Leo, naturally, 'was brilliant and fabulous,' Glicksman told Esquire. According to Michael Berk, Leonardo DiCaprio was 'ready to be cast' for syndication, but 'David wanted a younger son,' he told the Times, 'so it wouldn't age him.' The Hoff disagreed with that recollection, but did say he felt that Leo, who was around 15, was 'way, way, way too old' at the time. Lambert on Step by Step, played Mitch's son, Hobie, in season one. And at the height of its popularity, Baywatch reached a weekly audience of 1.1 billion people in 142 countries.Ģ1.

The Hoff's popularity in Germany helped them secure $300,000 an episode from 'continental Europe' as part of a first-run syndication deal, Berk told Esquire.

'If we were successful they got $5,000 an episode.' They asked Hasselhoff to take a 50 percent pay cut in exchange for an executive producer role. 'If we weren't successful at the end of that year, they got Baywatch back,' Schwartz told the New York Times in 2017. It was a big show.'ġ7. Berk and Schwartz's uncle, Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch, advised his nephews to buy the rights to their show from GTG. Warlock insisted to Esquire that ratings had nothing to do with the cancellation rather, 'we just didn't have the money. In a double whammy, the studio behind the production, GTG (owned by former NBC exec and Mary Tyler Moore Show producer Grant Tinker) was shutting down. time slot since Knight Rider, Baywatch didn't meet expectations (critically or commercially), they were canceled after 22 episodes. Bonann ran into the water, found the boy, gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and saved him-a rescue for which he was awarded the Lifeguard Medal of Valor from the county.ġ6. Despite being NBC's highest-rated show in the Friday 8 p.m. So there were two nude scenes in that pilot that never saw the light of day.'ġ3. After finding out they'd been picked up for 12 episodes in 1989, Bonann was with fellow producers and writers at Venice Beach scouting locations when a boy ran up and said his brother was drowning. 'We cast a girl named Hope Marie Carlton who did a topless scene,' Berk told Esquire in 2012, 'and the show opened with the lifeguards all gathering around with binoculars trying to see a photo shoot on the beach. They shot an, ahem, enhanced pilot for European markets that featured actual nudity. That proved much warmer, but there were sharks in the water, so guys with stun guns were called in to guard the lives of the lifeguards.ġ2. Even in Los Angeles, shooting the pilot movie Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier in the dead of January in 49-degree water wasn't working, so they moved the production to Hawaii.

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