Hey dudes, you’ll never believe what’s happening — the cast of Hey Dude is attending 90s Con!
Us Weekly can exclusively announce that Christine Taylor, David Lascher, Kelly Brown and Josh Tygiel will be on hand for the fan-focused event in Hartford, Connecticut. The annual convention will take place from March 15 to March 17.
While 90s Con has been running for years, this is the first time any Hey Dude cast member will be in attendance. Thats4Entertainment will be hosting this year’s festivities, which include Q&A panels, meet and greets for fans, photo ops with the groups and solo actors as well as autographs and selfie opportunities.
Hey Dude aired from 1989 to 1991 and consisted of five seasons. It followed a group of friends who work at a dude ranch while facing the ups and downs of adolescence. The main characters included Brad (Brown), Melody (Taylor), Ted (Lascher), Buddy (Tygiel), Danny (Joe Torres), Lucy (Debi Kalman) and Mr. Ernst (David Brisbin).
Ahead of their 90s Con reunion, Taylor, 52, and Lascher, 51, teamed up in 2022 to launch their podcast, “Hey Dude … The 90s Called!” During a December 2022 episode, the twosome revealed that while they never played love interests, they did date back in the day.
“You are my first real love, it was full of teen angst and everything you can imagine,” Lascher told Taylor during the first podcast episode. “You and I bonded over humor, laughter and I just remember we would just make fun of everyone and everything in a lighthearted way. We just laughed for two years straight.”
Lascher joked, “I was nervous to even ask you if wanted to talk about it, but we’re both happily married and we’re adults. But yeah, we were hot and heavy.” (Lascher is now married to Jill London, while Taylor wed Ben Stiller in 2000.)
Looking back, Taylor said she took “full responsibility” for their split, which came while the show was still filming. “[It] was not fun. I have memories of you being really angry with me during certain episodes,” she quipped. “I was terrible. I was non-confrontational and had no idea how to talk or deal with it.”
The pair were able to overcome the awkwardness of their breakup and work together to help revive their show via their podcast. The task was made that much easier when Taylor’s husband, 58, successfully located the whole show on DVD for her to watch back.
“I remember it was before the DVDs. There was a period of time where I was trying to get a hold of the episodes because my dad had recorded them on VHS. So that puts it all in perspective. My dad had a catalog, and I was like, ‘Not only is that going to be horrible quality, I don’t want to spend any time to transfer those to CDs,’” Taylor exclusively recalled to Us in January 2023. “We were trying to get them all and Nickelodeon was owned by Paramount, and I’d just done the Brady Bunch movie. So we went to Paramount. We’re like, ‘Do you have a catalog of this show?’”
Taylor revealed that Stiller was the one who eventually found them. “And Ben as a birthday gift for me, got all of the DVDs and put it in, like, a binder. It’s like an embossed logo of a leather binder. … This must have been, like, 2000.”
While Taylor said she was “excited to pop in an episode and show my kids,” her daughter, Ella, 21, and son Quinlin, 18, didn’t instantly appreciate the ‘90s series.
“Ten minutes in, they were literally, like, looking around like, ‘How much longer are you gonna make us watch this?’ Because it’s quiet and slow. It’s not great editing or music every second,” she explained. “It was not something they decided to go in to see all 65 episodes. I think they got their 10 minutes of episode one!”
Although Taylor’s kids didn’t take to Hey Dude, many fans have remained dedicated to the iconic show. Those individuals will get to see the cast firsthand in March, where Lascher will be playing double duty.
Lascher will be popping in on the Sabrina the Teenage Witch panels — he played Josh — when he’s not hanging with his former dude ranch pals, Us can confirm. Melissa Joan Hart, Jenna Leigh Green, Beth Broderick, Nate Richert, and Alimi Ballard will all be in Connecticut to represent the show.