‘Just Fire Me’: 90210 Star Tori Spelling Recalls Her Worst Movie Experience

Tori Spelling didn’t hesitate when she was asked about the worst movie experience of her career.

Spelling, 53, joined Stephen Baldwin’s One Bad Movie podcast to talk about her post-90210 film work, and one project came up immediately: 2003’s Evil Alien Conquerors. Coming off her breakout role as Donna Martin on Beverly Hills, 90210, Spelling thought the comedy would be a fun change of pace. Instead, it became one of the hardest sets she’s ever worked on.

“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 recalled. She said director Chris Matheson constantly asked her to dial her performance back, even though comedy was her strength. “My comedy was on point, like I was a comedian and am a comedian,” she said, adding that in drama, notes made sense to her, but on this set, they didn’t.

The criticism wore her down fast. Spelling said it didn’t matter if she had one line or a full monologue, Matheson would find something to critique, often calling her out by name in front of the entire cast. Eventually, she said, she stopped putting emotion into her performance just to get through it.

Things got bad enough that Spelling asked her manager if she could simply be let go from the project. “I was like, ‘Just fire me and recast. This is so hard on me,'” she said. She was so shaken by the experience that she requested to be uncredited in the finished film, not fully understanding at the time what that meant. Look up Evil Alien Conquerors today, and her name isn’t attached to it.

Matheson, now 67, responded to Spelling’s comments in a statement to PEOPLE: “I’m sorry she felt that way. I like Tori personally. I just think we have some different ideas about comedy.”