It's sometimes difficult to explain to those who weren't around in the early to mid 90s just how popular Baywatch actually was but we'll give it a go. It was Game of Thrones on steroids.
It's estimated that at it's peak, 1.1 billion viewers in 158 different countries tuned into the beach drama every week. It still holds the spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most watched TV show of all time. And as its lead actor, David Hasselhoff was the biggest TV star in the world.
In advance of the big screen remake of the show, the original producers, Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz revealed some pretty interesting never before heard tidbits about the show to The Hollywood Reporter. The most interesting of which being that a 15 year old Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as Mitch Buchanan's son but Hasselhoff vetoed it because he was afraid that having a 15 year old son would make him appear older than he was.
"David thought it would make him look older. He had a lot of concerns of that type." says Schwartz.
Another concern that Hasselhoff had was in relation to the casting of Pamela Anderson. He apparently didn't want a girl that's been in Playboy appearing on a family show.
"He said, 'Children watch this show.'" Berk recalls.
Schwartz thinks Hasselhoff had slightly different concerns. "She had these enormous breasts," he says, "and David thought he would be upstaged by everyone looking at her breasts. Which is what happened."
It ended up being the right call for Berk and Schwartz as Anderson's involvement in the show brought the ratings to new highs, especially after sex tape was released. Initially there was worry about it and foreign distributors became nervous.
"They came to us and said, 'What are we gonna do? Should we leave her out of the next episode?'" remembers Berk. "We had to figure out how to deal with it. So we just kept going."
Says Schwartz, "The ratings doubled. That was a big thing for Baywatch."
