TV
Johnny Depp was a fixture on '21 Jump Street' early in his career. But he wasn't originally planned to be a main character on the show, according to Holly Robinson Peete.
Published on April 5, 2023
2 min readPolice procedural show 21 Jump Street was a phenomenon when it first premiered in 1987. It earned a spot in many fans’ hearts thanks in large part to the lead characters played by Johnny Depp and Holly Robinson Peete. When looking back at her 21 Jump Street days, Robinson Peete has nothing but fond memories.
’21 Jump Street’ was a unique show
Holly Robinson Peete reflected on her time on 21 Jump Street in an April 2023 episode of the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast. She noted that the show was unique at the time in that it filmed in an unconventional location for TV shows.
“Jump Street was everything,” she said. “First of all, we were working in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is now one of the meccas of Hollywood — Hollywood North, if you will. And no one was really up there but us as a TV series. So… I feel like we were like the mod squad of Canada.”
“We were in our twenties. The world was our oyster. We were just loving life. And all I can say is thank God there was no social media back then to document some of the things that were going on. We dodged that bullet,” she said. “But it was fun. Like we had so much fun, especially the first couple years. Later on, it got a little more challenging, but the first couple years was like a dream.”
Johnny Depp was a mid-season replacement on ’21 Jump Street’
While speaking to podcast host David Yontef, Robinson Peete also revealed some information about Johnny Depp’s role on the show.
“Well, what was crazy was… a lot of people don’t realize that Johnny was a replacement. There was another actor who was in his part. They let him go in the middle of the pilot and brought Johnny in,” she recalled. “So we all thought we were gonna get fired. We didn’t know what was going on. We tried to welcome Johnny… But we felt bad for the other actor.”
“It was a real interesting way that he came into the show. But then we all embraced him, we embraced each other, and we became this really rock solid group on TV, and it was really, really lovely,” she continued. “He was pretty much, you know, a lot of the ways he is now. In some ways, he was totally different because he was just so green and… he was broke. He, you know, [had] done a couple things here and there, but this was his big break. So it was interesting.”
“I think I certainly knew that he was destined for superstardom,” she added. “It was great to be around him when he was nice and young and unaffected, and it was a really good time.”
’21 Jump Street’ has inspired movies
21 Jump Street continued to live on in the hearts of fans after it went off the air in 1991.
In 2012, the show got a film adaptation with the same name. The movie was set in the same world as the series, with Depp, Robinson Peete, and Peter DeLuise reprising their roles from the TV show in cameo appearances. The 2014 sequel, 22 Jump Street, also featured cameos from original show stars Richard Grieco and Dustin Nguyen.
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