Luke Perry Spends His Own Windfall

Luke Perry's new role as a lottery winner in NBC's Windfall (Thursdays at 10 pm/ET, premiering tonight) has the former Beverly Hills, 90210 bad boy thinking about what he'd do with a massive payday of his own.

TV Guide: Your new show, Windfall, is about a group of friends who win $20 million each in the lottery. What would you do if you won?
Luke Perry: If $20 million dropped on me in one lump sum, you wouldn't see much of me. I'd be gone, doing something else.

TV Guide: Such as?
Perry: There are things I want to build. I'd build a bridge. There are machines I want to make. Everybody has things like that. That's part of what makes the show so interesting. It's not a complete fantasy  endless money. It's a quantifiable number, $20 million. Pro athletes make it all the time.

TV Guide: And actors, sometimes?
Perry: [Laughs] Not me. But it's a figure that is accessible to people. It's enough to get you in trouble, but I'm not sure if it's enough to get you out. It's finite. $20 million? You're gonna get through that in this life, possibly. Me, I want to spend my last dollar on my last day either that or leave $88 million of it to Anna Nicole Smith. I love that. Get off her, OK? The old man wanted her to have it, and it was his money.

TV Guide: If you'd come into big money before you moved to L.A. to try acting, would you have still made the move?
Perry: Yeah. I just would have lived in a nicer motel.

TV Guide: But didn't there come a point when Beverly Hills, 90210 became such a huge hit that circumstances changed suddenly and dramatically for you?
Perry: [Shakes head] I drove a pickup truck the whole time. No Mercedes here. It was so quick, and we worked so much. We were on the set 60, 70 hours a week, so there wasn't really any time to do anything else. They kept us chained up in the dark, filming, and there wasn't much time or opportunity to get out, which was probably a good thing. All I wanted to do then was shoot film  do the show, do movies. I loved it, loved it, loved it.

TV Guide: Are you still in touch with Aaron Spelling or with the other cast members of 90210?
Perry: I still talk with the boss. He still has ideas for shows, and he calls me. I run into those other geeks once in a while. They're not going anywhere, and I ain't goin' anywhere. If I ever need 'em, I can get 'em. But everyone's sort of flung to the far ends of the earth.

TV Guide: Have you seen Tori Spelling's fake reality show, So NoTORIous?
Perry: No. I heard it was good. But what the hell is a fake reality show?

TV Guide: It's supposed to look like a reality show, but it's actually all scripted. She's playing an exaggerated version of her life.
Perry: What do you mean "playing"one? She's living an exaggerated version of her life! [Laughs] Well, I wish her luck with that.

TV Guide: The character you play on Windfall is no stranger to a bit of extravagance, right?
Perry: Yeah, what I call woo-hoo moments... I love big-ticket items on the show  elephants, helicopters. I want to deliver that, because I know that when people win the lottery, that's one of their first instincts. I'm having trouble convincing the producers. They're like, "We can't do that every week." And I'm like, "People want to see the elephant, the helicopter, the hovercraft, the James Bond thing." Crazy stuff.

TV Guide: So what crazy thing would be at the top of your list?
Perry: An air scooter. Have you ever seen one?

TV Guide: Uh, no. What is it?
Perry: It's awesome! A one-man helicopter with counter-rotating blades, so they're smaller in circumference. It's very stable, very flyable. That, and I'd spend all my money promoting biodiesel, ethanol, alternative fuels. I've never been a political person, but we're at the crossroads. Armageddon is one way, and us figuring it out is the other way. So me, personally, I'd get an air scooter and fly around telling people about biodiesel. And see if I could power that air scooter with biodiesel....