Ian Ziering Thought Beverly Hills, 90210’s Steve Would Be ‘In Jail’

Ian Ziering didn’t always think that his Beverly Hills, 90210 character, Steve Sanders, would end up with “such an incredible arc,” once believing he’d be jail-bound.

“From the first time we met him, a spoiled rich kid [who is] arrogant and obnoxious, nobody liked him until we found out why he was the way he was,” Ziering, 60, exclusively told Us Weekly at ‘90s Con on Friday, September 13. “Being a product of poor parenting kind of gives you a free pass a little bit. People thought, ‘Oh, bless his heart’ kind of thing, and he really learned his values and morals from Brandon and the Walsh family.”

Ziering played Steve on Beverly Hills, 90210 between 1990 and 2000, later reprising the role on Fox’s BH90210 spinoff in 2019.

“We had 296 episodes where Steve’s arc started down here and skyrocketed to someplace where no one could have expected him to land,” Ziering recalled on Friday. “And that’s being a loving, devoted husband and father and successful businessman. I would have thought he would end up in jail!”

In the pilot, Steve is seen as a careless, rich and spoiled high school student. Further episodes reveal that he had been adopted by his overly critical parents. When twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh (played by Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty, respectively) arrive in Los Angeles, Steve finally receives a sense of stability he’d previously never known.

The dramatic story lines were some of Ziering’s favorite parts about portraying Steve.

“That’s one of the things that I love about Steve Sanders as a character,” he gushed to Us. “When people ask me if you could choose to be any character I would definitely choose to be Steve Sanders, because he had such an incredible arc.”

Beverly Hills, 90210 is only one of Ziering’s most famous roles, but the actor still has hope to star in a sitcom one day.

“[Because of] the fact that sitcoms are a mix of theater and television, filming in front of a live audience,” he explained. “Doing something that’s comedic in nature. It still has eluded me, but if that type of program does come back, I would love to do a sitcom.”

Until then, Ziering is focused on reliving his 90210 glory days at the nostalgic convention in Daytona Beach, Florida. He will sit on a panel later this weekend with former costars Jennie Garth, Brian Austin Green and Gabrielle Carteris. Doherty had also been scheduled to attend, but she died two months earlier at the age of 53 following a lengthy battle with cancer.

With reporting by Kat Pettibone