across entertainment outlets, prompting Matheson’s rare public response. The exchange marked an unusual instance of a director directly addressing decades-old on-set grievances from a former cast member. Evil Alien Conquerors, which featured Chris Parnell, Diedrich Bader, and Elden Henson, was made for approximately $500,000 and received largely negative reviews upon its limited release.
Spelling continues to revisit her past through podcast appearances and her own MisSpelling show, where she has discussed everything from her Beverly Hills, 90210 years to her personal relationships.
Spelling is scheduled to appear at the Washington State Summer Con in Puyallup from June 20 through June 22.