Shannen Doherty detailed her less-than-charming experience working alongside Alyssa Milano on the cult classic series “Charmed.”
On the latest episode of her “Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty” podcast, the 52-year-old actress reminisced about feeling “competitiveness” with Milano and a “lack of female support” while chatting with her friend and co-star Holly Marie Combs.
Doherty recalled one situation in which her friendship with Combs was affected by Milano’s actions. When Combs required surgery for a uterine tumor “the size of a baseball,” Doherty was traumatized by her father being “in and out of the hospital nonstop,” and claimed Milano blocked her from seeing Combs in the hospital.
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“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,” Doherty said. “I was like, being told I couldn’t even get in by Alyssa and her mom. They were blocking people from seeing you, and at the time, you didn’t know.”
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She added, “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. 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 claimed “drama” on set sparked her early departure from the series in 2001, which ran for eight seasons until its final episode aired in 2006.
When Doherty left in the third season, Rose McGowan took on her role as Paige Halliwell.
“There was too much drama on the set and not enough passion for the work. You know, I’m 30 years old, and I don’t have time for drama in my life anymore,” the “Beverly Hills, 90210” actress told Entertainment Tonight at the time.
Following Doherty’s exit from the show, Milano told Entertainment Weekly, “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.”
While she’s continued to use her podcast as an outlet for her mental health, Shannen recently revealed her cancer spread to other areas of her body and metastasized to her brain.
She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy in addition to radiation treatments along with a single mastectomy before entering remission in 2017.
In 2018, Doherty revealed her tumor markers were “elevated.”