The cast & crew of Charmed bid farewell From stars Holly Marie Combs, Rose McGowan, Brian Krause and Kaley Cuoco and creator Brad Kern, iF magazine has the scoop on the final episode of the beloved genre series.
The first episode of CHARMED, appropriately called "Something Wicca This Way Comes" aired on October 7, 1998. Now, a 178 episodes later, the show will broadcast its last episode, "Forever Charmed", this coming Sunday, May 21, 2006. CHARMED is the longest running TV show featuring female leads in the history of TV even surpassing the critically acclaimed LAVERNE & SHIRLEY.
CHARMED is extremely popular all over the world and in some countries, such as Italy and France, the show is probably more popular than it is in the U.S.
Alyssa Milano (Phoebe Halliwell) is well aware of how loyal and dedicated the fans can be. "I know they are upset because I read the message boards and such," she admits. "A lot of fans of the show started watching it at a very early age, 10 or 11 years old, so basically they grew up with watching the show. It's part of their childhood and it's going away."
During one of their last interview sessions, done on the set at Paramount Studios, the stars of the show, Holly Marie Combs, Rose McGowan, Brian Krause and Kaley Cuoco along with Producer/Writer Brad Kern talked with iF MAGAZINE about the final days of CHARMED.
iF MAGAZINE: You've kind of knew this was coming for a while I'm assuming, so story line-wise, how do you feel about the way your characters are heading to their conclusion?
HOLLY MARIE COMBS: It was kind of a team effort. We all had a meeting and we discussed the last two episodes and made sure that everybody was happy and made sure that the fans would be happy, too. So Brad was nice enough to care about our little opinions.
ROSE MCGOWAN: It was so odd because there was kind of a great expectancy last year that it would be the last year. So it was kind of strange. It's like the double goodbye. You go into a party and then you say goodbye and then you realize you left your purse. You're, like, oh, crap.
COMBS: It's true. They did all the crying last year.
MCGOWAN: I did. I was all cried out last year. I was very upset last year.
COMBS: I didn't. I was in a great deal of denial. We're coming back. But we knew this time it wasn't going to happen because all of our contracts were up.
iF: Do you have a message for the fans that stuck with you for all these years?
COMBS: We just have a great deal of gratitude for them. They let us into their homes and it's like today - even today we have a Make-A-Wish child coming to the set. There were so many parents of these sick kids that would tell us -- this just kills me -- that this show was the bright spot of their kid's day. A child with a brain tumor, it was the only time she smiled all day. And so as silly as the premise of the show is -- and there have been a lot of haters, there's those kids out there, and adults -- people that saw this show as a bright spot in their day. And I know that between blood, sweat, and tears, I strived with every day that I worked to make this show good and better than it was on the page and better than the network said we were. So I appreciate them for being loyal and sticking up for the underdog.
MCGOWAN: Yes, and I have immense gratitude for the fans. When I started the show I thought it would be all 13-year-old girls and I could not have been more wrong. We had so many viewers from all over the place. I mean maybe that's why the network was always odd with us because it was really hard to pin down one demographic.
We're all over the map, you know. I had this multimillionaire corporate owner of some company on the plane with me yesterday and he was telling me all about the show. It's amazing that we touch anybody's life. And as goofy as we can be sometimes, like a leprechaun fell out of a tree and landed on my chest, I'd like to go kill myself [laughing]. I mean it is ridiculous but it makes somebody laugh.
COMBS: It did mean something to some people. And at the heart of the show we never pretended to be greater than we were, bigger than we were. At the heart of the show it is basic entertainment to take you away from whatever your day was. And that's all we strived to be.
iF: How weird it was to come back in the show? BRIAN KRAUSE: It's different. It's something Brad and I have been talking about since I found out I was only doing ten this year. It was something I definitely wanted to do and as a writer it's so nice for him to be able to wrap up the whole series in eight years, to have all his players to come back.
So I've kind of known that I would return, but, you know, it's been four and a half months since I've been here and it's - the transition of life, of being here for so long and being so blessed and kind of being out on my own and now coming back. It's fun. It's great to see everybody.
iF: What does it mean for you now that the show really ends for real? KRAUSE: Well, I've kind of been dealing with that since November. Being out on my own and I made a short movie myself last year and been trying to shop that around. I made a Lifetime movie and another feature film since I've been back. So I've been kind of busy, trying to get into the film world or if something else comes along it would be great. But it's nice to make this transition of life and reflect on everything that's happened in the last eight years of our lives. So many things have changed. iF: Have you got a message for the fans? What would you say as the show is coming to an end?
KALEY CUOCO: I think it's just incredibly lovely that there has been a group of people -- a big group of people that have been watching for eight years solid and have made CHARMED the leading show for women. I think it's just been incredible. I mean they're the longest running show with women at the top of the chart. I think it's awesome and people have been sticking by it and I'm sure there's going to be some very upset people now that it's over. And I thank you and them for also accepting me.
iF: We know a lot of the actors who have been on CHARMED are coming back for the final episodes, but not Shannen Doherty. Did you approach Shannen?
BRAD KERN: Well, let me just look at my clock here. That took two seconds for that question to come up. We did not approach Shannen. There's not much to say about it. She was a huge part of the show, obviously, in the first three years, but there are a lot of issues, most of them internal, that are not for me to discuss.
Financial is a big issue, but also my feeling is the show, after five years of having Rose, which is two more years than Shannen was on the show, as we end the series it should be more about the sisters who are here, not the one who's not. Because it would be such a huge deal to bring in Shannen and suddenly you're going "is that what the show is about" And that's not what the show's been about.
So in the last episode Prue will be kept alive in many different ways, but we did not approach Shannen and there are a lot of reasons behind it. There's not just one reason, so I'll leave it at that.
iF: Can you tell us who's coming back specifically, or will you need to keep that a surprise?
KERN: No, I will not tell you anything. [Laughing] No, Piper's coming back, Phoebe's coming back, Paige is coming back, Brian's coming back, Leo's coming back, Patty -- Mom is coming back, Penny, Grams is coming back. We're going to be getting a visit from future Wyatt and future Chris. There's actually one scene that we're doing that has, I think, 12 people in the scene, which the director's [James Conway] about ready to kill me over because that's almost impossible to shoot.
But we're just trying to do a show where we can give a valentine to the fans -- at least I hope so -- where we can get to meet all of the favorite characters - or most of the favorite characters -- the ones that we could get and the ones that we could afford -- back together at one point in time to be our farewell to CHARMED.
iF: Is Julian McMahon -- Cole Turner -- one of those?
KERN: No. Julian, who I consider a friend, I was able to twist his arm and have him come back for the 150th episode, but his career is so huge. He's gone on to do so many great things and to get him to come back for the one day we might be able to get him back, and then to work a last episode story around his character I think we've played that relationship [out].
There's really no way to have him come back organically without it taking away from all the other characters I mentioned. So it was kind of my choice to say let's deal with the family - the past generations and the future generations of the girls.
iF: So how challenging was it to come up with story lines to make everybody satisfied with the way the girls all finish after eight years?
KERN: I don't think I'll ever come up with anything that'll satisfy everybody. And that was actually interesting, because that was something that I had to work through myself was this pressure to try to please everybody. Being the child of divorced parents I've been trying to please everybody since I was seven years old. [Laughing] Then I realized I couldn't please 16 million people around the world with one story that we do.
So I think it was more of a feeling that I personally was trying to achieve in the last episode, which was to try to get a sense of warmth, a sense of hope, a sense of the fun of CHARMED. If the show starts out to be about family it should end about family. And that's really where I was looking for the last story. I didn't actually have the exact story that I wanted to [tell] until two or three weeks ago.
There have been things I've wanted to do for the last five, six years that I've been thinking about, and those elements are still there. They're still being incorporated in the last episode. But as far as exactly what I wanted to do, it was a leap of faith. But I figured after eight years and 178 episodes that we?d be able to figure out something that's cool and we're very happy with it. We're excited.
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