Tonight at 9p, Reelz debuts the new series The Price of Fame and you will be instantly hooked. It is a docuseries of how celebrities lives are ruined by fame. The 2-episode premiere looks into how fame changes Heather Locklear and the Diff’rent Strokes kids.
In each episode, they will interview people who knew the actors and people who know about them. They will also do reenactments of their lives, so we can see what their lives were like as they were paying the price.
At 9p, Heather Locklear was a shy, awkward high school student who joined the drama club to be braver. By the time she goes to UCLA to study psychology, she is no longer shy or awkward. Her friends tell her to take some acting classes and she is discovered by an agent.
After several commercials and guest roles, she is convinced to drop out of school. While starring in the movie Twirl, Aaron Spelling notices her and asks her to audition for Dynasty. As we know she gets the role. She an instant star, but not an actress. She has to take acting classes even though she is on one of TV’s biggest shows.
Spelling loved her so much, he cast her on TJ Hooker. Now she is doing two TV shows at once, dating rocker Tommy Lee and getting movie roles. She marries Lee, her shows get cancelled and her movie career stalls.
Her marriage falls apart and she starts dating Richie Sambora. They get married and have a daughter together. She lands a part on Spin City and befriends Denise Richards who was dating her co-star Charlie Sheen. The two women become best friends until there are rumors Richards is having an affair with Sambora. While he is on tour, she files for divorce without telling him.
At this point, nothing goes right for and she spends the next several years in and out of jail and rehab. Something that still troubles her until this day.
At 10p, one of the saddest cases of fame is the stories of the kids from Diff’rent Strokes. They were three normal kids whose lives would change because they were on the sitcom.
However, they had their own issues outside of the show. Dana Plato’s father left her and her mom is in the hospital with a terminal disease. She just wants to be loved. Something she will find at 19 with a guy. They elope and she gets pregnant. That image will not work for the show, so they fire her.
The show was Gary Coleman’s show anyway. Much to the dismay or Plato and Todd Bridges. Plato introduced Bridges to drugs and it becomes a habit he cannot break.
Coleman was not a healthy person. He was born with kidney disease and he is receiving dialysis on the set. The disease also stunted his growth and he was sick of playing a child while dealing with his illness and becoming a man.
When the show is finally cancelled, their lives take an even sadder turn. They cannot find work, but they can trouble. Plato moves to Vegas, does a lot of drugs while working minimum wage jobs. She holds up a video store and is arrested for the crime. She tries to get clean and it looks like she does it. When she goes on Howard Stern, he asks her to prove that she is clean. I guess it was too much for her and her death is ruled a suicide.
Todd Bridges as several run-ins with the law and is even accused of murder. He is sentenced to rehab and he gets himself clean. Something he remains to be up until this day as the last surviving member of the cast.
Coleman sued his parents for spending all of his money and wins. However, he is broke. He eventually takes a job as a security guard and is happy doing it. Fans still approach him and he does not want to be a star anymore. One day he loses it and punches a fan. That is just the beginning of his troubles. He marries a woman, they get a divorce but still live together. They did not have a healthy relationship. Then one day, he falls down the step and dies from his injuries.
Someone says on the episode that this could never happen again. They are better provisions on sets so that their lives don’t end up to be such disasters like Plato, Coleman and Bridges. While yes it has not happened again to a whole cast, it is still happening. I guess you can say, it is the price of fame.
