Jason Priestley fought back tears in June as he remembered the directing moment that still sits closest to him: Luke Perry’s last episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. The memory was not just about a scene he shot years ago. It was about the last time he and Perry worked together in a moment Priestley still calls one of their best.
Priestley made his directorial debut in Season 3 of Beverly Hills, 90210, and he said his favorite directing memory came when Perry’s character fell to his knees in the rain, looked up at the heavens and cried out after learning his wife, Antonia “Toni” Marchette, had been killed in a drive-by shooting. He recalled rain towers running everywhere and a big camera on a crane pulling away as the scene unfolded. That is the moment that brought him close to tears on the Best With Them podcast, because he was not just remembering a job. He was remembering Perry.
The reason the recollection lands so hard is that the scene was joyous to make, even if the ending of the story is not. Priestley said he and Perry were having the best time shooting that material, and he said he still thinks back to those moments now that Perry is gone. Perry died in March 2019 at the age of 52 after suffering a massive stroke days earlier, and Priestley’s voice has carried that loss ever since.
Priestley nodded when asked whether he missed Perry, and he had already written an emotional Instagram tribute after the death. He called Perry his dear friend of 29 years, said he was an incredibly bright light extinguished far too soon, and later said that losing Perry and Shannon Doherty made him think about his own mortality. In August 2024, he said waking up on his 50th birthday made him realize he had already lived most of his life.
What remains unresolved is the exact episode title of Perry’s final Beverly Hills, 90210 appearance, but the memory Priestley described is unmistakable. It was the end of one on-screen chapter, the start of a lasting grief, and the kind of scene that now means something different every time he tells it.
