[On screen: Something Wicca This Way Comes, SEASON 1]

Holly Marie Combs [hereinafter HMC]: We look like such babies, we were so young.

Piper: Prue?
Prue (calls out): In here, working on the chandelier.

[On screen: HOLLY MARIE COMBS, Producer/‘Piper Halliwell’]

HMC: This show was about three girls who were growing up and, you know, coming into who they were as adults.

[On screen: Morality Bites, SEASON 2]
Piper: I think you have the wrong house, certainly the wrong mommy.
Little girl (hugs Piper): Stop fooling!

HMC: That’ definitely I know what happened for me. I mean I was 24 when me started the show and I think 32 when it ended, so those were very defining periods in my life.

[On screen: IN THE BEGINNING…]

HMC: I went to the network to test and so they were in love with Shannen but they didn’t want me. They felt that they needed someone with more ‘star power’ [gestures quote marks with her hands], which was their quote, to stand next to Shannen and Aaron became… livid. [Laughs.] I don’t know what in the stars this man saw in me but thank goodness because he was one of my biggest champions, you know, second to none other than Shannen. Basically they both threw down the gauntlet and said ‘We’re not doing this show without Holly, if you wanna do the show, you’re gonna do it without us and we wanna do the show with her’. So it was basically a gift that Aaron and Shannen gave to me and it was all because of them.

[On screen: THE MIDDLE SISTER]

[On screen: BRAD KERN, Executive Producer]

Brad Kern: Holly’s character Piper was the crazy, overscheduled, overstressed middle sister. We always called her Solomon: she was always trying to make peace between Prue and Phoebe, the oldest and the youngest sisters.

[On screen: I’ve Got You Under My Skin, SEASON 1]
Prue: We’re not supposed to use our powers for our own personal gain! That’s what it says In the Book of Shadows.
Piper: Not so loud!
Phoebe: You said we needed money, right? Well, I’m getting some.
Piper: Come on, you guys!

HMC: Brad was very much a champion of mine as well and he had something to prove to the network as much as I did, so it was like somewhere halfway through the first season I was like ‘Dude, you gotta take it easy on me, I’m getting really exhausted!’ and he was like ‘I’m just trying to prove to the network what you can do’ and I was like ‘Well, I appreciate that, but I need a nap!’. [Laughs.]

Piper: That wasn’t so hard.

Brad Kern: It was interesting to watch her character evolve over the course of the series because when Prue died, the middle sister became the oldest sister and it was a struggle for her and that was a lot of interesting stuff for us to mine as a character because she had never been in charge, she had always been the peace maker. Suddenly she’s having to set the agenda, she’s having to be the matriarch.

[On screen: Charmed Again, SEASON 4]
Piper: I’ve always had a big sister… and I don’t know how to live without one.

HMC: They made it a somewhat cathartic experience for me so when I’m actually crying at Prue’s funeral, it was really me, kind of working out what I had to do. Because here was this, you know, situation that was very much gonna be to my advantage but was at a cost of her and that was something that I obviously still have not reconciled.

[On screen: THE SUPERMOM]

[On screen: Siren Song, SEASON 5]
Leo: Oh, not the crying thing!
Piper: Leo, I have growing powers inside of me. Powers that I do not understand. Add that to raging hormones and I guarantee you I am absolutely entitled to do the crying thing!

HMC: From this show I met my husband and had these two miraculous babies. But in the meantime, you know, Piper was having the same journey of her own, you know, with her kids and her husband, and, um, I don’t think that was an accident. [Laughs.]

[On screen: Black As Cole, SEASON 5]
Paige: So I hear you and Leo are thinking about having a baby.
Piper: Where did you hear that from?

[On screen: JAMES L. CONWAY, Co-Executive Producer]

James L. Conway: Brad went to the studio and said: “I wanna have Holly get pregnant.” Aaron and Duke hated the idea. “This is a show about three sexy women, you can’t have one of them being pregnant!” They were worried that it would ruin the ratings. And it didn’t. So she had the baby and then she had another one!

HMC: I spent two years pregnant on screen but like three years pregnant because the first season I did a fake pregnancy and then the second season I was pregnant myself with Finley and I called Brad and I said: “Um… we have a problem.” And he goes: “What?” And I said: “Well… I’m pregnant.” And he goes: “Hmph! You’re a season late!” I said: “No, you were a season early!”

[On screen: It’s A Bad Bad Bad Bad World, SEASON 6]
Phoebe: Piper, are you okay?
Piper: Of course I'm okay. I'm having a baby, for crying out loud. (She holds out the JELL-O cup and smiles.) Jell-O? It's really yummy.

HMC: I was the first one and the only one that was, you know, in the cast and pregnant so it was like the guys didn’t know how to operate around me. It’s like, you know, everything changed.

Piper: Those darn contractions are a lot more painful than they should be.

HMC: And even still they had gone through my first pregnancy with me and I’m pregnant with Riley during the last part of the last season and here I am in the second to last episode and the whole house is blown up around me and I’m just like ‘Could we get more smoke, flames, fire and gas around the pregnant woman? If this child turns out strange, you’re all getting sued!” He was a little big, but he’s very healthy.

[On screen: Desperate Housewitches, SEASON 8]
Leo (smiling): Doesn't get more perfect than this.
(With tears in her eyes, Piper smiles and applauds.)

Jeannine Renshaw: Desperate Housewitches, when Piper faces her worst fear, in a way, with the perfect mother. And she’s feeling completely inadequate, I mean, she’s a working mom, she has a club, she has her job as a witch and she wants to be a good mom to her kinds.

Leo: She is not gonna use magic to make Wyatt a costume.
Piper: Oh, no? Watch me!

[On screen: JEANNINE RENSHAW, Co-Producer]

Jeannine Renshaw: She had to deal with the fact that she was trying to be all things at all the time.

(Piper picks up the pumpkin costume and holds it up as she admires it.)
Piper: Ha-ha! How ya like me now?
(Piper smiles, pleased with the job she did.)

Jeannine Renshaw: And here she’s faced with this woman, who she thinks is just the perfect mom. It turns out that, of course, she’s a demon. She’s too good to be true. She’s a demon and I loved her and I loved how Piper, how angry Piper got in dealing with her because really it made Piper look at her own inadequacies.

Piper: Oh… She’s a DEMON!
(Piper turns and storms out of the pre-school.)
Miss Diane (to Mandi’s son): Jealousy is an ugly, ugly thing.
(He nods.)

Jeannine Renshaw: All us moms think those people must be, like, horrible human beings inside or something, they must be demons, they can’t be human.

[On screen: FOREVER PIPER]

Piper: This place is a mess!

HMC: Now with two children under three, basically, I really need to freeze time and take a nap.

Piper: I'm a working single mother of two kids. I barely have time to brush my teeth, let alone self-reflection.

HMC: After an eight-year show, an eight-year run and the two kids, I just really need a nap. And it’s funny I said that like in interviews when I was 25 or 26, ‘I’ll just freeze time and take a nap’, but now I really mean it because now I know what it means! [Laughs.]

[End credits]

Source: The Charmed Book of Shadows boxset bonus disc