When Shannen Doherty looks back at her time filming much of it’s with ambivalence, thanks in no small part to the rivalry she experienced with costar Alyssa Milano.
During this week’s episode of her podcast Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty, Doherty, 52, discussed the “competitiveness” she felt with Milano — a “lack of female support” — which she says affected their friendship with costar Holly Marie Combs.
During the WB show’s first season, Combs, now 50, dealt with a growing uterine tumor “the size of a baseball” that caused the series to stop filming for two weeks while she underwent surgery.
When Doherty tried to visit Combs in the hospital post-surgery, she says she was met with resistance.
“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 by Alyssa and her mom,” she recalls. “They were blocking people from seeing you, and at the time, you didn’t know.”
The actress went on to explain her frustration after Combs reached out, asking her whether she planned on coming by.
“I remembered you texted me and were like, ‘Dude, are you going to come and see me?’ And I can feel like your pain of feeling like I’d abandoned you.” she continued. “But I also felt like my anger at the situation of not being allowed to come see you, and like how sort of family had like swooped in and caused like this sort of weird divide between the two of us that then continued throughout season 2 where I think I cried every single night of season 2.”
Doherty left Charmed three seasons into the show’s eight-year run. After she left the show, she opened up to Entertainment Tonight about the reasons for her departure, which she attributed to “drama” on set.
“There was too much drama on the set and not enough passion for the work,” she said at the time. “You know, I’m 30 years old and I don’t have time for drama in my life anymore.”
Milano, 50, spoke with Entertainment Weekly following Doherty’s exit, saying: “I think it’s hard when you put two very different people together. I’m very laid-back and passive. I have my Buddha. I come in here and meditate. [Shannen’s] got a lot of energy, she’s very headstrong, she wants to get the job done.”
In 2015, Doherty once again addressed rumored tension on set in an interview, saying that “we were all friends and at times we weren’t.”
“Were there times that were rough?” she said, according to E!. “Yeah, when you work that closely together there’s always going to be times that are rough.”
While Milano said in 2021 that she and Doherty were cordial by then, with Milano sending DMs to the actress then “every couple of months,” Doherty suggested during this week’s episodethat, at least on her part, the two may not be mending fences anytime soon.
“I heard that she addressed it [the competitiveness] in her book,” Doherty said, referring to Milano’s 2021 book of personal essays Sorry Not Sorry. “Obviously, I’m never reading her book, because it’s Sorry, Not Sorry. So right there. You know, it tells me you’re not freaking sorry.”
iHeartRadio’s Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty airs weekly and can be streamed wherever you get your podcasts.
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