On The Set : Unfriendly Persuasion : TORI SPELLING AND KELLIE MARTIN TURN THEIR SERIES IMAGES AROUND IN NBC FILM

Socializing between the two female stars of the NBC movie “A Friend to Die For” is noticeably nonexistent on this set.

But no tales of young Hollywood fur flying here. Kellie Martin (“Christy”) and Tori Spelling (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) are just being professional: Martin’s character, a smart but not very popular high school student, reveres Spelling’s cheerleader character from afar and approaches her to be her friend. When she’s rebuffed, she kills her. Plain and not-really-that-simple and, oh yes, based on a true story.

“I don’t want to be too friendly with her,” says Martin, who acted with Spelling in the 1989 feature flop “Troop Beverly Hills.” “My character is very in awe of her and then ends up killing her, so when they say, ‘Cut,’ I’m not going to say, ‘Hey, Tori!’ and have a big conversation with her and end up laughing. Because when they say, ‘Action,’ it’s hard to stop.”

Sometimes she finds staying in character a little off-putting to others, though. “When I say I’m killing Tori Spelling, people say ‘Whoa,’ ” says Martin, who, like Spelling, shot the movie over 18 days while her series was on hiatus.

Both actresses realize they are going against their “TV type” in the movie; in fact, that is one of the main reasons cited by each for accepting their roles.

Spelling plays a spoiled child--not an evil character, yet still far from her cloyingly sweet Donna on Fox’s “90210.” Martin, who plays the incredibly wholesome and religious title character in CBS’ “Christy,” portrays a young woman who kills in a moment of passion and anger.

“It was a good script,” says Spelling, “and it got me excited that the character was so different from Donna. I think people can’t even fathom me playing this role. They’ll be shocked when they see this, that I could play somebody like that.”

Despite the depressing nature of “A Friend,” Spelling is definitely enjoying the change of pace. “I like having the opportunity to be the bitch,” she says, sitting patiently for makeup and hair before the day’s shooting begins.

“I love characters, like Heather Locklear on ‘Melrose Place,’ that play bitches. They always get the great lines. With this role, I get the zinger lines and I love it.”

She adds sadly: “I can’t imagine a 15-year-old killing another 15-year-old. I think Kellie has the more difficult role. I can’t imagine this happening, but it did happen.”

(The names in “A Friend to Die For” have been changed, even the name of the town where it all happened.)

On the day of this interview the shooting of the funeral scene for Spelling’s character is taking place. “I got really queasy doing the scene where I died,” she says.

While the filming schedule for the project is short, director William A. Graham, a veteran of film and television movies, likes to squeeze in some rehearsal time before shooting. “I have a reading where all the actors sit around and read the script. I get them up from the table, have them move around, simulate the staging. My main purpose is not to solve big problems of interpretation, but to break the ice.”

Graham adds, “Tori’s playing the bitch here. I tell Tori, ‘Show me what makes you the most popular girl in the school. I don’t want to see the bitchiness, just give me flashes of that, where she puts down (Martin).”

The director is a testament to the non-interaction between Spelling and Martin on the set: “The other actresses hang out in Tori’s dressing room. Kellie stays on her own. I think she wants to stay alienated (from Spelling’s character), not be too chummy.”

While they’re not overly friendly on the set, Martin enjoys working again with Spelling and feels compelled to say something about the snide press Spelling sometimes get. “ ‘90210’ comes with a certain stigma, good or bad. People resent a show and the actors when they become so famous so fast.

“Tori gets a bad rap, like on ‘Saturday Night Live’ (sketches). It’s hard to have a famous father or mother. Tori’s made her own way. She didn’t get this job because Aaron Spelling is her father,” Martin says.

No one has anything bad to say about Martin. Graham is unreservedly enthusiastic. “She is a virtuoso performer, she does so much homework, she knows the script and the part so well, much better than I do.”

“A Friend” offers as much of a stretch for Martin as it does for Spelling. A few years back, Martin was a regular on the ABC series “Life Goes On,” where she played the girlfriend of a teen-age boy (Chad Lowe) with AIDS. Martin says of that character, “She had her share of problems, a dark side to her personality. She’s more similar to Angela (Martin’s character in “Friend”) than Christy is. I want to play a psychotic or a blind girl or die, because they’re extreme, different, challenging roles. I’ve reached one of those goals here.”

“It’s a meaty part, one that I get to sink my teeth into, but it’s draining and I have to go to places, dig deep, where with Christy I don’t have to do that,” Martin says.

“Angela has so may characteristics I don’t have or wouldn’t want to have. She’s not that smart. If she was smart, then she would know that she doesn’t have to be part of the popular crowd to be cool,” says Martin, who doesn’t run with Hollywood’s in-crowd.

The girl upon whom the film is based was paroled last year, and reportedly living in the Midwest.

“A Friend to Die For” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC. “Beverly Hills, 90210” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Fox. “Christy” is scheduled to return (time to be announced) as a midseason replacement on CBS.