December 11, 2023 • 43 mins
Sisters on and off screen, Shannen and Holly recall their friendship before their days on Charmed…and how their bond grew through the trials and tribulations experienced on set.
Pushing against the producer patriarchy, and what caused a temporary wedge between the original Halliwell sisters.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is let's be clear with Shannon Doherty.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Everyone, This is Shannon Doherty and today I am joined
by very special guests. My friend Holly Marie comes. Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Holly, Hi, how are you going?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
As usual? So full of energy? What some people don't
know is that we knew each other before Charmed.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
How do people not know that? I don't know they
weren't paying attention.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I know, but some people don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
They didn't watch TMZ very much.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Wait, this was before TMZ.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It was so how did we how did we meet?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Are you saying you don't remember?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I'm quizzing you?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Oh, but I didn't know there was going to be
a test.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
There's always a test.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Wow, this is this is a long string of events.
So my first husband, my first mistake, was friends with
Jeffrey Dean Morgan some of you may know his name,
and he was dating Lara Flynn Boyle at the time.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So Lara was actually.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
The first friend I had in La when I moved
there to do pick offensuits, and Lara knew Rox Sanna,
Roxanna knew you, and Charlie was in there in the
middle somewhere. So when I was no longer friends with Lara.
Then I became friends with Rexanna, and then I became
(01:42):
friends with you, and then Roxanna became upset that we became.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Friends, and well, really the story is like you met
me and you were like, I don't need any other friend,
but Shannon.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That was the distinction.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Thank you, really it was the only joy.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
You're like, I don't need any of these other people.
With her multiple personalities, she covers all of them. It's
all good.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So and so then I became I became Charlie's daughter's godmother,
and then I got fired because of the first husband,
my first mistake. She in like that situation, and then
you got hired as that godmother. It's all very twisted.
If you think about.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It, it is. It is really twisted. So we all right,
So right.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I was nineteen Oh god, that.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Means that means I was twenty.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
No.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I that means I had like a momentary lapse where
I'm like, what am I thirty nine now? Oh? No,
forty nine? So that means that was thirty years ago.
And I just don't think there's enough time in the
day to go through all of this.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
That's all. It's a long, long, long time it's a
long journey, right, So we hung out, we did all
of this stuff, and when when Charmed came around, I remember.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Seeing a lot of stuff here.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
By the way, I know I'm going to get to
Charmed real quick. We can always back track. We well, yeah,
I mean, okay, hold on, no, no, right, no, because
you said you said first mistake a couple of times,
which is really funny because I think we paralleled with
mistakes through out our friendship. You know, you're on your
(03:31):
third marriage, right I am, aren't you? But so far,
so good? Well, no, I mean my third is ending, right,
So okay, here's here's one of my favorite stories about
Holly that I want to tell all of our listeners.
It is that hollywould often stay at my house because
(03:51):
of my first mistake. The first mistake was no bueno,
and she needed a little bit of safety and protection
and and I supplied it along with my German shepherd Elfie,
who was like shits and three trained and cray cray
and loved Holly, and she kept people away from the property.
(04:12):
Let's just put it like that. She had a couple
of encounters with the first mistake that didn't go so
well for him. And so Hollywoold walk around the house
in overalls with a tool belt and she would fix
everything in the house that needed fixing. Like I distinctly
(04:33):
recall looking at her and saying, it's so weird that
there's not a lock on my bathroom door, Like what
if I have a guy over and I need to
use the restroom, they could just come in, Like that's
not okay. And the next thing I knew, I heard
like hammering and there was a lock on the door.
(04:54):
I was like, this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I was handy your projects.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
You were very, very very handy. Yeah you uh yeah
you you fixed everything in my house. I actually need
you to.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Something next.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, I have a couple I don't need fixing.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Do you have anything that needs to be put together?
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And you're cheaper and funnier than a handyman, I think.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
So.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I mean, I jumped a Charmed and I was obviously
off of nine O two and oh. I was very
trepidacious of working with Aaron Spelling again and getting involved
because they burned me really badly on nine O two
and oh, and I was probably carrying around a lot
of resentment and anger still, but absolutely, you know, working
(05:57):
do mall rats like doing different projects, you know, pretty chilled.
And Holly, I picked you up right and we were
in my car and she saw like this script sort
of thrown in the backseat.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
That's how much you looked at it. You saw spelling
just through it.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, it's true. I saw Aaron spelling. And I was like,
I'm not going down that path again, no, thank you.
But you saw it and you were like, have you
read it? And I was like, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And I said, actually, this one is pretty good. You'll
you'll probably like it. And you said, no, it says
Spelling on it. And I said, I know, I understand,
but if they sent it to you, that means they
want to work with you on it and it might
be a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, And I read it.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And then you had your meeting with Aaron coming to
Jesus moment.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I mean it wasn't really a coming to Jesus moment.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
It was for him.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It was for him like you just walk in and
it's as if nothing happened, right, I mean for him,
that's how he how he conducted the meeting was it
was like, kiddo, let's do this project together. It's gonna
be great. And I was just like, do we want
to talk about everything that happened in the past. Do
(07:13):
we want to talk about that you fired me and
didn't even have a discussion with me, and like all
this stuff that transpired on nine o two zero and
how you know that was just an ugly situation. But no,
he didn't really want to discuss any of it. He
just wanted us to move forward.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
He was moving on.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
But you know, you were right. It was really well written.
Constance Burge did an amazing job. It was supernatural, but
like it had darkness to it as well, and it
was funny to a certain extent. And it was like
the relationship between the sisters was so powerful and so great.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It was funny by accident, Like it wasn't supposed to
be funny. Anything funny happened was totally my accident.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, But then it worked because you know, the circumstances
were so beyond reality that to have those moments of
humor or humanizing moments helped it a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, and you were Aaron offered us different roles. Well,
I'm jumping ahead once again. So he wanted me for
Piper for your role.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yep, And I had auditioned for Phoebe, which was painful.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yes, and we sort of were like, let's switch this around.
Let me be the older, let you be the middle.
He didn't believe that we were old enough to play
those characters.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, it was Actually we were the appropriate ages for
the other characters that we preferred.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Right, And we preferred them because they were like Proof
felt more authentic to me. She also felt like a
different character than Brenda, which was really important to me.
Like Brenda on nine o two and zero was such
a she had so much like teenage angst and made
so many mistakes and was kind of selfish and self
(09:09):
serving in her own way, and Prue was the antithesis
of that. Right. She was all about her sisters and
all about self sacrifice, which I really liked as far
as a career move and for me personally, I just
didn't want to play a character that seemed to look
frazzled or like the Phoebe character, which was, you know,
(09:32):
a little on that immature cusp. I wanted to play
like a very solid, strong woman who put her sisters
above everything else. Why did you want to play Piper?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I just felt I definitely couldn't be the youthful Phoebe one.
I don't think I was that youthful when I was youthful,
and so Piper was just far more appropriate for me
at the time.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
And she was a handful. It was you know, it
was a challenge.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right, which I think is the thing about the two
of us always is that we kind of like challenges.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Definitely, I don't want to be bored.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's a lot of our mistakes.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
All of them.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Were like, well that's a challenge. That one's a challenge.
We can change him. I don't see red flag red
flags everywhere, no problem.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You've got a discount on red flags today.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Oh my god. Yeah, I mean I think that like Piper,
I just remember reading the script and when you were like,
I want to play Piper. I thought, this actually makes
sense because you would bring your sort of you have
like a dryness to you, which I love, like that's
(10:50):
my kind of sense of humor is a little dry,
little dark, super witty, clever. And yet they're back then
not saying that it's like this now. Back then there
was like there was something naive about you personally and
very like still very trusting regardless of your mistake, you
were still very trusting and soft, and it was a
(11:11):
It was a good casting call for you to be
Piper because you were able to bring the vulnerability to her,
the negativity to her, and along with like your dryness,
your eye rolls, which you know you're now famous for apparently,
you know, you brought a character that I personally felt
(11:34):
when I read the script was kind of two dimensional,
and you really made her three dimensional, Like you gave
her so many different layers and so many different colors.
You brought her to life, I think in a way
that not even the producers or constans could have could
have seen coming.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Well, Constance was tough too.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Remember she she based the characters on her sisters, and
so she was trying to hold me to what she
had created. And I was like, you got to give
me little leeway here, you gotta give me a little
It was tough to make everybody happy. You know, the
network was against me, only erin, and you wanted me blackmailed.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
You blackmailed the network into wanting me.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
We'll go into that story. So who was the network
WB or CW at that point, it was still the WB. Yeah,
the WB so I was already committed to the project,
and Erin and I made a calculated decision to take
only Holly for Piper and another girl, Dana for for Phoebe.
(12:35):
So we go to the network. I'm sitting in with
the network. The girls come in individually and read off of me,
and it's really like, I love telling the story. I
hope you like it as much as me, because I
just think it's such an interesting take on Hollywood and
sometimes the closed mindedness of people and someone like you,
(12:56):
like persevering and proving everybody wrong, which I love. But
so you came in and you read, Dana came in
and read, and the network, you guys went out of
the room and the network looked at me and they said, yeah,
she just doesn't have like that it factor. And I
was like, what are you talking about? Like you know
that like charisma, that like like when you walk in
(13:19):
a room, Shannon, like everybody takes notice. And I went, whoa, whoa, WOA.
That's because I'm now who I am thanks to nine
oh two and oh thanks to a network giving me
a chance, thanks to Fox Network saying like, okay, let's
hire her for Brenda. It's because I was on the
cover Rolling Stone magazine, like, you give this girl this
part and she's going to do all of that. They
(13:42):
were still sitting on the fence. Erin and I walked out,
and I remember that you and Dana were standing in
the parking lot and Erin and I kind of like
walked away from you guys, and Aaron goes, kiddo, what
do you want to do. I'll fight for Holly. And
I said, she does it, or I don't do it,
and Aaron goes, I'll back you, and I went great.
(14:03):
So we had our Piper. We did not have our Phoebe.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
No.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I believe the term the actual term was star quality.
She doesn't have the star quality that you do. And
that one stuck with me for a while, and I
know exactly the person who said it, and she actually
called me years later to do another pilot after Charmed,
and it was a pilot.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
It was six women mistresses, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And I said, are you trying to kill me? And
she goes, no, absolutely not. She goes, I think you're
the perfect person for this project. And I was like
why and she goes, because I know you'll deal with
all of them really well.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And I was like, God damn it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
But it didn't get picked up obviously anyway, I think
they picked up dropped a diva instead.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right, So then you know, we they to cast this
girl out in New York. Lori Rahm, who was wonderful,
loved her. She fit in perfectly. She brought some something
like she was quirky, right, like she was quirky, but
took everything very seriously.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, I think she was primarily a stage actress before this,
and it kind of showed.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, I mean I enjoyed her, but she ended up quitting.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
She did, and after we got picked up, and then
they filled her part with Elis Milana.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
It was actually right in the middle. We found out
right in the middle of.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
The TV Guide shoot that she wasn't coming to the
shoot and we didn't know why, And we found out
later that she was a member of a particular church
and the church didn't like that she was playing a
witch on TV and basically told her she would go
(15:59):
to hell.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Listen. I not the decision I personally would have made, clearly,
but I do respect her for, you know, putting her
faith in her values first, and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I couldn't argue with it. You know that nobody could.
They just kind of went, Okay, that's you know, now
what do we do? So that's why that TV Guide
shoot there's like there's us on each side and they
just dropped to listen to the middle of the photo shirt.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
What a time period mm hm and charmed. It was
like a you know, it was I sort of looked
back and think like that first season was sort of
the best season to shoot as far as everybody getting along.
Sure I felt, you know, I mean compared to season
(16:50):
two and season three for me, season one we were
all still like new working together and feeling things out.
There were obviously things that you know, we didn't necessarily
all agree on, Like I didn't think it was important
to move to a studio lot so that we could
have a commissary. There were just a few of those
things where you were like, okay, you know, I look
(17:13):
at season one a lot and say, wow, we were
getting our feet under us, Like you see the stay
improvement from season one to season three, season three being
my favorite season, and just like the growth like with
our writers and I think even the growth with like
(17:35):
our acting, and we settled into our parts a lot
more and felt a bit more of a freedom. Certainly
in season three, I can't. I'm not going to talk
about the other seasons because I was there, so why
would I. But like, you know, you and I had
(17:55):
so many arguments with the producers about our clothing, about
our hair, Like they wanted to control every single aspect
of us. We could not. We had zero freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah yeah, I mean, well that's Aaron's thing too with
the hairstyles, Like we were not allowed to change our
hair for the first I think six episodes, Like it
couldn't even they didn't even want it to be up.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
You had to establish your hairstyle and keep it that
way because he felt that that's how an audience became
familiar with you.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, that's how they identified with the character. Was a
big part of the.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Hair, right, And listen, I maybe he's right.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It's a formula, for sure, it's a formula.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I mean, I like to think that people are identifying
with the character because of what we're bringing to it
and our performances, not in the physical.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
All right, well one would hope, but right, right.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I mean, when you work that hard and those hours
you're working seventeen eighteen hour days, it's nice to think
that it's because you're talented and people are connecting with
the character as opposed to like your hairstyle.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, yeah, the job is to create a human, a
whole human. It was a little tighty. It was a struggle.
We were struggling to prove ourselves. We were struggling to
prove ourselves to the network and all of it. I mean,
we could keep talking about it where we could just
reboot the reboot.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
We're not talking about episodes. We're not We're not getting
any of that promise you that is for the rebate.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I want to ask a question, are you excited about
your new endeavor?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
You know, after I recorded the first episode, I said
to Chris on the phone, I was like, who needs therapy?
Like there's something very cathartic about doing a podcast, and
(20:08):
especially I think when it's like my type of podcast,
where you're you're unpacking your life, you're basically, you know,
looking at everything and in real time going oh, you know,
maybe I was at fault, maybe I did this, maybe
I did that, or maybe this person needs to take responsibility.
I think it is giving me and going to give
(20:30):
me in the future everything that I would be spending
two hundred and fifty dollars an hour for absolutely, so
I'm very excited about that I'm saving money. Yeah, I
bought a new pair of boots today because I was like, well,
I saved saved money on therapy, So I like it
so far. I also love the fact that, like you know,
(20:50):
I'm in sweatpants and slippers.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Absolutely can't beat it.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's an interesting question. I don't think anybody's ever asked
us this, And like you and I do a lot
of convince together and fans get to ask us questions
on the panel and they're usually you know about like
certain episodes like what would you say? The similarities are
between us and the differences between us because people really
look at us as like sisters, So it's it's kind
(21:18):
of an interesting question similarities.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
We definitely have the same sense of humor, Like when
we did the travel show. We could entertain each other
and we don't really need other people really don't. I
don't know. We were just always terribly compatible. I mean
I basically lived with you and Rob for quite a while.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I don't know how.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Rob feels about that still to this day, but we
sort of ate the same, We traveled the same, we
hated people, the same gun bar fights the same.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Made the same mistakes, right right, right, Yeah, you know,
we just had, you know, very similar personalities.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It's different, you know, we've come from very different childhoods,
but we're just very similar. We do holidays the same,
and there's not a lot of people I can say
that about.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Right, Yeah. I think one of my favorite trips of
ours that is actually not in the travel show is
when my parents, you and I went to Ireland.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
That really should have been the travel show. I know
what we were thinking.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I should have. The network didn't want to pay for
the whole you know, overseas trips. But that was definitely
one of the most fun vacations I've ever had. Just
you and I like walking around Ireland and sneaking out
of castles so that my parents sensius sneaking out. I. Meanwhile,
they were watching us from like their tower room, and
(22:49):
we were.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Of age people, we were still.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Of age, and we got caught because one of the
castles was you had to take the little the castle ferry.
But we got back too late. Oops, how did we
get back?
Speaker 3 (23:04):
We had to call a guy who knew a guy
that had the thing that.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Came across the moat thing and we that were too
loud coming in apparently, and your mother was up and
your mother was waiting, and it still feels terrible, Yeah,
it really does.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Was very upset with.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Me, she was, she was upset with us both. She
was like, it's dangerous. Two girls got we were And
meanwhile we just went to like the neighborhood pub.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
We went to the pub like as one does.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, and we had a blast, like hanging out with
all the Irish people and trying to mimic their accents
and getting to know them and you know, hearing like
the story of Ireland from people who actually live there.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
There's some great photos from that night.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Do you have them? You have to say, I do.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I do.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I actually don't have that many photos from Ireland, but
I need some. I recently realized that I do not
have nearly as many photos as I thought I did,
like just saved up over the years. I don't know
what happened unless unless they always included like a boyfriend
and I was mad and like break them up.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
They're probably in storage somewhere.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I have found like some photos where it's like ripped
in half, so I know that there was a guy
that I was dating next to me in the photo,
but I've now ripped him out of the photo. But
I apparently really liked how I looked in the photos,
so I didn't want to just throw it out completely,
which is hysterical. There's quite a few of those. And
then I have to like try to backtrack and like
by my outfit to figure out who was in the
(24:35):
photo with me, like fashion determined who I was with. So, yeah,
we had Ireland, so we're similar. How are we different
besides like our childhood.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
You drive a lot faster than I do.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I'm an aggressive driver, Yes you are.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
You're a lot how do I say, not like a
neat freak. But you're much more tidy.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Then I am. Yes, I do admire your drive, though
I can see keeping things in order.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, see that.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That wood thing behind her has to be at a
certain diagonal on the counter, and it cannot be five
degrees this way or that way.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
It has to be this way that one right there.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Just say when I place things, yeah, I like them,
Like I take my time placing stuff in my home
and because it's my sanctuary, right it's where I feel
the safest. So if I've spent you know, months just
looking for the right piece, and I then spend hours
(25:42):
figuring out exactly where it goes and at what angle,
and somebody comes in and moves it, it tweaks my
brain a little bit. But I'm not OCD. But I
do like things very much in order. I'm very very
like you know.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
If you had to look to check to see if
it was right.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I did, I'm like craning my neck on it is
it right?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
So that that I will say, you're much more okay
with diagonals and angles where I have to have everything
straight or drives me insane. I will be OCD about
that this bag is crooked. I'm gonna straighten it. So
you you were happy just putting like furnitures and desks
on angles, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Just like, I should do that only because everything else
is straight lines. Like I'm not the person that enjoys
a lot of arches and any of that. Like my
house is, as you know, it's very square or rectangular,
straight straight straight lines. So then I like to soften
those straight lines by moving furniture at like a slightly
(26:47):
off kilter angle.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that tweaks my brain I think we're
both I wouldn't say that we're germophobes, but I do
think we're both very conscious.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Of that, trying to be sure, Oh we're going for
how we're different. I think from my point of view,
those differences have become less as you've gotten older.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Oh yeah, No, I blame you for everything exactly when
I tell people to fuck off. Now, I'm like, that's.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Shit, is fult. I don't know where that came from.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
You know, you're one of many who blame me for everything,
So it's all good. I've heard it a lot lately. Yeah,
I mean, I think like in the beginning with Charm,
for instance, you were much more of a people pleaser,
a producer pleaser. You had your thoughts, you had your opinions,
(27:44):
but you were far quicker to acquiesce than I was.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh definitely. I mean I barely made it there, so
I had to be like, okay, sure.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
But then you started finding your voice for me. Your
voice really started becoming much more strong in the third season,
like you were gaining it in the second season, but
by the third season, I felt like you had your
voice and you were willing to use it, you know,
for the good of the show, like it was always
(28:16):
about improving and better scripts or you know, people actually
showing up and doing their job and not complaining about it.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I mean, it was very important to me and I
don't know how. I mean, it always was to both
of us. It was always very important and even to
elstit in the beginning, because here we were these like
you know, these child performers coming out of those trenches,
trying to have some sense of normalcy as grown ups
and wanting this not to fail. You know, we had
(28:48):
that in common in the beginning that we all wanted
this to be good and wanted this to be sort
of like our foray and to being grown up actors
and to be taken seriously. And that's you know, that's
a tough jump for kid actors to suddenly, you know,
be able to do this and be suddenly women. You know,
because we were still young. We were surrounded by a
team of men aside from Connie. Really in the beginning, yeah,
(29:13):
you know, we had something to prove for sure, and
so by season three it's like you have to believe
in yourself. You have to find your footing or you're
going to just constantly look like you don't know what
you're doing.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And we cared like we cared about the work. We
cared about what we were putting out there, and we
cared about like you and I were always like towards
the beginning, we were like, yeah, well we'll stay here.
We may be exhausted, we may be tired. The crew
wants to go home. We want to go home, but listen,
if we don't have it, we don't have it, We'll
like stay and we'll get it because we cared about
what was going on that screen.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, you know, and very dedicated.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
And I don't know where that came from necessarily, but
it was just, you know, a dedication to making it
right and making it well.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And it's a work ethic that I I don't think
you can really manufacture.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
It is work ethic, and it's it's work ethic along
with being grateful, right right, I think that we were
both always very grateful. Gratefulness does not equate to not
having an opinion. You can still be grateful and look
and say, you know what, this script is not great,
let's do a polish on it, or you know, this
(30:23):
doesn't feel natural to me, this relationship on this show,
like between these two characters, isn't working. Like, you can
still have an opinion, but be grateful for being there.
You just want your opinion valued and heard right and respected,
even if it gets rejected at the end of the day.
As long as it's respected and heard, it's okay.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Many times, you know, and I've been I've been accused
of taking the show too seriously at times, and I've
been accused of being too involved at times.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
There were times that I watched dailies every day and
I would call the editors and go, why did you
use that take and not that take? Like I was
overly involved at a certain point, but it just made
because it mattered to me.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I didn't want it to suck.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, And I mean we both always talked about like
the Comparison, a sort of practical magic, which was one
of our favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, it was a great book. It was my one
of my first favorite books.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I remember we referenced that movie a lot on occasion,
a lot, and on occasion to our producers and to
our writers, like, okay, look at how they did this.
Particularly I think with the like CGI. Yeah, because our
CGI was.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It was limited, limited, rid of time it was what
we could afford at the time, for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah it was. It was not great, but I mean
it was pretty successful. Like I think everybody was kind
of I think the network and spelling people, they were
all like, wow, this actually like premiered well, and it
kind of kicked off well, and then like the audience
fell in love with the concept and fell in love
(32:05):
with the characters and the sisters, and we were able
to connect people in a way that they weren't connecting before.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yeah, it was a big It was a big premiere
for the WB at the time, and I remember Aaron
saying it was the first time they had gotten a
full season pickup so early. The first season went pretty well,
and that was the only time that that happened, because
every season after that they sort of made us wait
(32:33):
for it and we never knew if we were going
to be.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Canceled or not.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
For me, the way that things were on nine O
two one zero and like standing up for myself against
all the men, and I think that got carried over
into Charm to a certain extent because it was still
the same group of producers, right, and it was still
producers who they started getting a little bit better about
(32:59):
pretending to listen, but they weren't really listening. And whenever
I would say something that was constructive about trying to
improve the show or about my character, they would kind
of like go uh huh uh huh uh huh uh
huh and then smile and walk away. And then I
(33:19):
remember that like my attorney or my agent or my
manager would always get a phone call being like, you know,
Shannon needs to stay in her lane, and you know,
she's an actress and that's her job, and she can't
tell us how to run a show. And I was
always like, my god, like when when do things become collaborative?
Things were very collaborative with like Kevin Smith and Maul
(33:40):
Ratz and a bunch of the other other things that
I did. So going back into this situation was spelling,
it was like, so things haven't really changed that much,
like they're not evolving with the times. And and I
will say again that we were We were definitely ahead
of the time of like the women's movement that has
happened in the business. We were sort of pushing for
(34:02):
our voices to be heard. We were you know, rebelling
against like the patriarchy, if you will, like the men
who just wanted us to stay in a box and
wear skin tight clothes with our boobs hanging out and
you know, keeping our hair a certain way and all
of that stuff. Like we were sort of already pushing
up against that and saying no, no, no, we have
a little bit more to offer than all of that,
(34:24):
So let us bring everything that's within us to the show, Like,
let us be the creatives and the talent that you hired.
You need to trust us at some point.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, which wasn't by design though, it just happened organically,
and I think the fact that we knew each other
from before and we kind of stuck together and creatively
we wanted more, and we wanted better, and we wanted
more realistic portrayals of women. You know, there were just
sometimes where like the dialogue just didn't sound right. It
(34:56):
didn't sound like a person our age would talk like that,
so it needed to Well it was because you know,
I'm forty five year old, fifty year old guy was
writing it. So it was like, you know, it had
all of that happened organically. I don't remember ever feeling
like we were being a pain in the ass. You know,
(35:18):
it's it's I couldn't have done it any other way.
I couldn't have just been a puppet, like that's just
not in me.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
But I definitely looked back on all of that and think,
you know, we we were some of the very first
trailblazers in sort of petitioning, if you will, for women
to have a voice that actually mattered in a male
dominated business and certainly in a very male dominated set
(35:48):
with producers who were used to things being done a
certain way and keeping their actresses, you know, sort of
in a box.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
We were show ponies for sure. We were show companies.
And I think people get confused when they see so
many women writers un charmed and say, well, there were
women behind the scene, but there wasn't for us. The
only producers we got to see were spelling producers, which
were all men. And you know, the writers had a
(36:22):
writer's room that was all the way in Hollywood, very
far removed from us, and they didn't get to visit,
They didn't get out much. That room stayed in the
erin spelling building by design, and you know, there wasn't
you know, women writers on set aside from Connie. And
you know, eventually we saw how that went too you know,
(36:42):
she was pushed out creatively, financially and in all the
ways of the show that she created based on her
own sisters by the group of guys.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I also don't remember that many female writers in the
first three seasons.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
That's because they never got out of the building and
you know, they just didn't get to visit a lot.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
And also the problem.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Was is that Brad did a polish on every script,
so it didn't matter if we had like a great
script from Daniel or Zach and Chris. It came out
feeling hearing sounding the same because Brad did a polish
on every script. And I was like, how many times
(37:25):
am I going to say, We're screwed? Every time there
was a We're screwed, it was Brad Kern.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I was like, I know, we're talking about the showrunner, producer,
Brad Kern, who was an interesting fella, illustrious. Yeah, I
was such a fascinating letter from him that at some
point I'm going to read on this podcast. It's just fantastic.
(37:52):
It was after I was gone from the show and
him experiencing that show without me and a deep, deep
apology letter of like oh my god, which you know,
is great. You're like, okay, but you don't want to
hear it after the fact. You want to hear it,
(38:13):
you know, you want to be protected in that moment.
So going back to like us as women, I think
it was also, you know, three women on a show
supposed to, you know, in its own way being ensemble,
but I was cast. You know, first, the show was
originally sold to the WB based on me, so obviously
that's all that's going to be there. That's just natural.
(38:35):
But once those like magazine covers started happening, and you know,
one person is being asked and the other one isn't
or you're And I experienced this on nine in two
zero as well, with like the cover Rolling Stone, and
everybody was super mad at me because I did the
(38:57):
cover Rolling Stone and didn't request everybody else. And I
was like, okay, it's cover of Rolling Stone. I'm not
saying no to it. And I kind of felt that
it didn't kind of feel it was happening of the
the competitiveness was kicking in. And I'm not saying with you,
(39:19):
I'm saying with Alyssa and myself that there was a
lack of female support. Oh yeah, And I personally was
never you know, I've had the same publicis for I
don't even know how long Leslie Sloan and you know,
she could come on the podcast and be like Shannon
(39:41):
never cared about somebody else getting a cover, Like it
just wasn't like in my wheelhouse. And I actually, even
though it was supposedly good for my career, I we
were working so hard. I was like, like, to then
go on your weekend and do a photo shoot was
kind of a nightmare to begin to with. But there
was a competitiveness with Alyssa. I heard that she addressed
(40:03):
it in her book. Obviously I'm never reading her book
because it's sorry, not sorry, so right there, you know,
it tells me like you're not freaking sorry, like why
have you mentioned something in that case? And there was
also competitiveness about you, which was really interesting of you know,
trying to pull you away from me, and that you
(40:27):
know transpired in that second season, and it was I know,
for me, it was an incredibly rough season. You know,
you were going through health stuff. You were in the hospital,
and my dad had been as you know, in and
out of the hospital NonStop, and hospitals scared me to death,
and I, you know, waited twenty four hours after your
(40:50):
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 it by like Alyssa and her mom,
like they were blocking people from seeing you. And at
the time you didn't know. And I remember you texted
me and were like, dude, are you gonna come to
(41:12):
see me? And I could feel like you're you know,
your pain of feeling like I had abandoned you, but
I also felt like my anger at the situation of
not being allowed to come see you, and like how
a sort of family had like swooped in and caused
like this sort of weird divide between the two of
(41:33):
us that then continued throughout season two where I think
I cried every single night of season two. What is
your take on season two? Because it was really interesting
and even go like broad strokes.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Watching season two. I like season two because I feel
like we were more ourselves than anything. I agree, but
you know, there was a lot going on behind the scenes.
I think it was pretty obvious that you know, I
was raised by teenage parents.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
I didn't have a big.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Family, and so you're right when a family swooped in
and tried to be, you know, basically adopt me. It
was very seductive for me, and I also wanted, you know,
I wanted everybody to get along. I wanted the show
to be successful, and that was part of that. There
were no angels, there were no demons. We all had
bad days, we all had good days. We all could
(42:29):
have behaved better at certain points, but there was a
lack of awareness of a bigger, broader picture of just being,
like you said, grateful to have a job and to
be doing something that we liked, and to be in
a position of power to do something that we liked
(42:49):
was not something that happens easily or normally or routinely.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Well, we are out of time for today, but there
is so much more I want to talk to you
guys about, So everyone, please join me next week for
part two of my interview with Holly Maray Combs. Until
next time,
This is let's be clear with Shannon Doherty.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Everyone, This is Shannon Doherty and today I am joined
by very special guests. My friend Holly Marie comes. Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Holly, Hi, how are you going?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
As usual? So full of energy? What some people don't
know is that we knew each other before Charmed.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
How do people not know that? I don't know they
weren't paying attention.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I know, but some people don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
They didn't watch TMZ very much.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Wait, this was before TMZ.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It was so how did we how did we meet?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Are you saying you don't remember?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I'm quizzing you?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Oh, but I didn't know there was going to be
a test.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
There's always a test.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Wow, this is this is a long string of events.
So my first husband, my first mistake, was friends with
Jeffrey Dean Morgan some of you may know his name,
and he was dating Lara Flynn Boyle at the time.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So Lara was actually.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
The first friend I had in La when I moved
there to do pick offensuits, and Lara knew Rox Sanna,
Roxanna knew you, and Charlie was in there in the
middle somewhere. So when I was no longer friends with Lara.
Then I became friends with Rexanna, and then I became
(01:42):
friends with you, and then Roxanna became upset that we became.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Friends, and well, really the story is like you met
me and you were like, I don't need any other friend,
but Shannon.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That was the distinction.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Thank you, really it was the only joy.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
You're like, I don't need any of these other people.
With her multiple personalities, she covers all of them. It's
all good.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So and so then I became I became Charlie's daughter's godmother,
and then I got fired because of the first husband,
my first mistake. She in like that situation, and then
you got hired as that godmother. It's all very twisted.
If you think about.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It, it is. It is really twisted. So we all right,
So right.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I was nineteen Oh god, that.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Means that means I was twenty.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
No.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I that means I had like a momentary lapse where
I'm like, what am I thirty nine now? Oh? No,
forty nine? So that means that was thirty years ago.
And I just don't think there's enough time in the
day to go through all of this.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
That's all. It's a long, long, long time it's a
long journey, right, So we hung out, we did all
of this stuff, and when when Charmed came around, I remember.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Seeing a lot of stuff here.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
By the way, I know I'm going to get to
Charmed real quick. We can always back track. We well, yeah,
I mean, okay, hold on, no, no, right, no, because
you said you said first mistake a couple of times,
which is really funny because I think we paralleled with
mistakes through out our friendship. You know, you're on your
(03:31):
third marriage, right I am, aren't you? But so far,
so good? Well, no, I mean my third is ending, right,
So okay, here's here's one of my favorite stories about
Holly that I want to tell all of our listeners.
It is that hollywould often stay at my house because
(03:51):
of my first mistake. The first mistake was no bueno,
and she needed a little bit of safety and protection
and and I supplied it along with my German shepherd Elfie,
who was like shits and three trained and cray cray
and loved Holly, and she kept people away from the property.
(04:12):
Let's just put it like that. She had a couple
of encounters with the first mistake that didn't go so
well for him. And so Hollywoold walk around the house
in overalls with a tool belt and she would fix
everything in the house that needed fixing. Like I distinctly
(04:33):
recall looking at her and saying, it's so weird that
there's not a lock on my bathroom door, Like what
if I have a guy over and I need to
use the restroom, they could just come in, Like that's
not okay. And the next thing I knew, I heard
like hammering and there was a lock on the door.
(04:54):
I was like, this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I was handy your projects.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
You were very, very very handy. Yeah you uh yeah
you you fixed everything in my house. I actually need
you to.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Something next.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, I have a couple I don't need fixing.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Do you have anything that needs to be put together?
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And you're cheaper and funnier than a handyman, I think.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
So.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I mean, I jumped a Charmed and I was obviously
off of nine O two and oh. I was very
trepidacious of working with Aaron Spelling again and getting involved
because they burned me really badly on nine O two
and oh, and I was probably carrying around a lot
of resentment and anger still, but absolutely, you know, working
(05:57):
do mall rats like doing different projects, you know, pretty chilled.
And Holly, I picked you up right and we were
in my car and she saw like this script sort
of thrown in the backseat.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
That's how much you looked at it. You saw spelling
just through it.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, it's true. I saw Aaron spelling. And I was like,
I'm not going down that path again, no, thank you.
But you saw it and you were like, have you
read it? And I was like, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And I said, actually, this one is pretty good. You'll
you'll probably like it. And you said, no, it says
Spelling on it. And I said, I know, I understand,
but if they sent it to you, that means they
want to work with you on it and it might
be a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, And I read it.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And then you had your meeting with Aaron coming to
Jesus moment.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I mean it wasn't really a coming to Jesus moment.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
It was for him.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It was for him like you just walk in and
it's as if nothing happened, right, I mean for him,
that's how he how he conducted the meeting was it
was like, kiddo, let's do this project together. It's gonna
be great. And I was just like, do we want
to talk about everything that happened in the past. Do
(07:13):
we want to talk about that you fired me and
didn't even have a discussion with me, and like all
this stuff that transpired on nine o two zero and
how you know that was just an ugly situation. But no,
he didn't really want to discuss any of it. He
just wanted us to move forward.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
He was moving on.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
But you know, you were right. It was really well written.
Constance Burge did an amazing job. It was supernatural, but
like it had darkness to it as well, and it
was funny to a certain extent. And it was like
the relationship between the sisters was so powerful and so great.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It was funny by accident, Like it wasn't supposed to
be funny. Anything funny happened was totally my accident.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, But then it worked because you know, the circumstances
were so beyond reality that to have those moments of
humor or humanizing moments helped it a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, and you were Aaron offered us different roles. Well,
I'm jumping ahead once again. So he wanted me for
Piper for your role.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yep, And I had auditioned for Phoebe, which was painful.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yes, and we sort of were like, let's switch this around.
Let me be the older, let you be the middle.
He didn't believe that we were old enough to play
those characters.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, it was Actually we were the appropriate ages for
the other characters that we preferred.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Right, And we preferred them because they were like Proof
felt more authentic to me. She also felt like a
different character than Brenda, which was really important to me.
Like Brenda on nine o two and zero was such
a she had so much like teenage angst and made
so many mistakes and was kind of selfish and self
(09:09):
serving in her own way, and Prue was the antithesis
of that. Right. She was all about her sisters and
all about self sacrifice, which I really liked as far
as a career move and for me personally, I just
didn't want to play a character that seemed to look
frazzled or like the Phoebe character, which was, you know,
(09:32):
a little on that immature cusp. I wanted to play
like a very solid, strong woman who put her sisters
above everything else. Why did you want to play Piper?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I just felt I definitely couldn't be the youthful Phoebe one.
I don't think I was that youthful when I was youthful,
and so Piper was just far more appropriate for me
at the time.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
And she was a handful. It was you know, it
was a challenge.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right, which I think is the thing about the two
of us always is that we kind of like challenges.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Definitely, I don't want to be bored.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's a lot of our mistakes.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
All of them.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Were like, well that's a challenge. That one's a challenge.
We can change him. I don't see red flag red
flags everywhere, no problem.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You've got a discount on red flags today.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Oh my god. Yeah, I mean I think that like Piper,
I just remember reading the script and when you were like,
I want to play Piper. I thought, this actually makes
sense because you would bring your sort of you have
like a dryness to you, which I love, like that's
(10:50):
my kind of sense of humor is a little dry,
little dark, super witty, clever. And yet they're back then
not saying that it's like this now. Back then there
was like there was something naive about you personally and
very like still very trusting regardless of your mistake, you
were still very trusting and soft, and it was a
(11:11):
It was a good casting call for you to be
Piper because you were able to bring the vulnerability to her,
the negativity to her, and along with like your dryness,
your eye rolls, which you know you're now famous for apparently,
you know, you brought a character that I personally felt
(11:34):
when I read the script was kind of two dimensional,
and you really made her three dimensional, Like you gave
her so many different layers and so many different colors.
You brought her to life, I think in a way
that not even the producers or constans could have could
have seen coming.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Well, Constance was tough too.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Remember she she based the characters on her sisters, and
so she was trying to hold me to what she
had created. And I was like, you got to give
me little leeway here, you gotta give me a little
It was tough to make everybody happy. You know, the
network was against me, only erin, and you wanted me blackmailed.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
You blackmailed the network into wanting me.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
We'll go into that story. So who was the network
WB or CW at that point, it was still the WB. Yeah,
the WB so I was already committed to the project,
and Erin and I made a calculated decision to take
only Holly for Piper and another girl, Dana for for Phoebe.
(12:35):
So we go to the network. I'm sitting in with
the network. The girls come in individually and read off of me,
and it's really like, I love telling the story. I
hope you like it as much as me, because I
just think it's such an interesting take on Hollywood and
sometimes the closed mindedness of people and someone like you,
(12:56):
like persevering and proving everybody wrong, which I love. But
so you came in and you read, Dana came in
and read, and the network, you guys went out of
the room and the network looked at me and they said, yeah,
she just doesn't have like that it factor. And I
was like, what are you talking about? Like you know
that like charisma, that like like when you walk in
(13:19):
a room, Shannon, like everybody takes notice. And I went, whoa, whoa, WOA.
That's because I'm now who I am thanks to nine
oh two and oh thanks to a network giving me
a chance, thanks to Fox Network saying like, okay, let's
hire her for Brenda. It's because I was on the
cover Rolling Stone magazine, like, you give this girl this
part and she's going to do all of that. They
(13:42):
were still sitting on the fence. Erin and I walked out,
and I remember that you and Dana were standing in
the parking lot and Erin and I kind of like
walked away from you guys, and Aaron goes, kiddo, what
do you want to do. I'll fight for Holly. And
I said, she does it, or I don't do it,
and Aaron goes, I'll back you, and I went great.
(14:03):
So we had our Piper. We did not have our Phoebe.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
No.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I believe the term the actual term was star quality.
She doesn't have the star quality that you do. And
that one stuck with me for a while, and I
know exactly the person who said it, and she actually
called me years later to do another pilot after Charmed,
and it was a pilot.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
It was six women mistresses, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And I said, are you trying to kill me? And
she goes, no, absolutely not. She goes, I think you're
the perfect person for this project. And I was like
why and she goes, because I know you'll deal with
all of them really well.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And I was like, God damn it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
But it didn't get picked up obviously anyway, I think
they picked up dropped a diva instead.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right, So then you know, we they to cast this
girl out in New York. Lori Rahm, who was wonderful,
loved her. She fit in perfectly. She brought some something
like she was quirky, right, like she was quirky, but
took everything very seriously.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, I think she was primarily a stage actress before this,
and it kind of showed.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, I mean I enjoyed her, but she ended up quitting.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
She did, and after we got picked up, and then
they filled her part with Elis Milana.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
It was actually right in the middle. We found out
right in the middle of.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
The TV Guide shoot that she wasn't coming to the
shoot and we didn't know why, And we found out
later that she was a member of a particular church
and the church didn't like that she was playing a
witch on TV and basically told her she would go
(15:59):
to hell.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Listen. I not the decision I personally would have made, clearly,
but I do respect her for, you know, putting her
faith in her values first, and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I couldn't argue with it. You know that nobody could.
They just kind of went, Okay, that's you know, now
what do we do? So that's why that TV Guide
shoot there's like there's us on each side and they
just dropped to listen to the middle of the photo shirt.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
What a time period mm hm and charmed. It was
like a you know, it was I sort of looked
back and think like that first season was sort of
the best season to shoot as far as everybody getting along.
Sure I felt, you know, I mean compared to season
(16:50):
two and season three for me, season one we were
all still like new working together and feeling things out.
There were obviously things that you know, we didn't necessarily
all agree on, Like I didn't think it was important
to move to a studio lot so that we could
have a commissary. There were just a few of those
things where you were like, okay, you know, I look
(17:13):
at season one a lot and say, wow, we were
getting our feet under us, Like you see the stay
improvement from season one to season three, season three being
my favorite season, and just like the growth like with
our writers and I think even the growth with like
(17:35):
our acting, and we settled into our parts a lot
more and felt a bit more of a freedom. Certainly
in season three, I can't. I'm not going to talk
about the other seasons because I was there, so why
would I. But like, you know, you and I had
(17:55):
so many arguments with the producers about our clothing, about
our hair, Like they wanted to control every single aspect
of us. We could not. We had zero freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah yeah, I mean, well that's Aaron's thing too with
the hairstyles, Like we were not allowed to change our
hair for the first I think six episodes, Like it
couldn't even they didn't even want it to be up.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
You had to establish your hairstyle and keep it that
way because he felt that that's how an audience became
familiar with you.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, that's how they identified with the character. Was a
big part of the.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Hair, right, And listen, I maybe he's right.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It's a formula, for sure, it's a formula.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I mean, I like to think that people are identifying
with the character because of what we're bringing to it
and our performances, not in the physical.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
All right, well one would hope, but right, right.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I mean, when you work that hard and those hours
you're working seventeen eighteen hour days, it's nice to think
that it's because you're talented and people are connecting with
the character as opposed to like your hairstyle.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, yeah, the job is to create a human, a
whole human. It was a little tighty. It was a struggle.
We were struggling to prove ourselves. We were struggling to
prove ourselves to the network and all of it. I mean,
we could keep talking about it where we could just
reboot the reboot.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
We're not talking about episodes. We're not We're not getting
any of that promise you that is for the rebate.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I want to ask a question, are you excited about
your new endeavor?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
You know, after I recorded the first episode, I said
to Chris on the phone, I was like, who needs therapy?
Like there's something very cathartic about doing a podcast, and
(20:08):
especially I think when it's like my type of podcast,
where you're you're unpacking your life, you're basically, you know,
looking at everything and in real time going oh, you know,
maybe I was at fault, maybe I did this, maybe
I did that, or maybe this person needs to take responsibility.
I think it is giving me and going to give
(20:30):
me in the future everything that I would be spending
two hundred and fifty dollars an hour for absolutely, so
I'm very excited about that I'm saving money. Yeah, I
bought a new pair of boots today because I was like, well,
I saved saved money on therapy, So I like it
so far. I also love the fact that, like you know,
(20:50):
I'm in sweatpants and slippers.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Absolutely can't beat it.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's an interesting question. I don't think anybody's ever asked
us this, And like you and I do a lot
of convince together and fans get to ask us questions
on the panel and they're usually you know about like
certain episodes like what would you say? The similarities are
between us and the differences between us because people really
look at us as like sisters, So it's it's kind
(21:18):
of an interesting question similarities.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
We definitely have the same sense of humor, Like when
we did the travel show. We could entertain each other
and we don't really need other people really don't. I
don't know. We were just always terribly compatible. I mean
I basically lived with you and Rob for quite a while.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I don't know how.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Rob feels about that still to this day, but we
sort of ate the same, We traveled the same, we
hated people, the same gun bar fights the same.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Made the same mistakes, right right, right, Yeah, you know,
we just had, you know, very similar personalities.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It's different, you know, we've come from very different childhoods,
but we're just very similar. We do holidays the same,
and there's not a lot of people I can say
that about.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Right, Yeah. I think one of my favorite trips of
ours that is actually not in the travel show is
when my parents, you and I went to Ireland.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
That really should have been the travel show. I know
what we were thinking.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I should have. The network didn't want to pay for
the whole you know, overseas trips. But that was definitely
one of the most fun vacations I've ever had. Just
you and I like walking around Ireland and sneaking out
of castles so that my parents sensius sneaking out. I. Meanwhile,
they were watching us from like their tower room, and
(22:49):
we were.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Of age people, we were still.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Of age, and we got caught because one of the
castles was you had to take the little the castle ferry.
But we got back too late. Oops, how did we
get back?
Speaker 3 (23:04):
We had to call a guy who knew a guy
that had the thing that.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Came across the moat thing and we that were too
loud coming in apparently, and your mother was up and
your mother was waiting, and it still feels terrible, Yeah,
it really does.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Was very upset with.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Me, she was, she was upset with us both. She
was like, it's dangerous. Two girls got we were And
meanwhile we just went to like the neighborhood pub.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
We went to the pub like as one does.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, and we had a blast, like hanging out with
all the Irish people and trying to mimic their accents
and getting to know them and you know, hearing like
the story of Ireland from people who actually live there.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
There's some great photos from that night.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Do you have them? You have to say, I do.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I do.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I actually don't have that many photos from Ireland, but
I need some. I recently realized that I do not
have nearly as many photos as I thought I did,
like just saved up over the years. I don't know
what happened unless unless they always included like a boyfriend
and I was mad and like break them up.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
They're probably in storage somewhere.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I have found like some photos where it's like ripped
in half, so I know that there was a guy
that I was dating next to me in the photo,
but I've now ripped him out of the photo. But
I apparently really liked how I looked in the photos,
so I didn't want to just throw it out completely,
which is hysterical. There's quite a few of those. And
then I have to like try to backtrack and like
by my outfit to figure out who was in the
(24:35):
photo with me, like fashion determined who I was with. So, yeah,
we had Ireland, so we're similar. How are we different
besides like our childhood.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
You drive a lot faster than I do.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I'm an aggressive driver, Yes you are.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
You're a lot how do I say, not like a
neat freak. But you're much more tidy.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Then I am. Yes, I do admire your drive, though
I can see keeping things in order.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, see that.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That wood thing behind her has to be at a
certain diagonal on the counter, and it cannot be five
degrees this way or that way.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
It has to be this way that one right there.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Just say when I place things, yeah, I like them,
Like I take my time placing stuff in my home
and because it's my sanctuary, right it's where I feel
the safest. So if I've spent you know, months just
looking for the right piece, and I then spend hours
(25:42):
figuring out exactly where it goes and at what angle,
and somebody comes in and moves it, it tweaks my
brain a little bit. But I'm not OCD. But I
do like things very much in order. I'm very very
like you know.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
If you had to look to check to see if
it was right.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I did, I'm like craning my neck on it is
it right?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
So that that I will say, you're much more okay
with diagonals and angles where I have to have everything
straight or drives me insane. I will be OCD about
that this bag is crooked. I'm gonna straighten it. So
you you were happy just putting like furnitures and desks
on angles, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Just like, I should do that only because everything else
is straight lines. Like I'm not the person that enjoys
a lot of arches and any of that. Like my
house is, as you know, it's very square or rectangular,
straight straight straight lines. So then I like to soften
those straight lines by moving furniture at like a slightly
(26:47):
off kilter angle.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that tweaks my brain I think we're
both I wouldn't say that we're germophobes, but I do
think we're both very conscious.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Of that, trying to be sure, Oh we're going for
how we're different. I think from my point of view,
those differences have become less as you've gotten older.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Oh yeah, No, I blame you for everything exactly when
I tell people to fuck off. Now, I'm like, that's.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Shit, is fult. I don't know where that came from.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
You know, you're one of many who blame me for everything,
So it's all good. I've heard it a lot lately. Yeah,
I mean, I think like in the beginning with Charm,
for instance, you were much more of a people pleaser,
a producer pleaser. You had your thoughts, you had your opinions,
(27:44):
but you were far quicker to acquiesce than I was.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh definitely. I mean I barely made it there, so
I had to be like, okay, sure.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
But then you started finding your voice for me. Your
voice really started becoming much more strong in the third season,
like you were gaining it in the second season, but
by the third season, I felt like you had your
voice and you were willing to use it, you know,
for the good of the show, like it was always
(28:16):
about improving and better scripts or you know, people actually
showing up and doing their job and not complaining about it.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I mean, it was very important to me and I
don't know how. I mean, it always was to both
of us. It was always very important and even to
elstit in the beginning, because here we were these like
you know, these child performers coming out of those trenches,
trying to have some sense of normalcy as grown ups
and wanting this not to fail. You know, we had
(28:48):
that in common in the beginning that we all wanted
this to be good and wanted this to be sort
of like our foray and to being grown up actors
and to be taken seriously. And that's you know, that's
a tough jump for kid actors to suddenly, you know,
be able to do this and be suddenly women. You know,
because we were still young. We were surrounded by a
team of men aside from Connie. Really in the beginning, yeah,
(29:13):
you know, we had something to prove for sure, and
so by season three it's like you have to believe
in yourself. You have to find your footing or you're
going to just constantly look like you don't know what
you're doing.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And we cared like we cared about the work. We
cared about what we were putting out there, and we
cared about like you and I were always like towards
the beginning, we were like, yeah, well we'll stay here.
We may be exhausted, we may be tired. The crew
wants to go home. We want to go home, but listen,
if we don't have it, we don't have it, We'll
like stay and we'll get it because we cared about
what was going on that screen.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, you know, and very dedicated.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
And I don't know where that came from necessarily, but
it was just, you know, a dedication to making it
right and making it well.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And it's a work ethic that I I don't think
you can really manufacture.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
It is work ethic, and it's it's work ethic along
with being grateful, right right, I think that we were
both always very grateful. Gratefulness does not equate to not
having an opinion. You can still be grateful and look
and say, you know what, this script is not great,
let's do a polish on it, or you know, this
(30:23):
doesn't feel natural to me, this relationship on this show,
like between these two characters, isn't working. Like, you can
still have an opinion, but be grateful for being there.
You just want your opinion valued and heard right and respected,
even if it gets rejected at the end of the day.
As long as it's respected and heard, it's okay.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Many times, you know, and I've been I've been accused
of taking the show too seriously at times, and I've
been accused of being too involved at times.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
There were times that I watched dailies every day and
I would call the editors and go, why did you
use that take and not that take? Like I was
overly involved at a certain point, but it just made
because it mattered to me.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I didn't want it to suck.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, And I mean we both always talked about like
the Comparison, a sort of practical magic, which was one
of our favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, it was a great book. It was my one
of my first favorite books.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I remember we referenced that movie a lot on occasion,
a lot, and on occasion to our producers and to
our writers, like, okay, look at how they did this.
Particularly I think with the like CGI. Yeah, because our
CGI was.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It was limited, limited, rid of time it was what
we could afford at the time, for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah it was. It was not great, but I mean
it was pretty successful. Like I think everybody was kind
of I think the network and spelling people, they were
all like, wow, this actually like premiered well, and it
kind of kicked off well, and then like the audience
fell in love with the concept and fell in love
(32:05):
with the characters and the sisters, and we were able
to connect people in a way that they weren't connecting before.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yeah, it was a big It was a big premiere
for the WB at the time, and I remember Aaron
saying it was the first time they had gotten a
full season pickup so early. The first season went pretty well,
and that was the only time that that happened, because
every season after that they sort of made us wait
(32:33):
for it and we never knew if we were going
to be.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Canceled or not.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
For me, the way that things were on nine O
two one zero and like standing up for myself against
all the men, and I think that got carried over
into Charm to a certain extent because it was still
the same group of producers, right, and it was still
producers who they started getting a little bit better about
(32:59):
pretending to listen, but they weren't really listening. And whenever
I would say something that was constructive about trying to
improve the show or about my character, they would kind
of like go uh huh uh huh uh huh uh
huh and then smile and walk away. And then I
(33:19):
remember that like my attorney or my agent or my
manager would always get a phone call being like, you know,
Shannon needs to stay in her lane, and you know,
she's an actress and that's her job, and she can't
tell us how to run a show. And I was
always like, my god, like when when do things become collaborative?
Things were very collaborative with like Kevin Smith and Maul
(33:40):
Ratz and a bunch of the other other things that
I did. So going back into this situation was spelling,
it was like, so things haven't really changed that much,
like they're not evolving with the times. And and I
will say again that we were We were definitely ahead
of the time of like the women's movement that has
happened in the business. We were sort of pushing for
(34:02):
our voices to be heard. We were you know, rebelling
against like the patriarchy, if you will, like the men
who just wanted us to stay in a box and
wear skin tight clothes with our boobs hanging out and
you know, keeping our hair a certain way and all
of that stuff. Like we were sort of already pushing
up against that and saying no, no, no, we have
a little bit more to offer than all of that,
(34:24):
So let us bring everything that's within us to the show, Like,
let us be the creatives and the talent that you hired.
You need to trust us at some point.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, which wasn't by design though, it just happened organically,
and I think the fact that we knew each other
from before and we kind of stuck together and creatively
we wanted more, and we wanted better, and we wanted
more realistic portrayals of women. You know, there were just
sometimes where like the dialogue just didn't sound right. It
(34:56):
didn't sound like a person our age would talk like that,
so it needed to Well it was because you know,
I'm forty five year old, fifty year old guy was
writing it. So it was like, you know, it had
all of that happened organically. I don't remember ever feeling
like we were being a pain in the ass. You know,
(35:18):
it's it's I couldn't have done it any other way.
I couldn't have just been a puppet, like that's just
not in me.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
But I definitely looked back on all of that and think,
you know, we we were some of the very first
trailblazers in sort of petitioning, if you will, for women
to have a voice that actually mattered in a male
dominated business and certainly in a very male dominated set
(35:48):
with producers who were used to things being done a
certain way and keeping their actresses, you know, sort of
in a box.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
We were show ponies for sure. We were show companies.
And I think people get confused when they see so
many women writers un charmed and say, well, there were
women behind the scene, but there wasn't for us. The
only producers we got to see were spelling producers, which
were all men. And you know, the writers had a
(36:22):
writer's room that was all the way in Hollywood, very
far removed from us, and they didn't get to visit,
They didn't get out much. That room stayed in the
erin spelling building by design, and you know, there wasn't
you know, women writers on set aside from Connie. And
you know, eventually we saw how that went too you know,
(36:42):
she was pushed out creatively, financially and in all the
ways of the show that she created based on her
own sisters by the group of guys.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I also don't remember that many female writers in the
first three seasons.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
That's because they never got out of the building and
you know, they just didn't get to visit a lot.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
And also the problem.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Was is that Brad did a polish on every script,
so it didn't matter if we had like a great
script from Daniel or Zach and Chris. It came out
feeling hearing sounding the same because Brad did a polish
on every script. And I was like, how many times
(37:25):
am I going to say, We're screwed? Every time there
was a We're screwed, it was Brad Kern.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I was like, I know, we're talking about the showrunner, producer,
Brad Kern, who was an interesting fella, illustrious. Yeah, I
was such a fascinating letter from him that at some
point I'm going to read on this podcast. It's just fantastic.
(37:52):
It was after I was gone from the show and
him experiencing that show without me and a deep, deep
apology letter of like oh my god, which you know,
is great. You're like, okay, but you don't want to
hear it after the fact. You want to hear it,
(38:13):
you know, you want to be protected in that moment.
So going back to like us as women, I think
it was also, you know, three women on a show
supposed to, you know, in its own way being ensemble,
but I was cast. You know, first, the show was
originally sold to the WB based on me, so obviously
that's all that's going to be there. That's just natural.
(38:35):
But once those like magazine covers started happening, and you know,
one person is being asked and the other one isn't
or you're And I experienced this on nine in two
zero as well, with like the cover Rolling Stone, and
everybody was super mad at me because I did the
(38:57):
cover Rolling Stone and didn't request everybody else. And I
was like, okay, it's cover of Rolling Stone. I'm not
saying no to it. And I kind of felt that
it didn't kind of feel it was happening of the
the competitiveness was kicking in. And I'm not saying with you,
(39:19):
I'm saying with Alyssa and myself that there was a
lack of female support. Oh yeah, And I personally was
never you know, I've had the same publicis for I
don't even know how long Leslie Sloan and you know,
she could come on the podcast and be like Shannon
(39:41):
never cared about somebody else getting a cover, Like it
just wasn't like in my wheelhouse. And I actually, even
though it was supposedly good for my career, I we
were working so hard. I was like, like, to then
go on your weekend and do a photo shoot was
kind of a nightmare to begin to with. But there
was a competitiveness with Alyssa. I heard that she addressed
(40:03):
it in her book. Obviously I'm never reading her book
because it's sorry, not sorry, so right there, you know,
it tells me like you're not freaking sorry, like why
have you mentioned something in that case? And there was
also competitiveness about you, which was really interesting of you know,
trying to pull you away from me, and that you
(40:27):
know transpired in that second season, and it was I know,
for me, it was an incredibly rough season. You know,
you were going through health stuff. You were in the hospital,
and my dad had been as you know, in and
out of the hospital NonStop, and hospitals scared me to death,
and I, you know, waited twenty four hours after your
(40:50):
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 it by like Alyssa and her mom,
like they were blocking people from seeing you. And at
the time you didn't know. And I remember you texted
me and were like, dude, are you gonna come to
(41:12):
see me? And I could feel like you're you know,
your pain of feeling like I had abandoned you, but
I also felt like my anger at the situation of
not being allowed to come see you, and like how
a sort of family had like swooped in and caused
like this sort of weird divide between the two of
(41:33):
us that then continued throughout season two where I think
I cried every single night of season two. What is
your take on season two? Because it was really interesting
and even go like broad strokes.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Watching season two. I like season two because I feel
like we were more ourselves than anything. I agree, but
you know, there was a lot going on behind the scenes.
I think it was pretty obvious that you know, I
was raised by teenage parents.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
I didn't have a big.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Family, and so you're right when a family swooped in
and tried to be, you know, basically adopt me. It
was very seductive for me, and I also wanted, you know,
I wanted everybody to get along. I wanted the show
to be successful, and that was part of that. There
were no angels, there were no demons. We all had
bad days, we all had good days. We all could
(42:29):
have behaved better at certain points, but there was a
lack of awareness of a bigger, broader picture of just being,
like you said, grateful to have a job and to
be doing something that we liked, and to be in
a position of power to do something that we liked
(42:49):
was not something that happens easily or normally or routinely.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Well, we are out of time for today, but there
is so much more I want to talk to you
guys about, So everyone, please join me next week for
part two of my interview with Holly Maray Combs. Until
next time,
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