Shannen Doherty claimed that Alyssa Milano and her family caused tension between her and Holly Marie Combs on the set of Charmed.
“There was a competitiveness with Alyssa. I heard she addressed it in her book. Obviously, I’m never reading her book because it’s [titled] Sorry Not Sorry, so right there it tells me you’re not freaking sorry. Why mention something in that case? There was also competitiveness about you,” Doherty, 52, said to guest Combs, 50, on the Monday, December 11, episode of the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum’s “Let’s Be Clear With Shannen Doherty” podcast. “Which was really interesting of [her] trying to pull you away from me and that transpired in that second season.”
Doherty explained that filming season 2 of the WB drama — which starred Doherty, Combs and Milano, 50 — was a difficult period for her and her costars. At the time of filming in 1999, Doherty’s father was “in and out of the hospital nonstop” as Combs suffered from her own health scares.
“Hospitals scared me to death. I waited 24 hours after your surgery to go and then it wasn’t even easy for me to get in. I was like being told I couldn’t even get in,” Doherty claimed. “Alyssa and her mom were blocking people from seeing you and at the time you didn’t know. I remember you texted me, ‘Dude are you going to come and see me?’”
Doherty confessed that Comb’s message affected her. She felt her costars “pain” and saw how it looked like she “abandoned” her.
“I also felt my anger at the situation of not being allowed to come see you and how a sort of family had swooped in,” Doherty explained. “[It] caused a weird divide between the two of us that continued throughout season 2. I think I cried every single night.”
Combs agreed with Doherty’s reflection and noted that “there was a lot going on behind the scenes.”
“I think it was pretty obvious I was raised by teenage parents and I didn’t have a big family So you’re right, when a family swooped in and tried to basically adopt me it was very seductive for me,” Combs explained. “I also wanted everybody to get along, I wanted the show to be successful.”
She continued: “There were no angels, there were no demons. We all had bad days, we all had good days. We all could have behaved better at certain points but there was a lack of awareness of a bigger broader picture.”
Charmed ran for eight seasons from 1998 to 2006. In 2001, Doherty exited the series after three seasons after rumors swirled that she and Milano were not getting along. Rose McGowan took over as new Halliwell sister Paige.
“I want to work with actors who really, really care and that want to be there every single day,” Doherty said to Entertainment Tonight about her departure at the time. “I don’t want to work with people who bitch about their job and complain about it and say that they hate it or anything else.”
While promoting her aforementioned book in 2021, Milano claimed she and Doherty were “cordial.”
“You know, I could take responsibility for a lot of our tension that we had,” Milano said to ET at the time. “I think a lot of our struggle came from feeling that I was in competition rather than it being that sisterhood that the show was so much about. And I have some guilt about my part in that.”
