Shannen Doherty says Alyssa Milano and her family caused tension on “Charmed” set

On her latest podcast episode, Doherty claims Milano's family started a rift between her and Holly Marie Combs.

The coven is brewing up trouble once again.

On the latest episode of her podcast, Let's Be Clear, Shannen Doherty welcomed her former Charmed costar Holly Marie Combs to talk about their longstanding friendship and their time together on the WB series. The two even got into some of the nitty-gritty details about the infamous behind-the-scenes drama on the show, which spurred Doherty's exit after season 3.

During season 2, Doherty alleges that Alyssa Milano and her mother attempted to separate Combs from Doherty. "It was really interesting of [her] trying to pull you away from me," she said. Combs and Doherty were close friends prior to being cast on Charmed, with Combs even living with Doherty following her split from first husband Bryan Travis Smith.

Season 2 brought a lot of challenges for the core trio. Doherty was dealing with her father's illness, which had him, “in and out of the hospital nonstop” at the same time that Combs faced her own health scare, which required surgery to remove a potentially cancerous tumor from her uterus.

Struggling with her own trauma over accompanying her dad to the hospital, Doherty summoned the strength to visit Combs after her surgery, which led to a pause in filming season 2. But Doherty claims that Milano and her mom were not allowing anyone to visit Combs.

“Hospitals scared me to death. I waited 24 hours after your surgery to go and then it wasn’t even easy for me to get in. I was like being told I couldn’t even get in,” Doherty said. “Alyssa and her mom were blocking people from seeing you and at the time you didn’t know. I remember you texted me, ‘Dude are you going to come and see me?’”

Doherty was crushed to receive Combs' message and felt guilt over Combs' perception that Doherty had abandoned her. “I also felt my anger at the situation of not being allowed to come see you and how a sort of family had swooped in,” Doherty added. “[It] caused a weird divide between the two of us that continued throughout season 2. I think I cried every single night.”

Combs acknowledged that her own difficult childhood led her to take refuge in Milano's family when they took her in. "I think it was pretty obvious I was raised by teenage parents and I didn’t have a big family So you’re right, when a family swooped in and tried to basically adopt me it was very seductive for me,” Combs said. “I also wanted everybody to get along, I wanted the show to be successful. There were no angels, there were no demons. We all had bad days, we all had good days. We all could have behaved better at certain points but there was a lack of awareness of a bigger broader picture.”

Over the years, rumors of a backstage feud have raged, particularly after Doherty left Charmed and implied that her costars were not as hardworking as she was. "I want to work with actors who really, really care and that want to be there every single day,” Doherty told Entertainment Tonight. “I don’t want to work with people who bitch about their job and complain about it and say that they hate it or anything else.”

In the years since, there have been various reconciliation. Combs and Doherty have remained close friends, even costarring on a reality travel show Off the Map With Shannen & Holly in 2015. Back in 2017, Milano said that she and Doherty had reconciled. In a 2021 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Milano took ownership over the ways her competitiveness contributed to strained relationships off screen.

"You know, I could take responsibility for a lot of our tension that we had," Milano told Entertainment Tonight. "I think a lot of our struggle came from feeling that I was in competition rather than it being that sisterhood that the show was so much about. And I have some guilt about my part in that."

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