Nicole Eggert reveals the origin of the famous ‘Baywatch’ slo-mo beach run

Nicole Eggert, a television mainstay since the early 1980s best known for roles on Charles in Charge and Baywatch, appeared on a recent episode of Still Here Hollywood, the inside-showbiz podcast hosted by Steve Kmetko.

In his signature lush tone, the host asked the 53-year-old model and actress about the first time she was asked to don the iconic red bathing suit and run in slow motion, the signature image of the most popular TV show to regularly feature swimming malfunctions.

“Here’s the thing about the slow-motion running,” Eggert announced. “We had no idea that there was such a thing as slow motion. We trailblazed that.”

We know what you are thinking. Eggert’s time on Baywatch, the third and fourth of the successful series’ nine seasons, aired from September 1992 to May 1994. The innovation of “overcranking” a camera — running more than 24 frames per second while capturing an image, thus making the subject appear slower — dates back to the earliest experiments in cinema. The Austrian polymath August Musger was the first to devise a synchronous motor for such use back in 1907.

But Eggert continued, suggesting she meant that she and her colleagues trailblazed the use of slow motion in a Baywatch context.

“We were the guinea pigs the first two seasons of this new look of Baywatch,” she said. “Nobody mentioned the slow mo. I heard that [it] happened by accident in the editing room. It was a timing thing, and an editor put it in slow mo, the run, for a montage, and then everybody fell in love with it.”

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She continued, “So I was running full speed. And let me tell you something, full-speed running in slow motion is not cute. Not cute at all. So the actors later had it so much easier because they knew what they were going into.” 

Eggert envied the successive cast members who knew upfront what the final product would look like. “They could be more conscious of the looks they had on their face or the way they were holding their body,” she said. “Not me. I was out there, like, trying to be Miss Athletic running, and then they would put it in slow mo. So I had a lot of cringeworthy moments.”

Eggert’s character Summer Quinn joined the Baywatch lifeguard crew while still a student. Her mother Jackie (played by Susan Anton) ran the local restaurant Jackie’s Summer Place. Eventually she shuffled off to Penn State University, where we’re sure the L.A. native enjoyed the grim, gray winters of coal country. Alexandra Daddario played the role in the 2017 movie version led by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Behold: the opening credits of the third season of Baywatch, the first to feature Summer Quinn. Maybe you forgot just how hard the piano solo went on “I’m Always Here.”

You can check out Nicole Eggert’s full chat with Steve Kmetko below.