Carteris eventually filed suit against the makers of the 2006 film “Past Tense” for the “life-changing” injury she says she suffered on set.

90210 alum Gabrielle Carteris details ‘disfiguring’ injury she suffered on film set: ‘I looked like the Joker’

Carteris eventually filed suit against the makers of the 2006 film "Past Tense" for the "life-changing" injury she says she suffered on set.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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February 24, 2026 6:44 p.m. ET

Gabrielle Carteris in 2019. Credit:

Paul Archuleta/Getty

Gabrielle Carteris is opening up about a traumatic on-set injury she says changed her life.

The *Beverly Hills, 90210 *alum was just a few years out of her iconic run as Andrea Zuckerman when she signed on to appear in the made-for-TV thriller *Past Tense*, which was released in 2006. Carteris was filming a scene in which a home invader was meant to pick her character up by the neck and drag her down a flight of stairs, she recalled on Monday's episode of the *Still Here Hollywood* podcast.

Carteris remembered the actor cast as the burglar as a "big guy, like 6 [foot] 6," who "was very hyped up and he kept lifting me up over and over and over again." She said she asked the film's director to rehearse the scene, and advised her costar not to "touch me anymore, because he kept lifting me by my neck." They completed the scene, but two days later, Carteris began registering troubling physical symptoms.

"I was actually in my dressing room talking to my husband on the phone. I was like looking at the mirror, I was getting ready for a scene. I said, 'Oh, it's so weird. Part of my face isn't moving.'" The actress connected that to the fact that she had been "getting headaches, really bad headaches" for which she had been receiving acupuncture treatments. Before she could make anything of these symptoms, they got worse.

"I was in a lot of pain, and then suddenly I was on set, and my face totally became — I mean, I looked like the Joker. It was so disfiguring, and it was a form of palsy. Then my body started to convulse, and they brought a set doctor in," she told host Steve Kmetko.

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Carteris took the doctor's advice to seek immediate medical attention and flew back to the States. "I remember being in the airport. I was so really deformed, like, I couldn't talk," she recalled. "I just felt so embarrassed because people were staring at me, not just from knowing me, but then also because my body was out of control. It was a very humbling time."

The actress said it took "several years" of intensive therapy at UCLA to "get my speech back and to help my body." She ultimately filed a lawsuit against the film's producers.

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Gabrielle Carteris on 'Beverly Hills, 90210'.

Mikel Roberts/Sygma via Getty

Carteris emerged out of the ordeal as a fierce advocate for on-set safety in Hollywood, especially for women. She touched on the *Past Tense* story in a 2017 Ted talk, where she said realizing the film's producers "weren't going to take care of me" became the moment when she "went from inner activist to out-of-the-closet activist. Oh yeah man, I was going to rock the boat."

She became the first executive vice president of the newly merged SAG-AFTRA in 2012 and went on to serve as vice president of the California Labor Federation. *Past Tense *was* *released direct-to-video in 2006 with Carteris' role cut out.**

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