Trivia / Degrassi High

• Creator Backlash: Naturally, a lot of the cast members, especially the prominent ones like Pat Mastroianni (Joey), Stacie Mistysyn (Caitlin) and Amanda Stepto (Spike), were typecast after the show, with the former two going on record as trying to distance themselves from the show in it's wake before later embracing it. In his Degrassi Talks book, Pat was said to have casually sipped the last of his champagne at the wrap party and left in his car without much fanfare.
  • Amanda Stepto was not fond of School's Out, not just because she felt it was a bad send-off, but that Spike was barely in it, and Liz wasn't even in it at all.^note In the I'm In Love With A Girl Named Spike podcast, Amanda scoffs at the movie the minute it is brought up, and talks about how she was living on her own with little income and unable to pay her rent during the movie's production and how she begged to be at least in the movie's party scenes but was denied. She would joke that she'd only attend screenings of the movie if it wasn't the only thing that was being shown.
  • Kirsten Bourne, who played Tessa, left the public eye after the show ended. Later, she admitted to Pat (at the time helming the Degrassi Palooza reunion tour) that she never received a thank you from the producers and was convinced they disliked her performance in School's Out. Kit Hood later thanked her at Degrassi Palooza.
• Executive Meddling: When the two-part premiere A New Start aired in the United States, PBS edited out the final scene of Erica and Heather pushing through pro-life picketers to enter an abortion clinic, claiming that the choice was for aesthetic purposes and felt it was more powerful to end before that. It angered Kit Hood so much that he requested his name be taken off the credits on the PBS broadcast.
• Hostility on the Set: There was reportedly little, but the closest would probably an argument Amanda Stepto had with a director over a kissing scene, that is only known at all because she mentioned it briefly in an old online interview.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Liz is almost universally despised by the fandom for her aggressive pro-life views and harassment of Erica after the latter's abortion. However, Cathy Keenan, Liz's actress, is pro-choice.
• Rereleased for Free: Made available on YouTube for free by WildBrain in the late 2010s, though the episodes were stretched to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio instead of its native 4:3, and only the first season was ever uploaded. Following the 2022 deal with HBO that put The Next Generation on HBO Max, it was region-blocked in North America and Australia, along with Degrassi Junior High and The Next Generation, which were also available for free. It was also made available in both English and French on Encore+, a government-funded Canadian media preservation project YouTube channel, and with the episodes not stretched. However, that channel suddenly announced it was shutting down in November 2022, right when it was in the middle of uploading the second season (of which contained frequent jittering and stuttering).

---