Baywatch Stigma? Stars Reveal Difficulties Being Taken ‘Seriously’ After Show (Exclusive)

And that, at least for a few of the show’s stars, was to their detriment after their time running in slow motion on the beaches of California came to an end.

Out today, ABC News Studios’ docuseries After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun delves deep into the show’s humble beginnings, eventual popularity, where the series may have stumbled when it came to issues of body image and race, and how being on it affected the lives of the actors themselves.

Both Erika Eleniak, who starred as Shauni McClain for the show’s first couple seasons, and Kelly Packard, who played April Giminski for two later seasons, opened up about how they struggled to be taken seriously when they began looking for other jobs.

“I grappled with taking it off my resume,” Packard said in the doc. “It really stinks now, because I’m this woman who’s trying to act still, but I can’t be taken seriously because I was a ‘Baywatch’ baby.”

“I mean, I think for me it’s, it was always a struggle,” Eleniak, meanwhile, told TooFab while promoting the series.

“When Baywatch happened, I had to fight really hard for the opportunities to get in rooms,” she continued. “Sometimes I’d get in a room and it would actually go really well, and it would be a lot of auditions and then it would be between one other person and myself. And there was one person in the camp that was afraid of the Baywatch credit, so I wouldn’t get the role.”

“I think that never ended. That happened to me 10 years after Baywatch. I was up for a television series and it was a huge audition process,” she added.

“Came down to me and another young lady and someone on one of the camps was afraid of Baywatch and out I went. So it never ended. It’s always been a fight,” Eleniak continued. “It’s always been a fight for diversity to be able to get those strong female leads. And by the grace of God, I feel like I was given some great opportunities, so I was able to do those shows, but it wasn’t easy.”

In the doc itself, Eleniak also said she felt a lot of self-doubt after being on the show, which she feels affected what happened next.

“When I left Baywatch, I left because I really wanted a film career. Some of the most incredible opportunities I had, I blew; self-sabotage because I was so scared,” she said, claiming she had an opportunity to read for Sharon Stone’s role in Casino, but turned it down. “What I did was I burned so many bridges, major bridges, because nobody understood why I wasn’t going. I was terrified. I didn’t feel good enough.”

For Alexandra Paul, however, being on Baywatch had the opposite affect on her career.

“I do feel like it gave it longevity because I had been working for 10 years in feature films and television movies … Baywatch was the first series. And I was really nervous about doing a series because in the early ’90s, actors did not move so comfortably between television — especially television series — and movies,” she told TooFab.

“Back then, there was definitely a fear that you would stay in TV. The thing was that I loved doing TV and I didn’t realize that I loved doing television series. It was a revelation to be able to go to work every day, see the same cast, play the same character, develop her more,” she added of playing Stephanie Holden on the series. “I mean, what a joy!”

“And so I did a couple more series afterwards and I think Baywatch actually opened up, for me, my career,” she added. “I’m sure there were tons of them where people said, ‘Oh, she was on Baywatch, forget her.’ But, as Erika knows, I tend to be a little bit of an optimist. I feel like it gave me a lot of opportunities.”

After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun is streaming now on Hulu.