Baywatch Where Are They Now

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A show so successful that it ran for over 10 years, and so derided that it has an average rating on IMDB of 4.8 out of 10. Perhaps best known for women in red swimsuits running in slow motion, it starred a lead actor with an inexplicable international singing career who has since had some infamous struggles with the bottle.  And if that’s where he ended up, you may wonder- what became of all the lesser known lifeguards?  Spoiler: terms like “rehab”, “Dr Drew”, “Celebrity Fit Club” and “militant vegan” are about to figure prominently.

andersonPamela Anderson (CJ Parker): While she only joined the show 3 years in, and stayed for “only” 5 years, Pamela Anderson is probably the person most associated with Baywatch besides Hasselhoff, and maybe even more than him. We don’t have to explain what she brought to the show, right?

Besides her career in various Playboy publications and videos, Anderson has also managed to stay busy in small roles, shows and personal appearances (and, if some gossip sites can be believed, “personal appearances”) with the most high profile being recent appearances on Dancing With The Stars in both the US and Argentina, Dancing On Ice in the UK, and Big Brother in the UK, India and Bulgaria. No, I don’t know why Bulgaria.

Of course, Anderson is also notorious for her tapes with musicians Tommy Lee and Bret Michaels, but by the scandal standards of the rest of the Baywatch cast this is small-time. It’s all downhill from here, folks.

David Hasselhoff (Mitch): Hasselhoff was already famous from daytime soaps and Knight Rider before his 10-year stint on Baywatch, so it’s no surprise that since his days on the beach he’s managed to stay more or less in the public eye with numerous TV, film and video appearances and ad campaigns, including a year as a judge on reality TV show Britain’s Got Talent alongside Simon Cowell.

Hoff

Nonetheless, Hasselhoff has been at least as well known for a number of incidents of drunkenness, including a YouTube video shot by his daughter of the incredibly drunk Hoff eating a cheeseburger, apparently intended to help show him how bad his alcoholism was getting.

Yasmine Bleeth (Caroline)Baywatch briefly made a star of the bombshell Bleeth, already a successful model at the time, and after she left the show she landed big roles in the Don Johnson vehicle Nash Bridges and an Aaron Spelling flop, Titans as well as a number of made-for-TV movies. All that ended in 2000 after her cocaine addiction took control of her life, with rehab and police arrests following after. While in rehab, Bleeth met a gentlemen’s club owner who she married. This sounds like it is heading somewhere even more sordid, but apparently the marriage has lasted and (apart from a one-off Baywatch special in 2003) she has not been in the public eye since.

Donna_D'Errico_and_Jeremy_JacksonJeremy Jackson (Hobie): Jackson spent 9 years on the show as the #2 male lead. He has since admitted that he became a meth addict while on the show, and eventually left it because he began to feel that Baywatch was beneath him. It’s unclear whether this was the effects of meth or of spending 9 years as 2nd banana to David Hasselhoff.

Jackson spent a lot of time in rehab, then a lot of time on talk shows talking about how he beat his addiction, and most recently appeared in 2011 on Celebrity Rehab With Dr Drew so I guess that whole “beat his addiction” thing didn’t stick. Oh, and he also had her own tape get out on the internet in 2008.

Donna D’Errico (Donna): Yet another buxom blond who was also a playmate, in the inimitable Baywatch style, Donna’s post-Baywatch activities until 2007 were mostly comprised of being married to musician Nikki Sixx (bandmate of Pamela Anderson’s former squeeze Tommy Lee… it was obviously a very small world). Then she divorced Nikki, found religion, and in 2012 climbed Mount Ararat in Turkey as part of an unsuccessful expedition to locate Noah’s Ark, so clearly the crazy caught up with her eventually. Injured during the climb, she appears to be currently recovering and probably plotting her next crusade.

erikaErika Eleniak (Shauni): The prototype Baywatch girl, who in her Playboy centerfold interview mentioned her excitement about the TV pilot she had just shot- a show about lifeguards. The young Erika had a small role in ET, and like fellow ET alumnus Drew Barrymore ended up with drug and alcohol problems while still in her teens. And then she ended up on Baywatch. And then she made a film with Steven Seagal (Under Siege). It’s pretty amazing the damage wasn’t worse.

After a string of B-movies, Erika ended up on Celebrity Fit Club in 2006 although by that stage she’d had a daughter so it doesn’t exactly count as having let herself go; on the other hand, her daughter was named “IndyAnna” so going on Celebrity Fit Club was probably a reasonable punishment.

Ms Eleniak has just started working in showbiz again, with a Lifetime movie called “Holiday Spin” coming out in the holiday season of 2012.

400px-Alexandra_Paul_Sundance1Alexandra Paul (Stephanie): Breaks the mold in many ways: she wasn’t blond. She wasn’t a playmate. Continued working steadily between Baywatch and the present, assuming you count 14 telemovies for the Lifetime network as “working”, “steadily” and indeed “the present”. A political and environmental activist who has been honoured by the United Nations. Has been driving electric cars since 1990, which is a bit loopy, but it did land her a role as a spokesperson for the Chevy Volt in 2011. Is also a militant vegan, so the Baywatch crazy gene didn’t miss her entirely.

Nicole Eggert (Summer): Nicole was only on Baywatch for 2 years, but it was obviously enough as her post-Baywatch career has mostly consisted of Lifetime movies followed by a 2010 appearance on Celebrity Fit Club. Nicole gave birth to a daughter in 2011, and for now appears to be a happy full-time mother.

400px-Traci_BinghamTraci Bingham (Jordan): Like Nicole Eggert, Traci was only on Baywatch for 2 years, but it was enough to see her on VH1 “reality” show The Surreal Life by 2004 and again in 2007, followed by Gimme My Reality Show! on Fox in 2008.  Has made a handful of movies which would charitably be described as B movies, but these days appears to be working primarily as a bikini model or possibly a full-time tweeter (not a euphemism).

Carmen Electra (Lani): Amazingly enough, the ex-wife of noted weirdos Dave Navarro and Dennis Rodman has managed to avoid sex tapes, drug meltdowns, rehab and general crazypants. While Carmen hasn’t exactly been appearing in Oscar-winning fare, she’s at least been in movies outside the Lifetime Network (such as the Scary Movie franchise), judged reality shows So You Think You Can Dance and Britain’s Got Talent rather than appearing in trashy reality shows (at least until appearing on celebrity dating show The Choice in 2012) and generally appears to have maintained a relatively successful career for a woman who in her Baywatch days would have been regarded as having only two talents, and artificial ones at that (although very large). Oh and the gossip mags are now reporting that she’s dating Simon Cowell.

Carmen Electra, we anoint you the winner of Where Are They Now: Baywatch Edition!

Carmen

(All pictures via Wikimedia Commons)

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