Brian Austin Green couldn't really get over Luke Perry's death

Brian Austin Green ponders the difficulty of losing his Beverly Hills, 90210 Co-star Luke Perry so suddenly.

“There was a part of me that couldn't really process that that was real,” Green, 50, said in a Wednesday, Jan. 31 segment of an upcoming episode of Getting grilled with Curtis Stone. “I texted him the day after he passed away. Just because there was a part of me that said, 'No, he's going to answer. He's hiding somewhere. Or something happened. ''

Green, who played with Perry 90210 from 1990 to 2000, noted that while he did not “completely believe in it” he would hear from his friend that “a big part” of him hoped “that was the case.”

Perry suffered a massive stroke in February 2019 while at his home in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where he remained until his death on March 4. He was 52 years old.

Although Green admitted that he came to accept the idea of ​​death with age, he never thought he would lose someone so early — especially Perry. “I honestly never expected it to be Luke,” he said. “For me, Luke was the strongest of everyone in my eyes. He was the constant man, he was always exactly who he was.

Despite the loss, Green clarified that Perry is still a “big part” of his life and that the relationship he had with the actor is something he thinks about “almost daily.”

“When things happen in my life,” he said, “I stop for a moment and think about him and what I learned from him and what I think his opinion would be about what I do.”

Green called the personal “connections” Perry had with those around him the “legacy” he left behind, as opposed to his professional accolades. “It's the lasting impression you left on your friends, on your family, on your children,” he explained. “It's the stories people share with me about you afterwards.”

It was after Perry's death, Green noted, that he began to hear stories of his friend's benevolence, as Perry was known to be a private person.

'He did a lot of things and never talked about it. He bought a new wheelchair for the guy in the neighborhood who needed one, or got on a plane and flew to a hospital where a girl was sick,” he said, citing some altruistic examples from Perry's life. “Every time he flew on a plane, he had a bag full of balloons, so if he heard a baby crying, he could walk back to where they were, blow up a balloon and give them something to take their mind off the plane. bit. And he never shared that with anyone.”

He added: “As shocked as I was to hear that one, I thought, that's definitely Luke. It didn't surprise me.”

Green and Perry, who played David Silver and Dylan McKay respectively on the teen soap, co-starred Shannen Doherty (Brenda Walsh), Jennie Garth (Kelly Taylor), Jason Priestley (Brandon Walsh), Ian Ziering (Steve Sanders), Tori spelling (Donna Martin) and Gabrielle Carteris (Andrea Zuckerman). Days after Perry's death was confirmed, the costars gathered at Carteris' home to mourn the loss of their longtime friend.

“People I haven't seen in like 18 years,” Green shared during a March 2019 episode of his 90210 rewatch podcast, discussing who showed up to honor the late star. “And you see them there, and it's… you were happy to see everyone, and you were like, 'God, it's been too long,' and it was great, but what a terrible reason to see everyone again must see.”