Tori Spelling has relived the moment she realised her best friend Shannen Doherty had died after her phone “kept buzzing” at 7am.

The actress, 51, has been struggling with her grief over her former ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ co-star’s passing on 13 July aged 53 after she lost her years-long battle against cancer – and has now relived the horrific moment she learned she was gone.

She said on her ‘misSPELLING’ podcast about her phone lighting up when she was asleep with her two of her children on Sunday, 14 July: “It kept going off. I checked the time, and it was 7am, and I knew immediately.

“I was… I was like, ‘Oh my god. Somebody’s passed, somebody important has died.’

“And I took that moment not to go on social media… when I pulled up Google, I saw that Shannen had passed on Saturday night, and it was shocking.”

She added: “For everyone around the world that was going through something, whether it was cancer or any other kind of disease or ailment or connected to a hard time they were going through… they really did look to her for inspiration and power to carry on in the moments when they felt they couldn’t – and I got to see that in person.

“I got to see that in person her whole life, which is beautiful.”

Tori also recalled the first time she met Shannen aged 15 while filming the pilot for ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’.

She added: “I think Shannen and Brian (Austin Greene – who played David Silver on the show) were the first people that I met on set, and they were really, really welcoming.

“She immediately took me under her wing. She gave me a big hug, walked me around, took me into the makeup trailer.”

Tori admitted she and Shannen didn’t always agree, which she said led to “lost years” between them before they reconnected and realised they were being “silly”.

She said: “Ultimately, we got that time to go back and say, ‘None of that matters’.

“What matters is that core friendship that we had, and we were able to get back to that.”