Shannen Doherty cried when she talked about her relationship with the press & Aaron Spelling

Shannen Doherty promoted her new Oxygen-reality show “Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty” at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena which premieres in Aug. 22 (some sites insist that the premiere starts in Aug. 5) at 10PM on Oxygen.

In a roomful of television reporters and critics, Shannen Doherty talked about her own love-affairs, and she cried when she mentioned her relationship with the press in front of everyone in the room when she looked at her mom, Rosa Doherty.

She teared up talking about Aaron Spelling

She also said, that an upcoming project she couldn’t name has her very excited. Perhaps she’ll get a second chance to, as she put it, “dance with the media.”

Shannen mentioned that the reason she got fired from UPN’s sitcom “Love, INC.” was the bad press she gets since her 90210 days. “Last season, Doherty was cast in a UPN series called Love, Inc. She never made it past the pilot. Producers loved her performance but her negatives, as they say in this business, finished her.”

[…]”I’m not going to lie to you; it hurts a lot to read the stuff I read about myself, and it hurts me and it hurts my mom a lot,” said Doherty, who choked back tears as she looked at her mother, who was nearby.

[…]So of course the critics swooped in with the obligatory “are you really a bitch” questions. Shannen was calm at first, explaining that even though “everyone thinks I�m a really, really strong woman who would have no problem breaking up with someone,” it�s not true. Welling up with tears, she went on to say that it “hurts a lot to read” the stuff that�s written about her. And it not only hurts her but it also hurts her mom, she says, who was there with her today.

[…]Shannen: Nobody says, ‘You know what? She was young. Give her a break.‘ Give me a chance to mess up again. Stop writing about stuff that happened 10 years ago. Stop bringing up every bad thing in my life. And give me another chance to mess up. If I mess up again, then write about it. But just let me breathe and let my parents breathe. Let them pick up the paper and it says one nice thing about me.“

[…]In the clip shown to critics, she tells a total jerk to get lost. He instantly forgets his girlfriend and starts hitting on Doherty. “Are you ovulating?” he asks. Smooth.

The 35-year-old actress admitted that if she was ambushed on a series like this, “I would not sign the release.” Why do so many others seem eager to humiliate themselves on television?

“It’s America,” she said. “People have a thirst for it.”

The Press:

* SFGate

Well, another opportunity wasted. The Muay Thai girls did not, repeat not, kick Shannen Doherty in the head back stage. And so she’s here promoting her new show, “Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty,” where she helps people - duh - break up with their lovers. We saw a clip. It was pathetic and it looked fake. But it’s a reality show, so you get what you paid for. The hook here is that she uses hidden cameras to see what cads and sluts the other partner is, then she walks in and announces that this relationship is over. It’s a “break-up intervention” said the producers.

I need more Diet Coke to get through this.

She’s talking about her past relationships and, well, I couldn’t really care and now I’m frantically looking around for the exit and perhaps more Diet Coke…do I have to stay?

When I was coming back from coffee this morning, I ran into Doherty’s posse, by the way, and it was enormous. She had black glasses on in the hotel, which actually happens a lot and never loses its annoying star appeal. Oxygen apparently thinks she’ll mesh with their you-go-girl attitude. Maybe she will. But if you need Shannen Doherty to break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you need a new spine.

Doherty said she is 100 percent misunderstood and her reputation isn’t totally accurate but that also she played into it by her behavior when she was 18. Well, 18ish. She knows she’s typecast and is no longer worried about fighting it. She can only be who she is. Oprah would probably approve of that.

OK, so now I’m warming up to her. She said, “I tried desperately to be given a second chance by the media but it’s never been given to me.”

Uh-oh. She’s crying now. She’s cried before when she’s been here from harsh questioning and now, as she explains why she’s been misperceived (?) all these years, she’s crying again. She says it hurts when people say mean things about her. And, uh-oh, she pointed out that her mom is in the room and the vicious media attacks make her mom sad. She’s crying again.

God, we suck as people. But now I’ve gone all soft and feel sorry for her and agree that she needs a second chance.

* The Mercury News

From the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Pasadena:

There are always days on The Tour that have a surreal quality, as if you’ve suddenly fallen down that rabbit hole with Alice. Most often, it’s the simple juxtaposition of shows and the people who come to The Tour to promote them.

The first such moments of this tour came this afternoon on Day 2 when most of the TV writers had barely settled into their hotel rooms. It started at lunch with some strange (but funny) with Danny Bonaduce, the ex-”Partridge Family'’ kid star who has become a staple of the supermarket tabloids and TV gossip shows.

Bonaduce rather famously self-destructed on his own reality show, “Breaking Bonduce'’ on VH1, just last year. (He claimed today that he has never seen the show, saying, “I at least had the common sense not to watch it.'’) But now he’s back as the host of a new GSN game show called “Starface'’ which uses the tabloid tales of celebrities behaving badly as the source for questions.

But Bonaduce was just the warmup act for the afternoon’s two headliners: actress Shannen Doherty and former CBS anchor Dan Rather. (Now, there are two names I never thought I’d be using in the same sentence.)

In the house to promote her new reality show — “Breaking Up With Shannen Doherty,'’ which begins Aug. 22 on Oxygen — the actress was actually on her better behavior as she answered the early questions about the series. (Doherty comes in to help people break up with their lovers.) But the love-hate relationship she has with the press eventually surfaced when a writer asked if she was trying to alter her checkered public image as someone who misbehaves off-screen and is difficult to work with onscreen.

“I’m not really trying to alter anything,'’ replied Doherty with a bit of a glare. “The only thing I can do in my life is be who I am.'’ She might have been better off leaving it there but she charged ahead: “I can’t fight what people think of me. … I’ve tried for years to get a second chance with the media and you guys haven’t given it to me.'’

At this point, Doherty started tearing up as she added, “It hurts a lot to read the stuff that’s written about me.'’

Also choking up during his time with the press: Rather, who left CBS under a cloud earlier this year and has now found a new home in “Dan Rather Reports'’ on HDNet. The hour-long weekly news program will begin in October on the cable channel owned by Dallas Mavericks boss and multi-millionaire Mark Cuban who thinks Rather’s presence could be just the boost HDNet needs to get beyond its limited viewership. (No cable system in the Bay Area carries it.)

Rather said he decided to go to HDNet because Cuban had told him, “I want to give you the backing to do the program you want to do.'’ What journalist, he said, “would turn down total editorial and creative control?'’

At CBS, Rather noted, he was working with “a large corporation with a chain of command that looks like the wiring of a nuclear reactor. The difference here is that the chain of command begins and ends with me.'’

The veteran journalist — who will turn 75 about the time “Dan Rather Reports'’ makes its debut — started to lose it just a bit when someone asked if he came with “baggage'’ after suffering through a discredited “60 Minutes II'’ report about President Bush’s military record, stepping down from the anchor job a year earlier then planned and then being pushed out of CBS completely.

“You bet I have baggage — and I’m proud it,'’ said Rather. “I’m committed to independent journalism, sometimes fiercely independent journalism if need be. … I’m not going to be bullied or intimidated'’ by critics who say, “Listen, you report the news the way I want or else.'’

His voice choking slightly, he added, “When you face the furnace, you have to take the heat — and sometimes you get burned.'’ (As you might have guessed, Rather is still given to slightly off-center, folksy phrasings.)

Still to come this week: Mr. T. I think the chances of him choking up are pretty slim.

* Broadcasting Cable.com

The critics were treated to real Shannon Doherty tears at Oxygen�s panel. Shannon�s got a new show on the women�s network called Breaking Up With Shannon Doherty, in which she helps unhappy couples (daters, friends, coworkers, etc.) put the kibosh on their relationships.

So of course the critics swooped in with the obligatory “are you really a bitch” questions. Shannon was calm at first, explaining that even though “everyone thinks I�m a really, really strong woman who would have no problem breaking up with someone,” it�s not true. Welling up with tears, she went on to say that it “hurts a lot to read” the stuff that�s written about her. And it not only hurts her but it also hurts her mom, she says, who was there with her today.

“Do I think there�s a misconception out there? Yes, 100%,” she said, allowing, “Did I play into that in the beginning? Yes.”

Pauvre Shannon. Her show actually looks decent. Well, I do tend to favor umm�low-brow reality, so maybe I�m the demo they�re going after, but the look on the face of the schmuck Shannon dumped in the three-minute clip they showed us? Classic. Dude turned beet-red for two seconds�before going ahead and asking Shannon out on a date.

After soldiering through question after question about whether she actually gives two hoots about the subjects she breaks up for (”yes”) and why, of all people, she�s qualified to host a relationship show (”I think it�s kind of obvious”), Shannon walked out in a huff saying she knew from the beginning that the panel was going in the wrong direction. “This happens every time,” she huffed.

* Los Angeles Times

Breaking up is hard to do. Enter: Shannen Doherty, a Hollywood actress who knows a thing or two about endings and now wants to help you break up with your boyfriend, fire a lousy employee or kick your lazy roommate out the door. On national television.

“Breaking Up With Shannen Doherty,” which the controversial “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star hosts and executive produces, premieres Aug. 22 on Oxygen. Doherty, 35, helps those in need of ending relationships by creating fictitious circumstances to get the two people in a room together so she can watch their behavior — and then step in herself.

“I’ve certainly been through a couple of relationships, as we all know, and some marriages,” she half-joked Tuesday to a roomful of television reporters and critics at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena. “Being a woman at the age that I’m at, you learn through life’s experience, which is more than a degree.”

The process is as simple as lying to a louse called Steven, luring him to a restaurant under the guise of appearing on a cooking show with his girlfriend, and having Doherty appear. That’s right, Doherty does the dirty work — and we mean dirty. This guy, unaware that he’s being watched, at first hits on Doherty by asking her if she’s ovulating. When Doherty reveals his relationship is over, he announces he’s relieved.

But not more relieved than Doherty and the girlfriend, or viewers for that matter.

Now, if only Doherty could break up with the press …

The actress, who began her career at age 9 and became as infamous as she was famous when she starred on “90210″ for her diva and bad-girl ways, became emotional when she was asked if her goal of helping people had anything to do with cleaning up her image.

“I’m not going to lie to you; it hurts a lot to read the stuff I read about myself, and it hurts me and it hurts my mom a lot,” said Doherty, who choked back tears as she looked at her mother, who was nearby. Doherty acknowledged she had only herself to blame for much of what had been written about her, but she later asked reporters to give her another chance.

“I hate to use the word ‘unfair’ because, again, I have to stand up and say it wasn’t just the press,” she said. “I played a huge part, a huge part, and everybody has a job. And if I’m creating some of the drama, then you guys have a job to report it.

“But where I start to say ‘OK, now we’re getting out of hand’ is when nobody lets it die,” she said. “Nobody says, ‘You know what? She was young. Give her a break.’ Give me a chance to mess up again. Stop writing about stuff that happened 10 years ago. Stop bringing up every bad thing in my life. And give me another chance to mess up. If I mess up again, then write about it. But just let me breathe and let my parents breathe. Let them pick up the paper and it says one nice thing about me.”

You got it, Shannen. We are moving on to the fact that you said you have been on only one date in the last 18 months and have reached a time in your life when you can declare: “I don’t need a man to make me happy.”

Looking fit in a strapless black top and white slacks and refreshingly her age (read: no botox), Doherty ‘fessed up about something else regarding her show. She is not selling herself as an authority on relationships.

“I think an expert doesn’t mess up nearly as many times as I have,” she said. “I think that I’m good with getting over relationships. I’m good with dealing with the guilt, the tears and the mourning and the grief because God knows I’ve done it enough.”

These days Mr. Right would not be an actor, but he would be a man who is “fiercely independent but he gives me my space. But I want to know he’s protective of me, loving, compassionate, kind, funny and secure with himself.”

And if he hired a Hollywood star to break up with her in front of a national audience?

“To be honest, my reaction would probably be one of shock,” she said. She paused. “But I would not sign the release.”

* Toronto Sun

[…]Doherty was up next promoting her new reality series, Breaking Up With Shannen Doherty (launching Aug. 22 on U.S. cable’s Oxygen network). The bizarre premise has Doherty stepping in for folks who are too timid to confront and dump their mates. In the clip shown to critics, she tells a total jerk to get lost. He instantly forgets his girlfriend and starts hitting on Doherty. “Are you ovulating?” he asks. Smooth.

The 35-year-old actress admitted that if she was ambushed on a series like this, “I would not sign the release.” Why do so many others seem eager to humiliate themselves on television?

“It’s America,” she said. “People have a thirst for it.”

Doherty has had her own rocky relationships and the scars to prove it. Married twice (including one brief liaison with Ashley Hamilton, son of George Hamilton and Alana Stewart), she was also once engaged to Judd Nelson. No more actors, she told me after yesterday’s session. “I look back and shiver,” she says of some of her past loves.

Still, she’s right for this show because she knows how to end relationships. Not that she’s had much practice lately. She said she has been on one date in a year-and-a-half.

She teared up talking about Aaron Spelling (the late TV titan who hired — and fired — her from both Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed).

She especially teared up about being permanently cast in the press as an impossible little bitch, a tag that is at least 10 years old, she said.

“It hurts a lot to read that stuff,” she said. “It hurts my mom (who was in the room).”

It has taken a toll professionally, too. Last season, Doherty was cast in a UPN series called Love, Inc. She never made it past the pilot. Producers loved her performance but her negatives, as they say in this business, finished her.

She accepts some of the blame for past bad behaviour — especially when she was a rebellious teen — but wishes the press would let go and move on. “The only thing I can do is be myself,” she said.

An upcoming project she couldn’t name has her very excited. Perhaps she’ll get a second chance to, as she put it, “dance with the media.”

Bonaduce could probably show her some moves.