Charmed Magazine - June/July 2006

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final curtain... After eight seasons and more than 160 episodes The WB officially called time on it hit show Charmed on Friday, March 3, 2006.
Altought the decision didn’t come as too much of a shock to star Holly Marie Combs, who’s played the delightful Piper Halliwell ever since the show’s pilot episode way back in 1998, it was still an emotional moment for the pretty mom-of-one. That’s because, as Holly herself is first to admit, Charmed has had incredible impact on her life, both as an actor and as a woman...
In a frank and exclusive interview with Charmed Magazine’s Davaid Waldon, Holly looks back on eight glorious years...

Charmed Magazines: It’s official. This is the last season of Charmed. Are you truly ready for it to be over?

I’m kind of in denial. [Laughts] I don’t really think about the particulars or specifics of, “Oh, God, I’m going to have to say goodbye to everyone.” And, you know, I have friends here that I’ll take with me forever. But it’s hard when you’re used to something.
I had no sense of normality or rountine in my life [when i was younger].
I moved around a lot with my mom, and I didnt’t have what you would call a typical childhood. So to be i one place for eight years with basically the same people and come to the same job day in and day out has been an invaluable lesson in stability for me. And so it’s going to be kind of weird. You get used to something after a while!

How has the slow changed you as an actor and as a woman?

Well, it’s been a big chunk of my life. Obviously, I met my husband [former crewmember David Donoho] doing the show – and we’ve had a baby together. So it’s a very big deal for me. I think about what the show has meant for me professionally and personally, and more has gone on in this time of my life than any other time in my life. Nothing really compares to this. So it’s going to be hard to say goodbye. But life moves on... Finley [Holly’s one-year-old son] is taking his first steps, and i pick him up and go, “No, don’t do that, don’t do that. What are you, crazy? Why are you walking so fast” It’s kind of the same thing. You’ve got to move on.
Actually, one of my friends said to me, because there was talk about doing a spinn-off, and we talked about it, adn i thought about it, and i was like, “Wow, it would really have to be right, right thing, and it would have to be creatively fulfilling for me, yet let me have a schedule where I could actually be a mom, because I think I owe him that much.” And so it’s tough decision for me. On one hand, work has always been my savior, because I really feel that my career and working has taken me out of the trailer park and put me in a different kind of trailer – my trailer outside.
[Laughts] I just work in trailers, live in trailers. But it has been my savior to a degree. So it’s hard for a workaholic who views her job as salvation to reprioritize and go, “Hmm, yeah, but there’s a small child that needs you be on the set.” And it’s tough adjustment for me, because I dont’t know where I would be without acting. So in a way, it gives me a great perspective, because i’m very thankful to have a job, and I know it’s made me the way that I am, and it’s kept me form being someone that I didn’t want to be.
Not a lot of people in my family even graduated high school, let alone college.
I come from a long line of mechanics and waitresses. There wasn’t a lot of personal ambition going on. [Laughts] So they just look at me like I’m sort of alien. They’re like, “What the hell happened with her? We tikd her to just have babies and just sit down, but now she’s taking half-naked pictures all the time!” My Family just has no idea what to think of me. But, you know, in a way it’s great to come from that kind of backround because it keeps me very, very grounded. My family’s not going to walk into the Christmas party and really dazzle everybody with their scholarly attributes or anything like that. But they’ll teach you how shoot tin cans off a fence with great grace and do the 7-Up fried turkey by the pool so that you don’t set the deck on fire, and that kind of stuff. They know the practical things. But at the same time, because of how I worked and where i worked, I was able to go school in New Yorkm I was able to subjected to all these different kind of cultures and peoples, and on evert movie set I met a whole bunch of different people, and I was just explosed to a whole worl that, really, my family can’t even imagine. And it’s made me a better person, absolutely, 100 percent. And so to have this little thing come along and have that be more important that most important thing is my life is quite a transition for me. So I think that, as much as I love this show, and I love characters, I think it’s going to be time for me to give some time to somebody else in my life.

In other word, time for a bit of a break after Charmed.

Yeah.

One of the benefits from your success on Picket Fences and Charmed is that you where able to put your mother trought college.

I did. You know, my mom got pregnant with me at 15; I think she had me at 16. And at that time, it was 1973, and abortion was just legalized, and it was kind of a hot issue, and she was actually kicked out of high school because she was told she was an insurance risk – that they couldn’t cover her and her unborn baby if there should be an accident. Which was kind of a bit of B.S., because they were fine with her going to their night school. They just didn’t want her to be seen as a pregnant, unwed mother. And my father was 17; they did get married, and they tried to make it work – for three years they stayed together – but they were kids. And unfortunately, my mother never resumed going to school after that because that, obiously, left kind of a bad taste in her mouth a little bit when they were, “Could you go hide in the dark?” So she kind of felt a little bit – not inferior, but inadequate, compared to the rest of the world who had gone to normal high school and had the change to go to college. It was always kind of a button with her. So she got her GED when we lived in New York, and she decided that sh e wanted to go to college. And it was more than about the diploma or the degree. It was about a personal fulfillment that she felt that she needed. So I had the financial means to help her do it, and the years when I didn’t have the financial means, she got scholarships, which I’m still paying off – God, those things are a racket! [Laughts] So it was a great thing for me to be able to do it, it was great thing for her to do.

Did you play the role of the crying parent when she graduated?

Oh yes, I did. I was in the audience, and she went up, and she cried. And she was graduating, and my granmother was there, and I was there in the audience. So it was pretty funny to have three generation of us there, and the middle generation graduating.

Looking back, would you like to have directed an episode of Charmed?

Oh, you know, we had and actor [Shannen Doherty] direct once on this show, and she did such a great job, and I still to this day don’t know how she did it. I think her episodes are some of our greatest episodes; especially the Western one. ‛The Goodm the Bad and the Cursed’ was done really, really well. And i remember how frustrated she would get during prep, because you have such grand ideas for this show because our scripts are so rich, and you want to do so many things, and our badget just really doesn’t allow it. We don’t have the time or the budget to do these episodes the way they really need to be done. And I know how tough it is, and I watch seasoned directors struggle with it, struggle to make the schedule and make the budget, and I know how hard this show is to do. It’s very hard, there’s a lot of elements, theres’s lot of green-screen, a lot of stunts, a lot of different actors, a lot of different personalities, and it’s a tough show to do. And I wouldn’t take it as my first gig, that’s for sure. [Laughts]

You are thinking about directing at some point, though?

Oh yeah. Sure, I’ve thought about it. But I just know better than to start with this show.

Tough question: do you have a favorite episode or memory of the show?

You know, I do kind of have a favorite episode, and it may be the one [I was doing] when I found out I was pregnant, just because of that, but I really love the episode in and of itself. It’s our “Camelot” episode with Edward Atterton, ‘Sword in the City,’ because it was just fun, and it was an exciting time of my life, and i got to do the swordplay, and it helps so dramatically when we have great actors to work off of, and Edward was awesome, and he was into it, and he wasn’t embarrassed by the silly nature of the material at all, and he went for it, and it help a tremendous degree. I think ‘Morality Bites’ is one of my earlier favorites; everybody loves that one. Shannen’s Western is on of my favorites as well. And then the one that Shannen directed where I did the bleed-out, dying scene on the table [‘All Hell Breaks Loose’] is one of my personal favorites! [Laughs] That was a great death scene for me. It’s a little creepy to think about, but...

How many death scenes have you had on the show? It must be a fair few...

Oh, I think I’m pushing six, at least.

It’s kind of like Star Trek, where the regular characters always died but always came back at the end...

Yeah, I definitely have died the most of anybody that’s here, that’s for sure. I’m really running out of ways ways to do it well, though. I really am! [Laughs]

Are you under pressure to do it different every time?

Absolutely. And i hope nobody compiles a whole bunch of them and goes, “No, she did it the same way every time.” That would just be my greatest failures.

When Charmed wraps in a few weeks time, what do you want to take home with you from the set?

What will I take from the set? Oh, I’m not telling. But if there’s a large book missing, don’t come looking for it at my place.