Baywatch Star Reveals Pre-Speedo Prep & More Cast Swimsuit Secrets (Exclusive)

While one star opens up about getting his package TV-ready, another admits she was “never comfortable” in her swimsuit, and a third shares why it was “empowering” for her to look “different” from the other women.

Back in the ’90s, we all tuned in to Baywatch to see the show’s stars strut their stuff in slo-mo on the beaches of California. But how did it feel for the stars themselves to wear those iconic red swimsuits?

That’s one of the many questions tackled in ABC News Studios’ After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun docuseries, which dropped today on Hulu. In the docuseries, stars including David Hasselhoff, Nicole Eggert, Carmen Electra, Billy Warlock, Alexandra Paul, Gregory Alan Williams, David Chokachi, Jeremy Jackson, Traci Bingham, Erika Eleniak, Michael Newman and more reflect on what it was like being the most famous lifeguards on television, spilling on both the good and the bad.

And those bathing suits brought out some interesting stories.

Alexandra Paul, David Chokachi, and Erika Eleniak (above, left to right) spoke with TooFab about the doc and gave even more insight into how they really felt about their very revealing wardrobe options.

“My character was an Olympic hopeful and we had to do a lot of stuff in the pool,” recalled Chokachi, who admits in the doc to “fluffing” himself before slipping into a Speedo.

“We’d be doing second unit and it’d be 6 or 6:30 in the morning, and it’s June and we’re like out in the middle of the ocean and it’s like, ‘Okay, Chokachi, jump in the water and you start swimming.’ So it’s me, Speedo, and the water’s freezing,” he told TooFab.

“We’re doing, you know, just freestyle and Alexandra’s on the boat, just like yelling at me,” he continued, “and then right after will be a scene that, like, I’ll have to jump out of the water and like kind of talk to her and it’s just like the Seinfeld episode with George when they’re in the Hamptons; the shrinkage factor.”

“The struggle is real,” quipped Paul, as Chokachi exclaimed he didn’t want to “go down as like that guy” with the small package.

“So I would just … the actors are allowed a couple minutes before action and I would just kind of turn around and do a little like, warmth down there and a little hand rubbing,” he confirmed, adding in the doc, “It created a little circulation and you’d kind of represent yourself a little better.”

“I would have helped!” quipped Paul again, after sharing her approval in the doc by saying, “You see his c–k in his suit and, you know, it was hot!”

Chokachi wasn’t the only man on set who opened up about his concerns, as Jeremy Jackson also shared that he was “a little bit embarrassed” when he started putting on a little extra weight during his teen years. “I was getting prodded by producers and stuff about my appearance, skinny arms and chubby belly,” he shared in the doc, before his mother said she hired him a personal trainer to “drag him out of bed.”

For the women, some of them have claimed there was a clause in their contracts saying they couldn’t gain or lose five pounds and had to stay within their weight each season. Kelly Packard claimed the suits got higher and higher each season, saying, “It was ridiculous, you couldn’t even function in it” — while Angelica Bridges added, “We had to stay fit, we couldn’t get cellulite, there was a lot of pressure.”

On a show where the goal for many cast members was to emulate Pamela Anderson’s blonde locks and curvaceous figure, Paul said she knows she “didn’t conform to what people thought of as Baywatch” in the doc, before expanding upon that with TooFab.

“For me, there was not competition because I felt very different from all the other women. My body type was different. Also, I had gotten over an eating disorder the year before I went on the show. So I had been bulimic and anorexic for 12 years. I wouldn’t have taken the show if I was still struggling with that eating disorder,” she told TooFab.

“I was so relieved about not having to battle that, that I was so grateful for feeling more comfortable in my body and not worrying about how it looked as much,” she continued. “I felt like this huge weight was off my shoulders and my weight kind of settled.”

Noting that the other women on the show were all “so beautiful,” she acknowledged that even if she had the “long blonde hair and large breasts,” she “still couldn’t emit that kind of sexuality and sensuality” as them, so she didn’t try to fight it.

“I kind of leaned into my individuality by cutting my hair, actually. And that worked well for me, both as an actor [and] it was empowering for me,” she added, as Eleniak chimed in to say “how amazing it is” for Paul to “have gone through an eating disorder and then to have felt actually liberated in the bathing suit.” Eleniak then added, “Because it could have gone the other way. But the fact that, for you, it was, seems like a catharsis, you know, that I get to be free and be me. That’s pretty amazing.”

Despite having a different body type, Paul initially had to wear the same suits “that were designed for women with large breasts and curves,” at least until Yasmine Bleeth joined the show as her character’s sister and requested a crossback suit before filming. “And then the producer said, ‘Hey, maybe we should give Alexandra a different suit too, because her body type is different,'” she recalled, “and so I got a suit that was more athletic and looked better on me. That was nice that they saw us as individual bodies.”

Like Paul, Eleniak didn’t necessarily feel like she was in competition with the other women on the show when it came to putting on a swimsuit. Instead, she was battling herself.

“I certainly felt, and I’ve always been, and I’m still self-conscious. It’s part of who I am,” she admitted. “It would be nice to say that at almost 55, I’m super comfortable in my skin and I love everything about my body now and all all the wrinkles and all that stuff. I’d love to say that, but it’s not true.”

“I’ve always felt insecure. So being in a bathing suit for your, that’s your work uniform, I was never comfortable ever and always just self-conscious,” she continued. “And that’s the last thing as an actor that you wanna be. You don’t wanna be thinking about that.”

She explained that donning the red suit was “always a bit of a battle,” as she struggled with “being able to focus on the work at hand and not have to think about wearing the suit.”

After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun is streaming now on Hulu.

Source: ABC News Studios, TooFab