Gabrielle Carteris, 46, played the older-looking out-of-place Andrea Zuckerman on the early years of 90s teen soap drama “90210.” She served as a kind of overachieving mother-type to the other characters, who were always hooking up and getting into trouble. Andrea eventually got pregnant and married and didn’t appear much in the later years of “90210,” which was on for an inexplicable 10 freaking years on Fox, from 1990-2000.
Carteris has been married to a stock broker since 2002, and has two daughters. After 90210 ended she had her own talk shown that lasted one season, and has done sporadic work in guest roles for television. She appeared on VH1’s The Surreal Life in 2003. She recently told Entertainment Tonight about the lasting injuries she suffered while working on some bush league TV movie in 2006. They had her doing her own stunts, which involved falling down the stairs and getting dragged by her neck.
It sounds like she suffered some kind of spinal cord injury, because she said she was having spasms, lost the ability to speak, and couldn’t feel her hands afterwards. It’s been hard for her to recover from that injury, and she has chronic pain. She copes with with medication, physical therapy, and acupuncture.
Carteris tells ET about the life-changing injury that occurred in 2006 while she was shooting a scene for a TV movie, “We were filming an attack scene. I remember being pulled up by my chin over and over again.” The 5′1″ Carteris was working with a 6′6″ tall actor in a scene which was “not properly rehearsed” and included 4-5 hours of being dragged down a set of stairs.
According to Carteris, the symptoms began almost immediately, “I was jerking around, I lost my speech and was having spasms. My face was doing wild things and I couldn’t feel my hands and was having headaches.” She says she took two days off and when she returned, “was crying and in so much pain.” Eventually, Carteris did not return to the set and her role was reshot with another actress.
Recovery has been long and difficult for Carteris, “Sometimes I look in the mirror and cry. Sometime I look and laugh.” Carteris says for an entire year she did not attend any public events. Today her condition is managed with acupuncture, physical therapy and Klonopin three times a day.
Carteris says she is coming forward to set an example for her daughters and to send a message to others that it is ok to speak out, “I refuse to be the victim. At one point I thought this would be for life. My life changed in a moment.”
[From The Huffington Post]
What I want to know is why she didn’t sue the pants off the production company responsible for that TV movie she was working on. IMDB doesn’t have her listed as working on any TV films in 2006, and that’s probably because she had to drop out after this horrible incident. She may have signed some sort of waiver that makes it impossible for her to sue.
This makes me so mad and I hope she is doing ok now. She appeared at the 90210 first season DVD launch in early November, 2006, so either this happened afterwards or she pulled herself together and went out for the sake of her old co-stars. How this could happen to an actress working on a scene is beyond me. No one should have to live like that due to a preventable injury.
Gabrielle Carteris is shown on 11/5/06 at the 90210 and Melrose Place first season DVD launch, thanks to Splash News.