Stars of ‘Baywatch’ Talk Upcoming Special ‘After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun’
The cast of Baywatch recently surprised television critics at the TCA summer tour with a last-minute panel on ABC News Studios’ upcoming documentary series After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun. While Baywatch‘s biggest names, Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff, were not present, the actors who were able to make it, including Carmen Electra and Nicole Eggert, had a great time reuniting and discussing the project.
Here are what some of the stars had to say on the upcoming series, which will delve into the Baywatch mythology and how it left its mark on pop culture through interviews, never-before-seen footage and access to personal home videos made during the filming of this show about lifeguards in Malibu.
Rob Latour/Shutterstock for the Television Critics Association
Baywatch stars on their current feelings on the show that launched their careers
NICOLE EGGERT: Well, I love it so much. I mean, I’ve definitely had a love-hate relationship with the show over the years, but it’s been an evolution, and I definitely love it and appreciate it and am proud of it. And I just wanted everybody to see the people for who we all really are. I see a lot of articles where there’s like — I’ll use myself for example — [a picture] of me at 19 in my red swimsuit and then me at 52 at the market. And it’s like “What happened to her?” Well, let’s talk about what happened. Everybody has a great story; the great humans that I worked with, there’s so much more to them than just their beauty and their time on Baywatch.
TRACI BINGHAM: It was a great job. It was a dream job, and it was truly something that was just memorable for me. And the fact that I’m here right now, it says so much. I mean, this is the highest-rated, No. 1 show in the world. It still is. It’s not going anywhere. People love it, just can’t get enough.
On who would be a good lifeguard in real life
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ALEXANDRA PAUL: (Pointing to Billy Warlock and David Chokachi) These two guys were really good. I can attest to that.
BILLY WARLOCK: That’s what I did in high school. I was all-city, L.A. city schools top eight in butterfly backstroke.
ERIKA ELENIAK: I was a terrible swimmer. I did have to audition swimming, and they needed to see my level, my advancement, and how much they were going to need to stunt double me or not. So I was not very confident in the water and completely shark phobic. So, yeah, it was a little — I remember one year I did have it in my contract that I was only going to go in up to my knees and come out from my knees. Yeah, it was a bit of a struggle. We got through it, though.
JEREMY JACKSON: I personally got on the show because I was great in the water already, already surfing, boogie boarding, body surfing; [I was] a kid from Newport Beach. So they threw me in the pool after they thought they liked me and a few auditions, and asked if I could swim, and I said, “Well, what do you want? Backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle? What do you want?” So that was great. And [executive producer and director] Matt Felker could be a lifeguard right now. He’s ready.
MATTHEW FELKER: Possibly.
CARMEN ELECTRA: And David Chokachi. I remember the moment we tandem surfed — to me, that was just mind-blowing because I never thought I could do that. And to this day, it’s still one of my favorite moments that we had. But he’s the real deal, the real deal.
Photo by Rob Latour/Shutterstock
DAVID CHOKACHI: Yeah, I was lucky enough to grow up on the East Coast, grew up sailing and teaching sailing and swam on a swim team. And, you know, and my character was an Olympic swimming hopeful. So auditioning for that, you know, you can’t fake looking like an Olympic swimmer. I crushed the swim test; and, like, Jeremy, the same thing. I can drive boats. I could drive jet skis. I was a certified scuba diver, and all those things led to, you know, okay, we can hire this guy. We don’t need a stunt double, and we can write these complex action sequences that he can actually do and, you know, make the show look really cool. But, yeah, Carmen and I had some fun. We would shoot these rescues, and she didn’t like to be in water over her head like by that much. So she would have three water safety guys surrounding her.
ALEXANDRA PAUL: She just wanted those three guys.
CARMEN ELECTRA: The season I was on as David Chokachi’s love interest, and I remember, I was so green because I was coming from MTV and, you know, performing with Prince. And so then all of a sudden it’s, you know, you’re kind of toned down or whatever. And I remember we had a make-out scene, and I didn’t realize, like, you don’t have to kiss, and I went in. Do you remember that? I just tongued him down.
Photo by Rob Latour/Shutterstock
DAVID CHOKACHI: Oh, yeah. I didn’t complain. Trust me. I wasn’t fighting it. I was like, “I think we need, like, 10 more takes.”
On the staying power and reach of Baywatch
DAVID CHOKACHI: I met a woman who grew up in Siberia, in a very remote town, and I was talking to her on the Fourth of July. And she was like, “Oh, my God. I’m sitting next to Cody Madison.” They grew up watching Baywatch in this really remote town in Siberia. And I’m like, “What?” I’ve been to places, like, in Chile, I went through customs in this tiny town, and the customs guy was like, Baywatch. The show really penetrated around the world. It’s an hour of escapism, you know? We got a lot of backlash as actors that we couldn’t act and, you know, I fought against that quite hard because I always said we weren’t up there saying we’re doing Shakespeare. We’re doing Baywatch. It’s a genre. And if you can’t grasp that, then maybe you’re in the wrong business because that’s what it was, and it succeeded beyond everybody’s expectations. A billion viewers. We’re in the Guinness Book of World Records.
MATTHEW FELKER: It sells a fantasy. It was fantasy. The ’90s and the late ’80s were a generation where we didn’t expect as much from TV. I don’t think you expected much from Baywatch. It was a visual medium, and it’s a direct parallel to the social media age. Shows like that kind of died off a little bit because we get the visual feed of beautiful people on Instagram and TikTok.
DAVID CHOKACHI: [I’ve heard] multiple stories of kids writing letters to the producer, saying “We didn’t know CPR, but because we watched Baywatch, I pulled my brother out of the pool. I performed basic CPR on him and saved his life.” We’ve had, like, many stories of this.
Everett Collection
ALEXANDRA PAUL: At the time, there was quite a lot of derision here in Hollywood about the show and the actors on the show. In America, a little less derision but still sort of, like, “Oh, I don’t watch that show.” But overseas, no one tried to distance themselves or be embarrassed about watching the show. There was unabashed enthusiasm and just joy at being able to watch this series. So, it’s kind of wonderful that right now, 30 years later, we’re able to be here. And there’s a documentary on this, about this show, that it’s still playing on Amazon, that it’s on channels all around the world.
JEREMY JACKSON: Baywatch was kind of an anomaly, right? Lightning in a bottle, so to speak. Nothing like it has ever been done since. If we could re-create it, snap our fingers, we would have just done it, somebody would have done it already. And there’s something special to that. And, you know, I said this earlier, Baywatch kind of created a mold, you know, that shaped an era. And I believe this, this documentary breaks that mold. I think it tells the story behind the story. It’s very relatable to right here, right now, and actually shatters a lot of perceptions, and gets into the connectivity and the relatability of the humanitarian aspect of people, and connects us all.
NICOLE EGGERT: I also think that the youth make a lot of Baywatch references. I see a lot of young people talking about Baywatch, if you’re on a beach or in a red bathing suit.
Remind On what they remember from the show
TRACI BINGHAM: I remember the fan mail; just stacks and stacks from the floor to the wall. They would just put them in these containers. I just couldn’t believe it. That was shocking to me, and that was another reality for me to know how huge the show was when I first started. It was just unbelievable.
CARMEN ELECTRA: Going from like Prince and then going to MTV, and then getting cast on Baywatch, it was like the icing on the cake. Those two combinations, woo. It was a lot. And it happened so fast, you know?
JEREMY JACKSON: From the nightclub to the cabana club.
CARMEN ELECTRA: All the way, baby. Still a wild chick, you know?
JEREMY JACKSON: And making out with Chokachi.
(Laughter.)
CARMEN ELECTRA: I’m going to always be a wild child. Never going to change that.
Frank Masi/Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
In addition to the docuseries (premiering Aug. 28 on Hulu), there is also a Baywatch reboot coming to FOX in 2025 (it was also a 2017 film starring Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron and Alexandria Daddario). Like just about everything from the 1990s, clearly Baywatch is back in fashion!
Remind 
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