‘Baywatch’ Cast Reunion Talks How They Got Hired for the Hit Show
Recently at the Hollywood Show in Burbank, California, nine of the Baywatch cast members — including Traci Bingham, Angelica Bridges, Brande Roderick, Nicole Eggert, Erika Eleniak, Kelly Packard, David Chokachi, Brandy Ledford and Jaason Simmons — reunited and took to the stage for a panel discussion about their experience with the show. Each actor had a fun take on how they got hired. Here’s what they told the audience.
Credit: Mike Pingel
Traci Bingham
Jordan Tate (1996-98)
Credit: Mike Pingel
OK, I’m gonna be completely honest with you. I’m a swimmer. But when I was cast on the show, obviously you have to know how to swim. My swimming wasn’t that great. So, I was swimming at my friend’s pool. I was just swimming like a maniac and my hair was out and it was just all over the place. So, my first scene that I did on Baywatch was with David Chokachi, and I got stuck and I was so nervous, honey, because you’re so hot, you’re still hot … and if you get the chance to smell him he smells so good!
My hairstyle was back off of my face, off of my forehead, and it was in this big kind of pompadour hairstyle and I hated that look on me, but it got stuck that way because when I was swimming in my friend’s pool like a maniac, my hair knotted up and I couldn’t get the knot out. So, the only way to hide this knot was to put it under all of my hair. So that’s how I got my look. Hair off my face with the pompadour.
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It was a swim test and was an audition. There were thousands of women of color on the audition, and it got down to 10, then I got down to four and I booked it and I was so nervous I couldn’t speak. It was with [David] Hasselhoff and [producers] Greg Bonann and Doug Schwartz and Michael Berk. All the producers, the directors, the casting agent, the stylist and everyone were staring at me, like, you all are asking me a million questions and I didn’t know that I got it because I didn’t even know what I said when they were asking me questions. I got home and I got a phone call from my manager with, “Congratulations. You just booked the show.” So, Traci Bingham from Boston booked the show, and it was amazing. They wanted to have a Traci Bingham Day parade all over the city of Cambridge.
Angelica Bridges
Lt. Taylor Walsh (1997-98)
Credit: Mike Pingel
I’ll be short and sweet. With my audition, right after I went in, they said you’re going to go down to the tank. And so, I was sent downstairs to the production offices. They gave me a red suit to put on, and then they sent me to the tank … where they would shoot underwater scenes on the little studio lot, and I actually had to do swimming and go underwater and they wanted to see how you looked underwater. … So, yeah, that was my audition, to swim and get into the tank.
Brande Roderick
Leigh Dyer (2000-01)
There’s a lot of people and I’m sure a lot of the experiences for the audition are the same. But what I can say is that it was different for me. After you got to the show was the grueling training you had to do. But I was lucky enough to be in Hawaii. Our training was a little different. We had [stunt coordinator] Brian Keaulana, who’s fantastic. We would go under the ocean with big, huge boulders. … We had to do underwater holding-our-breath scenes. We had to do ocean swim, competitions with each other, so it was kind of like an intense thing in the ocean, but it was in Hawaii, so we had such a great time, and that’s where Aquaman was created. Jason Momoa [who played Jason Ioane on Baywatch from 1999-2001] was a part of it and then he became Aquaman. But it was a lot of fun.
Nicole Eggert
Summer Quinn (1992-94)
Credit: Mike Pingel
OK, so my story is a little bit different. I was on a show called Charles in Charge and the executive producer from Charles in Charge was working with the executive producers from Baywatch and showing them how a syndicated show kind of works out. I was sent over there and the first idea was that it was going to be a spinoff and they were gonna do a high school show by the beach. So I was never meant to be a lifeguard, so I didn’t have to go through the grueling process that the other talented people did, thank God. I don’t know if I would have been hired, but then later we had to do things with the rocks underwater at the pool. We did it at the Rose Bowl. So I kind of slid in there.
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Erika Eleniak
Shauni McClain (1989-92)
In my day, in the old days, I would say we didn’t really have a lot of training upfront. Really, they just wanted to see how good you were, see how much they needed to double or not double you. So, the audition process was pretty grueling. It was a lot of back and forth with the producers and then the writers. So once all of that was done, they did bring us to a pool to see our ability and how much they might have to match us with someone.
Erika Eleniak and Kelly Packard Credit: Mike Pingel
Kelly Packard
April Giminski (1991-99)
My story is also a little different. I was 13 when I was on Baywatch, the first time as the first character, and I remember going up to [Erika Eleniak] and admiring her with every ounce of my being and wanting to be just like her. Then I was on again in Seasons 5 and 6, I think. And then I got a little show called California Dreams. When Nicole [Eggert] left the show, I don’t know if she knows this, they called and asked if I would essentially be Summer. I was on Dreams and couldn’t do it, but I was very sad because I wanted to be on the show.
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Well, cut to two years later. I auditioned and another funny story about that is I went to the audition, I walked in, and I walked right out because the room was full of a lot of women that looked like Pamela Anderson, and I did not look like that. I was just defeated, and my best friend Jenny was in the car. She was like, “What are you doing? Get in. … You don’t know, maybe they want you.” I was like, “Oh, OK,” so I went back in, and I was the only one there for my part. I didn’t know that. So anyway, I said to Greg [Bonann] years later, “What would have happened if I left?” and he said, “We would have found you.”
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David Chokachi
Cody Madison (1995-99)
Credit: Mike Pingel
Part of my audition, I came in when Gena Lee Nolin [who played Neely Capshaw from 1995-98] came in and they made us do a swim test at the Y in the Palisades. It was in front of Entertainment Tonight and all of the producers. Luckily, I came from the East Coast, and I grew up on the ocean. I grew up sailing. My mom came from the Cape. I had an ocean background. I was also on the swim team. I knew how to drive boats, and I was very comfortable in the water. My character specifically was an Olympic-hopeful swimmer, and that’s something you cannot fake.
All American TV, Inc./Getty
Luckily, I had that background, and when we did the swim test, Greg Bonann, who’s still at age 72 an active lifeguard, he said, “OK, jump in and let’s see you do freestyle. OK, let’s see how many underwaters you can do.” And I just crushed it. I could tell they were like, “OK, that’s the guy.” But my lifeguard-specific training, I had already known CPR from teaching sailing and a fair amount of other things, but Mike Newman [who played Michael “Newmie” Newman from 1989-2000] was the guy who took me under his wing and taught me basically everything how to do in and out, how to penetrate the ocean and how to release the can at the right time, dolphin out and then start swimming and come back. He taught me how to use the rescue board. It’s in the documentary. … He’s like, “Do you want to try the rescue board?” I was like, “Yeah, dude.” I was so young and just full of energy and stupid.
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Brandy Ledford
Dawn Masterton (1999-2000)
Credit: Mike Pingel
So, my story is also a little different. I was working on another show in Canada, and I was brought down to audition and so I had to stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, which is where after the audition they had me do my swim test. The audition process for acting was super easy for me. The swim test was super hard for me, really, really challenging because I was a smoker then, so I couldn’t hold my breath, and I was super nervous. So, they threw a quarter in the deep end and said all I had to do was swim to the deep end and then dive down and get the quarter. Like it’s so easy, right? I could barely do it because I was so nervous. For me, the hardest part was the swimming test. Later in Hawaii, when we were working in the tank or in the ocean, it was swimming that was hard for me because I would get nervous, so it’s a miracle I got this job. I can act, but I can’t swim.
Jaason Simmons
Logan Fowler (1994-97)
Credit: Mike Pingel
Oh no, I didn’t audition. Kidding! I didn’t do a swim test or anything like that. They asked if I could swim, and I said yes. I was on an Australian TV show playing a jet skier. I just learned on the job and faked it. The audience room was maybe 25 people in there and myself. I was leaving to go to the airport on the way and I think that anything sort of travels with you because your mind is somewhere else. It was great, easy-peasy.
For more behind-the-scenes fun about the show, dive into the four episode docuseries After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
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July 2022
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