No one likes to talk about death. As Beverly Hills 90210 star Shannen Doherty will tell you, it’s a “morbid” subject. And yet, there’s absolutely no getting around it. We all die sometime. And given the fact that Doherty herself has faced a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, as well as the death of her iconic television co-star Luke Perry, you can comprehend why death might be on her mind more often than usual. And the actress opened up about the topic on a recent podcast episode, going so far as to reveal some details on what she wants done with her ashes… and who she doesn’t want at her funeral.
Let’s Be Clear is a live-memoir podcast hosted by Shannen Doherty that started in November 2023. Previous guests have included Doherty’s Mallrats director Kevin Smith, and her Charmed co-star Holly Marie Combs. But on the most recent episode (via People), she got on the topic of her death, and what she wants to see happen following the sad event. As Doherty explained:
This is such a morbid conversation, but it's also so fun. I want [my remains] to be mixed with my dog and I want it to be mixed with my dad. I do not want to be buried and not cremated.
Shannen Doherty’s wishes are unusual, on the surface. Though, if you stop and think about them, they’re really very sweet. She goes on to talk about different places where she’d like to have her ashes – mixed with her dad’s, and her dog’s – spread. She suggests that they could be used to help grow a tree. Or maybe they could be scattered around Malibu, California, which Doherty says is a place that “meant a lot to us,” talking about her father.
The funeral, however, is a different story. As Shannen Doherty went on to talk about the arrangements of a gathering following her inevitable death, she said on the Let’s Be Clear podcast. Like many people, she says she wants her funeral to be a party atmosphere, hopefully held at her house. And she commented on the guest list by saying:
There's a lot of people that I think would show up that I don't want there. I don't want them there because their reasons for showing up aren't necessarily the best reasons, like, they don't really like me and, you know, they have their reasons and good for them, but they don't actually really like me enough to show up to my funeral. But they will, because it's the politically correct thing to do and they don't want to look bad, so I kinda want to take the pressure off them and I want my funeral to be like a love fest. I don't want people to be crying or people to privately be like, 'Thank God that bitch is dead now.'
We hope that Shannen Doherty doesn’t have to deal with these issues any time soon. The former star of Beverly Hills 90210 has stayed busy in movies, and appeared on Riverdale as a tribute to Luke Perry after he died. There’s always hope that she will return to Kevin Smith’s View Askew universe if and when the director gets his Mallrats sequel off the ground. Until then, we’ll just continue scanning the list of the upcoming winter TV schedule to see what else is worth watching on our tube.
