When Johnny got the call for the television show 21 Jump Street, he immediately said no. Johnny didn’t want to sign a contract that would commit him for years and years. Also, he felt that coming from a greatly appreciated film like Platoon, gambling on a new untested television show was a chance he wasn’t willing to take. When asked about the initial call Johnny said, “When they called and ask me to sign onto the show, I said, No, no, no, no, no, no?..I didn’t want to sign some big contract that would bind me for years, so they got someone else to do it. They fired him after about a month and then they called me again and said, ‘Will you Please do it?’ My agents said that the normal lifespan of a television show is thirteen episodes, one season, if that. So I finally said ok.” Part of this decision was a chance at security and a real current income. The first step for the producers was to finish taping the pilot episode. Johnny would play detective Tom Hanson, a police officer who looked too young for the job. Hanson was looked down on by his fellow officers and had something to prove. He is offered a position in the Jump Street program, posing undercover to arrest and protect the young kids in the high schools. 21 Jump Street took off as a huge hit; as it came on the heels of the huge anti-drug campaigns in the mid 1980’s. Unable to commit to both the Rock City Angels and the TV show, Johnny was forced to quit the band. A couple of months after, the band was signed by Greffen records to a 6.2 million dollar contract, which may have seemed at the time Johnny missed out on his chance, but a couple of months later the label dropped the band and Johnny was still attached to the show. Johnny was relocated to Vancouver Canada to shoot the program. After filming there for a few months, Johnny moved his mother and stepfather there to be with him. He tried to talk Sherilyn Fenn to move there with him also, but she would not leave Hollywood because she needed to be there for her auditions and her film opportunities. Johnny and Fenn would spend awhile traveling back and forth to visit each other between their work responsibilities and she even appeared on an early episode of Jump Street.
Right from the get go, Johnny had difficulties playing the character of Tom Hanson. Johnny has said, “I don’t believe in having undercover cops in high school it’s spying.” He also has said about Hanson that, “the only thing that I have in common with him is that we look alike.” Johnny was being paid 45,000 per episode and even though the money was a godsend, he was lonely and having his mother there was a great comfort to him. As soon as the first episodes aired, the show was an over night success. Even though the show was built around a full cast, there was something about Johnny that shoved him in the spotlight above all the others. This was situation that Johnny wasn’t prepared for. It however, brought a great opportunity to the eyes of the producers, who immediately played up the presses love for Johnny and shoved him into every teen magazine capable. This was yet another predicament that he was not equipped to handle. Feeling that he was an ordinary guy and not that attractive, Johnny could not believe how the adoring fans swooned over him. Part of his job now included, fifteen-hour days, script memorization and fittings, but also posing for photo shoots with a gun and sitting through interviews about his favorite color, food and movies. If there has been one thing that Johnny has been very vocal about, it is this time in his life, where his stardom truly began and where he felt he was being exploited the most. There have been many quotes by Johnny about this time in his life but one quote still applies today, “Those are things that are out of my control. It’s very nice to be appreciated, but I’m not really comfortable with it. I’ve never really liked being the center of attention. It just comes with the territory?”
The next change in his life came when he proposed to Fenn. This could have proved to hurt Johnny’s popularity because the girls would see him as unavailable, but instead they saw him as a wonderful guy, and his popularity continued to rise. The girls continued to follow him everywhere screaming and the fan mail began to pour in by the thousands. The star mail handler company of Fan Handle stated that Johnny received more mail than Michael J. Fox or Rob Lowe, more than 10,000 pieces a month. “Some letters are kinda weird, yeah I get those for sure, Letters threatening to kill themselves if I don’t write or asking for advice??but I’m not all that stable myself so who am I to give advice?” The shows success was in the background to Johnny who began to get overly frustrated; realizing the span between real life and camera contained a gap larger than he had contemplated.
The biography up to and including “Serious acting” is now under copywrite and trademark by Johnny-Depp.org and Laura Elizabeth Cline, (lizzy4depp). It may not be used without credit on any other work or website.
Thanks to Martina for allowing me to write and her help and support and to Beth for helping with research. Also to Just_Me for writing parts of the old biography here.
Sources for this new biography are “Johnny Depp A Modern Rebel by Brian j. Robb”,
“Johnny Depp an illustrated Biography by Nick Johnstone”, “The secret world of Johnny Depp by Nigel Goodall” and “Depp” by Christopher Heard, as well as different interviews seen and read through the years.