Elizabeth Berkley Lauren isn't shying away from her role in the 1995 box-office bomb "Showgirls."
Berkley Lauren, who is reprising her role as Jessie Spano on Peacock's "Saved by the Bell" reboot, decided to poke fun at her past flop by including several allusions to the film that only people who grew up with her on the first run of the show will likely understand.
In the second season's sixth episode of the reboot, Jessie is talking to her best friends Kelly and Lisa about how she's coping with her divorce.
Kelly asks Jessie about the last time she felt desirable and confident.
"There was that couple months I spent in Las Vegas," Jessie says.
"When was that?" Kelly asks.
"After college ... but I'm not that girl anymore," Jessie says.
While Berkley Lauren became famous for playing the studious and responsible Jessie on the NBC show, she decided to go in a completely new direction after that. In "Showgirls," her first major role since the show ended, Berkley Lauren played Nomi Malone, a new-in-town stripper who dreams of becoming a top Las Vegas showgirl.
The film grossed $19.3 million at the box office and was panned by critics as "Vile, contemptible, garish, and misogynistic — and that might just be exactly Showgirls' point," according to movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.
"Saved by the Bell" also gave another nod to the movie a few scenes later when a newly single Jessie is wearing a cowboy hat, tiger-striped shirt and a fringed jacket, which is exactly the sort of outfit her character in "Showgirls" would have loved.
Jessie even breaks out Nomi's signature dance move before working up the confidence to go flirt with a firefighter. When he starts with the usual questions, including where she's from, Jessie firmly tells him she's from "different places," another favorite line Nomi used in "Showgirls."
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While "Showgirls" is still remembered as one of the worst movies ever made, Berkley Lauren told Vanity Fair she's proud to own her past and even laugh at it on "Saved by the Bell."
"We were trying to decide, like, how far do we go?” she said. “And we all decided if we’re doing this, let’s go for it. Let’s be bold.”
She also discussed the "Showgirls" references in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
"Along the way since the film came out, it's had its own life," Berkley Lauren told EW. "It's been embraced in such incredible ways that it has its own legacy. And the way that it exists today in pop culture is different, of course, than when it came out. I just wanted to acknowledge that, I'm aware of that and love how it's been embraced and that's a beautiful thing. That's why right now is a really great time to have some fun with it."