Original subtitles

The Mullen brothers? Who are they?

They're dicks.

- Dicks. - No, like private eyes. Detectives.

Don't you see? They write themselves in as the heroes of their own books.

Like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe.

When | came in to do Charmed for the first time,

by chance, | was handed the script "Charmed Noir."

Do | know him? I've never seen him before in my life.

Because it was my first episode of Charmed

and Charmed had been around at that point for over six years,

| was a little bit concerned about how much

the producers would let me do

outside of what Charmed would normally look like.

So | spoke to them about it, | said, "| have some very specific ideas,

if you're willing to really, you know, let this fly and have some fun with it."

And they said, "Go for it."

The first thing they had to do was go to the network and get approval

to air black and white, which doesn't happen a lot.

Networks are very hesitant to allow things to be broadcast

in black and white.

And that was an important element,

because if we couldn't do the novel in black and white,

it would really change, stylistically, the way | would shoot it.

You were saying?

Thanks, guys. Could you be any less subtle?

So once they agreed to go to black and white,

| could then adopt

a very, very specific film-noir look to what I was going to do,

and they gave me permission to push that way past any reasonable limit,

which is why it was so much fun to watch and to shoot.

You're a little heartbreaker, aren't you? A regular femme fatale.

It was an opportunity to actually draw back from my past in film school,

and remember the noir period and remember the films that they showed,

and actually apply many of those visual effects to what we were doing.

| had worked very closely with the director of photography,

we were very interested in making sure that

although we were shooting in color

and we were gonna take the black and white out,

that the lighting would support the finished look in black and white.

We just got to do something completely different.

The camera angles we were doing.

Taking a camera up over a ceiling fan for a shot.

Everybody involved had a great time with it.

Everyone in the period costumes, all the cars,

and then just the campy-ness of what it was that we were doing,

and they completely embraced it and had a ball.

Mylie?

No, don't!

"A Witch's Tail." This was a key moment in the history of Charmed,

because we moved to Sunday night,

and we knew we had to come out with a splash.

So from the studio on down, we were gonna do everything we could

to make this the best possible episode.

Two weeks before we started shooting it,

Holly calls me up and she says, "The script is great, | think it's terrific.

I'm really excited about the fifth season.

I think you're gonna have a little trouble with Alyssa, though,

because she is deathly afraid of the water."

Will someone please get me back to the ocean before | suffocate?

- | need the water. - You want water? I'll get you some.

Five days before shooting, script comes out,

we get a call from Alyssa saying, "There's something you need to know.

I'm deathly afraid of the water, and | won't go in the ocean."

You are holding me hostage.

- Yep, looks like it. - Look, | am not a common goldfish.

| cannot ignore the call of the sea.

Well, the call of the common bathtub is just gonna have to do.

It was such a great script, it was gonna be a great episode,

but Alyssa wasn't going to do it.

She did it, but mostly it was a combination of her,

you know, doing more than she was comfortable doing

and us shooting in such a way,

both with a double and just with some very clever camera angles.

She agreed to go into the water up to her waist,

and we used stunt doubles for everything else.

We had a tank on-stage where the cavern was.

Whenever she was in that water, we had a stunt person in there for safety.

We met with people who had done mermaids before.

We looked at a lot of film, we picked a guy who supplied the tail.

Now we had to design what the top was gonna look like.

And a lot of that had to go with how much Alyssa was willing to bare.

It was all bare chest, except she had a little bit of mermaid stuff

right over her breasts and nipples.

In fact, when the network first saw it,

they were shocked at how revealing she was allowing it to be.

And she was fantastic.

She loved making people laugh and getting into the costumes,

so she was fantastic with that part of it.

Okay, all | need are my sea friends and little shiny objects

and to lay on a rock and comb out my hair.

So to do a mermaid episode,

with a woman who is deathly afraid of the water,

and pull that off, | think is probably one of the most magical things we did.

Excalibur.

In "Sword in the City" we had a gaggle of magical creatures.

Back of the line, please. Hoof it, sister.

Chris. Chris, get down here.

We had 20 little magical creatures in one little room,

and it was quite amusing.

Big to little.

There's a moment where Piper's in doing some potions

and Danny comes in to grab her.

Hey, lady, we could really use an authority figure out there.

A bunch of the stuff that's in that sequence, he just threw out.

I mean, the guy was amazing.

It was so wonderful to watch him do his thing.

- What is this? - Natural selection.

Naturally, | hope the sword selects me to be king.

Finally get a little respect around here.

One of my favourite episodes was "Happily Ever After"

because | got to do three completely different fairy tales

and shoot them in three completely different styles.

I'll split the witches up

and make sure that none of them lives happily ever after.

That was a great deal of fun,

and it was funny because the girls really embraced

their three story lines as well.

The ballroom scene in "Happily Ever After"

with Sean Patrick Flanery, and we had a beautiful set

that Paul Staheli had designed.

We had a big crane, and we were able to do interesting shots.

That was a particularly satisfying day for everyone concerned, | think.

It was a lot of fun, and Alyssa was just great in the part.

Paige.

| really liked "A Paige From the Past"

because it was the first year with Rose,

and it was the first time that we did something

with Rose that was different.

We put her in braces, made her be a teenager.

I'm all right, I'm all--

Wrong! Oh, my God. | saw Scrooged, I'm supposed to come back as a ghost.

Not a ghost with braces.

And she did that transition very well,

where she could tend to be a teenager but she was still herself.

| can't believe | remember the combination.

| used to live out of this locker.

I mean, she had a scene where she's describing

what happened to her parents to the other girls.

It's her first heavy, dramatic scene, and she was having trouble with it.

And the second take, not great but okay,

so | said, "Okay, we have it. I'll let you do one more,

but we do have it, so don't worry about it."

Now that she thought she had it, because we told her she had it,

then she let it go, and it was great.

He didn't see the car that swerved into our lane.

The next thing | know, I'm on the pavement. The car's on fire.

| love Rose. | love the fact that she came in

in a difficult situation and found a way to fit in very quickly with the crew.

"Bite Me" really centered around her becoming a vampiress.

| asked her to do things like

hang upside down from a trapeze at a certain point.

And things that other people were concerned that she wouldn't do,

and she absolutely did them.

She became an integral and important part of the show.

As is evidenced by the fact that she was there for five seasons.

In "Scry Hard" there's a dollhouse, an exact replica of the manor,

and we had to create a real dollhouse that looked like the manor,

and then Leo and Piper, shrunk down by Wyatt

and trapped inside the manor because they're fighting, he gets mad at them.

So we had to basically build a little house.

That was actually really, really cool. It's amazing we got it done,

because we'd only have eight days to prep.

And then we were shooting, so we found out as soon as we could.

The production team started building it,

and by the time we were shooting, thank God we had it.

For me, that was one of the biggest challenges, was to sell the fact

that they were in a really small dollhouse,

and not in the real manor.

And shooting it from different angles

that gave us the feeling that this was a small house,

and that they were small, because we were intercutting with other scenes

where people were full-sized in the real manor,

walking around this dollhouse.

So that was a challenge, but | think we pulled it off pretty well.

I think that "The Bare Witch Project" was

one of the more challenging episodes, and one of the more satisfying ones.

| remember getting the script on that and thinking,

you know, "How are we gonna pull this off in eight days?"

Because it is so massive, there were so many effects in that show.

Who the hell are you?

I've had it with you and your stupid ideas.

- Ready to summon? - Yep. All ready to go.

We had partial nudity with Kristen.

What's wrong?

If you would just listen to me.

That's just a lot.

It is apparently still the only way | can get anybody to listen to me.

Woman, keep your clothes on, this is a family show.

Working with Kristen on "Bare Witch Project"

was a great coup, both for the show and for me because

she was very daring, and a trouper, and she's such a wonderful actor,

and so incredibly pretty, it was just a pleasure to work with her.

Finally. I'm free.

Yes, you are.

All right, let's eighty-six that kind of talk, now, people.

We will not give up on love.

Repeat, not give up on love. Love is everything. It's the only thing.

It's why you're here, it's why I'm here.

The interesting thing about doing "The Seven Year Witch"

which was the 175th episode,

was a bringing together of cast from the past

that obviously were very successful in their own right, after the fact,

and trying to get everybody onto the set at the same time

basically proved impossible.

There was a long sequence where Holly was unconscious on the sofa,

and everybody was there, but we never had everybody there at the same time.

There were literally three different days that we shot

those scenes with different people.

So Julian, who was over on one side talking to Holly, was on one day.

What beauty.

She doth teach the torches to burn bright.

And what was going on on the sofa was another day.

And when Billy Zane made his entrance from the stairs

was a third day.

So we never had everybody there at the same time,

but had to create scenes where everybody was talking to each other.

Look, we know you have Leo. Bring him down here now.

The whole episode of "The Seven Year Witch"

is about Brian being put in a position of making a choice.

But making a choice without the knowledge

of what the ramifications of those choices are.

And ultimately, his choice to jump off that bridge,

he doesn't know that that's gonna get him back to Holly,

but he knows it's what his choice is,

to choose that over staying where he was.

No Elder has ever done that before.

- You take away my family, and | will. - This is about you making a choice.

That is the dilemma, and that is the crossroads that he faces.

There's a shot where the girls catch up with him.

We did a high shot over the truck as it stopped.

It was right at a crossroads, and then he's told,

"This is where you have to decide what to do.”

You need to make a choice. Every man does.

| know.

And it's not directly referenced, the fact that it is a crossroads, but it's in there.

You're gonna be on a series for many, many years,

it can get boring if they're doing the same thing every week.

Well, that was never the case on Charmed.

Every week, it was completely different.

Whether it'd be bats or vampires and the warlocks, it was never the same.

So each week, you had the arc with the girls' dramatic lives,

which was fantastic.

Thank you, guys.

On top of that, you mix in the demons and the warlocks and the fireballs,

and you have a nice stew of fun.