Original subtitles

- 1am one of millions. - The power of three will set us free...

In places you can't even imagine, in forms you'd never believe.

You will never be saved, and you will never be free!

The power of three.

If the show were just about three witches,

| don't think the show would have worked at all.

Everything feels the same, so nothing's changed, right?

We landed on a mantra, which is it's a show about three sisters

who happen to be witches,

not three witches who happen to be sisters.

And once we found that mantra, we stuck with that

and realised this is a family show first.

This is a show about women

who are in their early 20s, who have all the real issues

that any other woman has in their early 20s,

and sisters, who have to deal with each other with this secret.

Me, keep a secret?

Hello? Wrong Halliwell.

One of the things that was attractive about the show,

especially at the very beginning,

was the mythology of magic,

in terms of the love that the sisters had for each other

and this amazing gift that they'd been given

by the other women in their family.

| think that the timing of the show was perfect.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had been absolutely enormous,

so the whole sort of girl-power element,

Charmed definitely had that aspect.

We talked a lot in the early days about

metaphors for female empowerment and female relationships.

The power that they drew from each other

on a more practical, emotional level.

In the beginning, Phoebe was the baby,

Piper was the middle sister and Prue was the eldest.

We defined those characters a lot by the psychological dynamics

of what it is to be the eldest, what it is to be the middle, to be the youngest.

Please tell me you didn't use your powers.

- Don't put me in the middle. - I'm not, you were born in the middle.

What Shannen and Alyssa and | had was a very special chemistry

that was not manufactured, was not forced. It was very easy.

It's lightning in a bottle.

And we got very lucky with Rose.

We got very lucky with Rose because she didn't try to be part of something.

She was so individual that she was just like, "This is me, this is who | am."

And she was twirling in her own little splendor over here,

and it worked for her character

because the character had a different dad than we did,

and she was, you know, kind of the outsider, so it helped.

But thank the Lord for Rose,

because | don't think anybody else could have pulled it off.

It's nice to meet you.

It was a little scary, because it's the premise of the show,

is the power of three, and these three sisters.

But it was also really exciting, because what happened is

suddenly Piper is the oldest, Phoebe is in the middle

and Paige is the rebel.

It shook everything up. Which was really fun as a writer too.

You know, it ultimately infused a lot of energy into the story-breaking process.

Strange, isn't it?

Now, on top of everything else, you have to play the middle sister.

The writers really walk a very fine line

of having the show be fun and light and sort of campy,

and then deal with the real issues.

Thanks, Leo.

I didn't mean you couldn't use the stairs.

The thing | found most fascinating, in talking with the fans of the show,

is that they really liked the deeper issues

more than even the demon stuff.

It was, to them, a show about sisters.

You had a really wonderful relationship show

wrapped up in this cool mythology

that let us talk about anything.

| would always tell the writers,

"Anything goes, as long as it started with the girls.”

In order to ground this craziness,

it had to be a real story about women in their 20s,

dealing with love and loss, with jobs, with losing jobs,

with friends, with family.

It had to be always about that first and foremost,

because if we just went for the craziness, then what was grounding it?

It became an untethered balloon.

People aren't gonna come back every week to watch the wackiness.

They're coming back to watch the girls, the family, the sisterhood.

The wackiness is the icing on the cake.

| had the best power on earth.

People always ask questions,

"If you were a superhero, what kind of power would you wanna be?"

And everyone says, "Oh, I'd be invisible, or | wanna fly." No.

Orbing is hands down the coolest power on the planet.

One, | could throw something at you if | didn't like you.

Lamp.

Two, | could touch your hand and we could go to Paris for lunch.

Would never have to take an airplane.

I'm wearing my sun block. Bye, guys.

And I'll admit, I've been on airplanes many a times

and | sit there fantasizing about how I could do things if | were orbing.

Which is sad, because it's not in fact real, but, God, | wish it were.

That's the magic of Charmed. It's the wish fulfillment.

But what was interesting on the show

is that even though these girls had magic,

there weren't that many shortcuts.

They would use these spells and, like, chaos would happen.

They were always in trouble for using magic for personal gain.

But they wouldn't stop doing it, which all feels really true to me.

| wouldn't stop using magic, personally, if | could.

My son does it at home, it's just perfectly horrifying to me.

He's 3 years old and he'll go, "Freeze!"

And I'm just like, "Oh, God, please don't do that.”

It actually came pretty organically from the moment in the pilot

where | was just reaching for something

for him to stop.

Chef Moore?

We were kind of just stumbling through going, you know,

"What do we do for this power? What do we do for that?"

And we'd just kind of come up with it.

And then you just wave your arm at it.

| was very embarrassed the first season.

But also nobody primed me,

so | get there for the first, you know, episode that I'm shooting,

and I'm supposed to call out for a candle.

What are you people talking about?

I think the key to it all was to not fight it.

Because, you know, at first | think | had a tendency to be like,

"Oh, my God, what am | doing? And what am | wearing?"

Nice outfit.

Back at you, sis.

The key to it was just to sort of, you know, go with it

and allow yourself to find the humor in it as a character

and put yourself in these situations

that you would clearly never be in in life,

and how would someone react to that.

The thing that made Charmed fun to do--

If you're gonna be on a series for many, many years,

it can get pretty darn boring if it's the same thing every week.

Well, that was never the case on Charmed.

Every week, it was completely different,

whether it would be bats or vampires or dragons.

It was never the same,

so each week, you had the arc with the girls’ dramatic lives,

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

and you have a nice stew of fun.

| embraced it all, it was all fun.

You know, any time | got to throw on a wig, | was excited.

And why do | always get stuck with the wig?

Trust me, you don't.

First I'd look down and be in, like, this genie outfit with this wig,

and that's absurd, and then, you know, the action on top of that.

| was losing my balance inside a bottle.

You know. The absurdity never ended.

I wish to resurrect the lost city of Zanbar.

The thing about this show was that we had no rules.

We could make up any world at any time,

and there were no barriers.

It's not like we were doing a cop show or a hospital show.

Leprechaun!

At one point, | couldn't e-mail my friends or tell them what was going on

because they would stop believing me.

Ever date a little person?

"What'd you do at work today?"

"Oh, | had a leprechaun straddle my neck. What'd you do?"

But that's part of the charm of Charmed.

There was many moments like that,

where we're kind of like, we're in a cave in high heels,

and you're like, "Yep. This is what | do. This is my job."

Even if they didn't like it that much, they would sell it,

and that's one thing I'm always grateful to them for,

because they would sit up and show up and try to sell

some of the crazy, wacky stuff that we were asking them to do.

Okay. Yeah.

A demon monkey stole my hearing.

For the characters, it was real.

So you could never play something with a wink to the audience of,

"Oh, isn't this absurd?"

Because the whole premise really worked with the girls.

This is their real situation, what they're really dealing with.

They really were dealing with these absurd situations,

and so it can't really be that absurd to them,

and if it is, it was handled in really funny ways.

Oh, Paige is proposing violence against the monkey.

It turns out, you know, fun and campy and...

Exactly what it was supposed to be.

| will not use my powers for anything but good.

| know you believe that, and | know you want it to be true,

but, Cole, it's just a matter of time.

You're wrong.

Even though Charmed was a fantasy,

| think the strength and the reason it lasted so long is because it was

based in sort of universal truths and the humanity of these people

that happened to be witches.

You really ought to get yourself a prince,

in case this ever happens again.

- Who are you? - We'll send you the bill.

We got our best stories from truthful human stories,

so it's just like, you know, any woman who finds their match in a guy,

it's gonna be what they're needing for that time in their life.

Yeah, in case you haven't noticed, which | know you haven't,

my body, my thoughts, my dreams have all gone wonky.

Well, I'm sure that it's just normal pregnancy stuff.

We can talk about this later, if you want to.

Oh, | think you should talk about it now.

We felt like our trailers were bugged.

Because what was going on in the scripts,

we had been talking about in our real lives,

and we were just like, "Okay, where's the microphone?"

- You're pregnant? - Well, | was, but now | think Leo is.

Are your boobs always this sore?

It really wasn't about who the guys were.

We always thought about how would it be most interesting with the girls.

You know, who would bring out the best in them,

or some dark side of them, who would challenge them the most?

I'd say the majority of shows are about guys, and the female actresses

are in the situation that the boyfriends are in our show.

Which are servicing our leads, who are these powerful females.

| don't think there's anyone where we didn't have good chemistry.

Where it wasn't--

You know, where it was like pulling things out of them.

It just always felt good and right.

What was | saying?

When | first started the show,

they tried having me have a boyfriend every week.

You didn't come home all night?

No, Mom, why?

Paige isn't a ho.

What is this, a brothel?

You didn't mention that. I'm a little short on cash.

But | drew the line with them in the first season

after | was on a couch

and the girls would walk in and they caught me making out with some guy,

and you never saw the guy again and it was just me saying,

"| can't believe | got caught kissing--"

Whoever this guy was, God bless him. God bless me.

It was 6:30 in the morning and | meet this guy,

I'm like, "Hey, Bob, nice to meet you."

On the couch:

"All right, then. Nice working with you. Never see you again.”

| thought, "Okay, that | cannot do."

Well, | try never to get involved with guys | can't see regularly.

So don't feel bad. | mean, | understand.

Strangely enough, Brian and | had known each other before the show.

Which was weird.

Because it made it weird. It was like kissing my brother.

We were familiar enough with each other

to kind of be comfortable in each other's presence,

but familiar enough that you didn't wanna, like, kiss him.

So we made kind of a point of being in character, staying in character,

we didn't talk a lot about our personal lives with each other.

Because when we were around each other, we were Piper and Leo,

and it was very easy to stay within that.

We had just known each other for so long, it was so easy.

- Hi. - Hi.

I'll be in the attic.

That's tough on actors.

If you have to fall in love and break up

with the same people all the time, it's very hard.

All TV shows have it. If you're cursed with success,

the long-term nature of it is what becomes so difficult,

because it's forever that you're doing this,

and you have to create reasons to keep couples apart

and bring them back together.

So they did have their trials and tribulations.

We got to use all the things you'd normally deal with in drama,

you know, marriage, boyfriends, but yet it's all amplified

by the fact that they're witches, and that they're magical.

But it all, | think, was based in reality.

They always sort of learned and grew from each of their relationships.

It ended in the way it started, which is a show about sisters.

What we tried to make the show, and | think we largely succeeded,

was to have the demonic stories, or have the magical stories,

resonate, reflect, bring out, draw out

what was happening in the sisters' lives.

It was definitely fun, and there was always this

almost little-girl element to it of...

You felt like a little girl, because it's what you would sort of

utilize in your imagination when you were little.

My career had two very substantial growth spurts on TV.

One was Who's the Boss?, which I did from 11 to 19 years old,

which is, you Know, monumental.

And Charmed being, you know, early 20s to basically mid-30s,

and those are two really substantial times in your life.

You know, emotionally, physically, everything.

The last day of filming was very sad.

The last scene we shot was basically the ending of the show,

which was Phoebe and Coop getting married.

It was really touching. It was really sad, and it was really strange because,

you know, we kind of functioned as one big dysfunctional family for so long.

They're always gonna be a part of my life.

It was one of the best gifts I've ever had.

There's so much stuff, and there are so many people,

and there's so many great times and it's like,

it's one of those things where you won't really know how great you had it

till ten years down the line.

We had a great time, | wouldn't trade it for the world.