News Reruns of Who's the Boss? with Alyssa Milano are on Family Channel cable station.
Picket Fences, starring Holly Marie Combs of Charmed, returns to television on TNN Monday-Friday at 3 p.m. EST.
Highlights of the premiere season are special two-hour events for CHARMED and GILMORE GIRLS. On Thursday, September 27, CHARMED will make its season debut with a two-hour special and a new series regular, feature film star Rose McGowan ("Scream"), joining Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs as The Charmed Ones. If you spend that much time with someone and there are
differences anyway, you're not always going to get along. Both Milano and Combs deny tabloid reports that Doherty would only speak to them when the cameras were rolling. But Milano acknowledges that she and her former costar could get downright witchy. "There were times when I'd come in and say, 'Good morning, Shannen,' and she didn't say anything to me. And there were times when she'd come in and say, 'Good morning, Alyssa,' and I wouldn't say anything back to her."
In an attempt to defuse the situation, Paramount, the studio that produces Charmed, eventually sent a mediator to the set, something Combs says made things worse. "First of all, it was none of his business," she says. "And we certainly didn't want him reporting our girlie problems back to paramount."
"The problems we had weren't things some big company machine could fix," Combs adds quietly. "They needed to be fixed between us [by] going into [each other?trailers and saying, 'All right, I don't like it when you do this.' Or 'I didn't like it when you said this.' "
That apparently never happened. Doherty has contended that Milano eventually got fed up and issued producers an ultimatum - either Doherty walked or she would - but Milano insists that it isn't true. "I never even thought about doing that," she says. "I couldn't sleep knowing I backed out of something I'd committed to."
Instead, according to several sources, it was Doherty who approached Paramount executives last December and asked to be released from her contract. "[She] was like, 'This is getting too problematic. Just let me go,' " says Combs. "She didn't want all the bad press again. She wanted to exit peacefully." But the studio wouldn't have it. Continues Combs: "They stamped their feet and said, 'No, you cannot leave. We will sue you.' " (Both Paramount and Spelling declined to comment.)
Doherty's eventual dismissal, then, came as a surprise. And the form Combs says it took - a phone call to Doherty's lawyer after the embattled actress had flown to Winnipeg, Canada, to start shooting Another Day, USA's upcoming Francis Ford Coppola TV-move - still clearly angers her. "How do you go from directing the season finale to being [given] a pink slip over the phone, when [you're] in another country, at eight in the night?" Combs says. "It was really a tacky way to go about it."
"I'm sure I'm going to get many phone calls about this," she adds, "But you know what? I don't care. [The producers] know I was not happy with how it was handled. You just don't do that to a person, [especially] a person who has basically created two hit shows for you."
While no one's officially saying why Doherty was ultimately cut loose, a series insider says, "It eventually became clear that [either Doherty or Milano] had to go." And Doherty may have been the safer choice, according to Stacey Lynn Koerner, an industry analyst with Initiative Media: "Alyssa is just as popular, if not more so, than Shannen. And when Shannen left 90210, the series did just fine."
Whether Charmed can still work its magic without Doherty remains to be seen. But WB and Kern are putting on a brave face. "If we'd lost two girls, then I'd be nervous," he says. "But nobody would've been okay with making the change if they were [worried]. That's why I keep that poster [with the pilot's original threesome]. I believe the show has become bigger than any one of us."
Adds WB entertainment producer Jordan Levin: "We've got two great stars in Alyssa and Holly. Adding Rose to the cast brings a whole new dynamic that's edgy and compelling." McGowan pops up in the season premiere, which includes a funeral for Doherty's Prue, who was left for dead after battling a demon in last spring's finale. Another plot twist: Julian McMahon, who plays Milano's baddie boyfriend Cole, has recently begun dating Doherty. But he shrugs off any awkwardness with Milano: "To be honest, I'm usually pretty oblivious to that stuff."
Milano, too, claims she's put her issues with Doherty to rest. "I have a lot of respect for her," says Milano of her former costar, with whom she has not spoken since their last day on the set. "I think she's incredibly smart and talented, and I wish her happiness, love, and success."
But closure hasn't come as easily to Combs. While she says she still has a good relationship with Milano, she felt "a definite set of loss" when she returned to the set in July. "In a way," Combs says, "I have to treat this
as a brand-new job, a totally different show I'm doing, because if I [don't], it's going to be a really hard year." Young Hollywood In Love TV Guide August 11, 2001
By Diane Clehane
Alyssa Milano and Brian Krause
CHARMED, I'M SURE
Alyssa Milano, 28, is no stranger to high-profile romance. She was briefly engaged to Scott Wolf (Party of Five); her marriage to rocker Cinjun Tate ended in 1999 after about a year. And for the past six months she's been dating her Charmed co-star Brian Krause, 32. Their relationship, says Milano, is unlike any other she's had before. "It's just two people who knew the other person and loved that person before we were ever together. It's very different for me to do it that way because I'm usually like, 'I'm really physically attracted to this person, and now I have to figure out why I'm gonna love him.'"
HEALING HEARTS
Both Milano and Krause, who is divorced from former model Beth Bruce, were still hurting from previous relationships when they decided to date. "I had been single since my divorce," says Milano. "I didn't want to open up to someone, and he was going through a rough time. Things just sort of happened. Our relationship is great - very stable and very adult in the sense that there's no drama. He's just awesome and delicious and a great man."
MEET THE PARENTS
"My parents love him because he wears slacks and he doesn't own any vintage [clothes]," Milano says. "The first time he came over for dinner, he was wearing this beautiful suede jacket, and my mom was hanging it up, and I could just see her face. Little things are very important to parents." 'Charmed' Producer Explains New Character LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - With Rose McGowan in place to join the cast of The WB's "Charmed," following the departure of Shannen Doherty, the main challenge facing executive producer Brad Kern and his staff is explaining it all in a way that makes sense. Doherty's character Prue Halliwell, the eldest of a trio of sister witches living in San Francisco, apparently did not survive the series' cataclysmic third-season finale. And when your series' premise rests on there being three "Charmed Ones," that's a gap that must be filled. Enter Paige Halliwell -- the long-lost younger half-sister of surviving siblings Piper (Holly Marie Combs) and Phoebe (Alyssa Milano). Kern plans either a two-part season premiere or a two-hour single episode, to air in late September, to explain the new character, the secret daughter of the sisters' mother and her illicit lover, a "White Lighter" (magical protectors that look after good witches). Piper herself fell for her White Lighter, Leo (Brian Krause), but her mother's affair was expressly forbidden, and the child that came of it had to be hidden away. "From Paige's point of view," says Kern, "you go to bed one night, and you think you're a single child, and no one understands you. Then you wake up the next morning, and you find out you've got sisters who are witches, who've got supernatural powers, who have a destiny that you must now share and embrace, and you must learn your new powers." "It won't be a coincidence that she was named with a name that starts with a 'P,' like her sisters." According to Kern, Paige's newly emerged power resembles Prue's ability to move objects with her mind, but because her father was a White Lighter, she will have other abilities as well. "When we meet her," says Kern, "she will have been searching for many years, both for her birth parents, but also for an answer to that feeling that she's had inside of her that there's something special, there's something else that nobody has yet been able to understand and explain." "We hope to tap into that. It's also organic to the character. She brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to a grieving family. That's going to help us be able to honestly deal with the death of Prue, as well as being able to keep the fun of the show. Here comes Paige, who suddenly has all these powers and thinks it's pretty cool." McGowan, who has acted primarily in independent films, was high on a short list of actresses considered for the part." Our personal hope was to find somebody that would be of Shannen's caliber," says Kern, "that would have the sexiness, the edge and the range. That, for the age range we were looking for, is hard to find." "We said, 'We don't want somebody conventional. We don't want a shrinking violet. We don't want just another pretty face that smiles and has great teeth. We want somebody who has an attitude.'" "I think Rose definitely has an attitude, and that's an energy that we can take advantage of for the betterment of the show." Kern says the changeover has also reenergized the writing staff, which now faces a fresh set of challenges and story opportunities. "Paige's character gives us an opportunity to force (the other sisters) into their future, rather than dwelling on the past. What could have been a concern has turned into an opportunity." "Luck has to play a part in it, and I think that's why they call the show 'Charmed.'" |
