Rose McGowan recently revealed unsettling experiences she faced during her stint on the popular TV series Charmed. According to McGowan, the show’s producers closely monitored her weight, particularly at the beginning of each season.

During a conversation on the “We Need to Talk” podcast hosted by Paul C. Brunson on January 6, McGowan, now 52, shared, “They would gather around me to assess my weight when I returned each season.” She described this scrutiny as an inspection of their “product.”

The actress reflected on the industry norms of that era, noting that such behavior was widely accepted as “completely fine” at the time.

The supernatural drama Charmed, which debuted on The WB in 1998, was no stranger to controversy. The show, centered around the magical Halliwell sisters, quickly garnered attention, in part due to its casting choices. Notably, Aaron Spelling had cast Shannen Doherty as one of the sisters just four years after her controversial exit from Spelling Television’s Beverly Hills, 90210.

The power of three will set us free … from everything but drama. Charmed, which premiered on The WB in 1998, made headlines from the start as Aaron Spelling hired Shannen Doherty to play one of the three Halliwell sisters, four years after she was infamously let go from Spelling Television’s Beverly Hills, 90210. “[Aaron] […]

She played Paige Matthews for five seasons of Charmed, the WB fantasy series about San Francisco sisters who have secret supernatural powers. It was produced by Aaron Spelling and Brad Kern, among others.

Charmed ran from 1998 to 2006 and originally starred Shannen Doherty, Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano as a trio of do-gooding witches. Doherty, who played Prue Halliwell, left the show after three seasons. McGowan was introduced as half-sister Paige in season four. She had previously made her mark in edgier fare, having starred in the films Scream (1996), Devil in the Flesh (1998) and Jawbreaker (1999).

During her interview with Brunson, 50, McGowan recalled the pressure to tone down her style and appear “so mainstream” amid her Charmed run. 

“I knew the knives would be out,” she said, referencing the aftermath of Doherty’s departure. “That the fans would want … the person, the other character, that they loved.”

Rose McGowan is getting candid about grieving the death of fellow Charmed star Shannen Doherty at the age of 53. “I can’t stop crying,” McGowan, 50, wrote via Instagram comment on Sunday, July 14. “A world without Shannen Doherty is inconceivable.” McGowan had replied to Jawbreaker costar Julie Benz, who called Doherty’s death “heartbreaking” in […]

To endear herself to those viewers, McGowan “decided to base my character kind of on I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball. What if she was young and in this situation, just kind of lovable, like kind of goofy and soft? I’d pitch my voice higher and be non-threatening. Because I was ‘scary’ to people.”

Prior to Charmed, “I would dress myself if I ever had to go to an event,” McGowan said. “Or do my own makeup, things like that. And then, during that whole period when I was on that show, it all changed. All of a sudden, you had to have a stylist. You had to pay $6,000 a month to a stylist.”

McGowan said stylists would reject clothes she wanted to wear, telling her “‘That’s too editorial’ — meaning that’s too edgy and fashion.” She said they selected outfits that were more “red carpet. And then they’d put globs of makeup [on her] and giant helmet hair.”

After the show ended, McGowan and Doherty formed a friendship. In August 2024, a month after Doherty died of cancer at age 53, McGowan guest-hosted her podcast, “Let’s Be Clear.”

Shannen Doherty has no regrets about the Charmed finale. The actress, who played Prue Halliwell for three seasons before her character was killed off, was asked whether she regrets not appearing in the show’s final episode during a Q&A on the Monday, May 20, episode of her “Let’s Be Clear” podcast. The answer? “No.” “I […]

“If I have any regrets, I wish I could have gotten to know her sooner,” she said at the time, adding, “We were really pitted against each other. I was just told she was fired and nobody talked about her.”

McGowan refused to speak badly of Doherty when she joined Charmed in her place. 

“They wanted me to start a war with her, and I was like, ‘Absolutely not. I will not start a war with her,’” she said. “And to her credit, she absolutely did not do that either.”

McGowan said the “biggest misconception about [Doherty] was that she was hard. But at the same time, it was the truth, but it’s not who she was natively. And I would say that was the biggest misconception about me as well. We both just like to laugh. Soft, underneath it all.”