Rose McGowan & Brad Kern On Charmed Future

[Superbowl]

Eight Expectations

Dreamwatch (UK) - December 28, 2005

Is the end nigh for the Halliwell sisters? Rose McGowan and executive producer Brad Kern explain to Ian Spelling what the future holds for Charmed.

Neither Rose McGowan nor Brad Kern can believe it. Charmed has been on the air for eight years. Eight years. And McGowan’s been a part of it for five, a figure that just blows her tell-it-like-it-is mind. Why the looking back now? Because season eight will likely be the last, the swan song, for the venerable series about the sisters Halliwell. – initially Prue (Shannen Doherty) Piper (Holly Marie Combs) and Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), with McGowan coming on board as half-sister Paige in season four, following Doherty’s departure. The sisters, of course, are witches trying to lead ordinary lives while protecting mankind, which means regular, out-thinking, outwitting and out-magic-ing, as it were, all manner of evil – be it demons, shapeshifters, warlocks, Darklighters, Whitelighters with hidden agendas, ghosts or trolls.

“It’s awesome”, Kern, whose written and produced Charmed since day one, enthuses. “There are no words to describe it for me. I never imagined it. When we first started the show it was very difficult to figure out. I was falling on my sword, figuratively speaking. And the president of the studio came in, looked at me and said. ‘Do you think you have five years in this show?’ I said, ‘No way’But eight years later, here I am. What’s even more amazing is that we are the longest running show in television history with female leads. That’s an accomplishment that we’re all immensely proud of. It’s a tribute to the show and it’s a tribute to the fans, but most of all it’s a tribute to Alyssa, Holly, Rose and Shannen.”

Duel of the Fates
Season eight very nearly never happened. Charmed, though still popular, suffered audience erosion over the years and by the seventh season the ratings were down roughly 20 per cent from the year before. Worse, all signals from The WB, which airs Charmed in the United States, pointed to it’s demise. The network, which was under new leadership and seemed eager to start the 2005-2006 season with a clean slate of original programming, uttered not a word to Kern, and as the season approached its end he didn’t know whether to write a series finale or season finale. So he wrote an episode, Something Wicca This Way Goes, that could serve – or so he hoped – as both. Meanwhile, The WB looked at the pilots they’d commissioned and only a few of them merited slots on the schedule, which meant, which meant renewing several on-the-bubble shows, including Charmed. However the renewal and full 22-episode order came at a steep price: Kerns budget was slashed, forcing him to reduce Dorian Gregory’s role dramatically, after seven seasons as Halliwell ally Daryl Morris, and bid farewell to Brian Krause, who’d played Piper’s love leo since the early days. Kern had to fight to secure a 10 episode eight-season deal for Krause. Still, Charmed was back.

“I was actually not stressed about it either way because it was completely out of my hands,” McGowan says, settling into Kern’s seat after he steps away. “The outcome had nothing to do with me. I was just waiting to see what happened, like everybody else. And, frankly, I have no clue how I got the news that we were coming back. Isn’t that weird? I think Holly might have told me. I always get told everything last. It’s probably the last season of the show, but it’s my last season definitely, I haven’t thought about how I’d like to see things end for Paige. I don’t want her to die. They can do lots of things without killing her: I’d like to see it end on a happy note. She’s a positive character, plus for the people who watch the show, they really care about the character and are invested in her.. That’s been my experience when I meet people on the street. So, for them, It’s be nice to see some kind of a happy ending for Paige. But I don’t know what that happy ending would be. I really don’t”

Which Witch?
For all the departures on Charmed, there’s also been a major introduction or two this season. Kaley Cuoco, who played the late John Ritter’s daughter on Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, joined the cast as Billie, a tough witch-in-training whom the girls take under their wings. Kern added the character for numerous reasons: to ease the workload on his central trio; to space up the interactions between the sisters; and to have a potential spin-off character and actress in place should Charmed go on in some form next year.

“We’ve been introducing Billie.” McGowan says, ”She’s been helping us out since, especially at the beginning of the season, we were supposed to be dead to the world. So I’ve been teaching her the ropes. The idea is to distance myself from having to deal with the humans and demons and whatnot. Kaley being here is a win-win situation for everyone. She’s a sweetheart I think she’s done a nice job of adjusting to doing the show. It’s got to be so strange for her coming from a sitcom into an hour-long drama. It was really weird for her at first to do our recaps, where we replay the tail end of a scene so it can air after a commercial. I’d just look at her and say, ‘Welcome to my world.’ But she’s great, and she has eased the workload on all of us.”

The other big addition also involves Paige. Ivan Sergei, late of such television series as Jack & Jill., Crossing Jordan and Hawaii, arrived on Charmed for a multi-episode arc as Paige’s love interest, Henry. He made his first appearance in episode eight, Battle of the Hexes, and it’s a development McGowan is pleased with. “Ivan is my guy.” She says, laughing. “He’s my boyfriend. I’d actually met him once before. He’s got a Boston Terrier and I have two Boston Terriers. So, he’s OK in my book. I love that Paige is having a romance. It’s always seemed ridiculous to me that Paige hasn’t had a boyfriend. Obviously characters are different from real people, especially on a show like this, but I’ve always had a boyfriend in real life. So you can see why it’s odd to me that Paige hasn’t . Maybe she’s strangely undesirable and I just don’t know it. What was funny was when they told me it was finally going to happen all I could think was ‘Oh God, I have to kiss someone. Ewwww.’ It’s always weird to meet someone, say ‘Hi’ and then start making out with them.”

Out of Hours
Switching gears, McGowan took some time out during the seventh season of Charmed to try her hand at other projects. She played to Ann Margret in Elvis, a television mini-series about legend Elvis Presley in which she co-starred opposite Robert Patrick, Randy Quaid and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (the latter playing Elvis) and she also shot a small role in Brian De Palma’s upcoming film, The Black Dahlia, based on an Elmore Leonard murder mystery novel. The film stars Josh Harnett, Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank and it’s scheduled to open in 2006 .

“Playing Ann Margret was amazing,” McGowan says, “I know that the guy who did my costumes did her costumes for years, and I know a lot of people who actually know her. So she certainly knew what we were doing and that I was playing her. They asked me if I wanted to talk with her on the phone and I said ‘No, I’m too shy, I’m too shy.’ Hopefully she didn’t hate it. The saddest part is that we shot it down in New Orleans. So many of the crewmembers were from the area. I’d been down there a number of times before I did the Elvis movie and was familiar with the city. I’m just hoping they’ll be able to make it what it was again.”

“The Black Dahlia was shooting for a long time and they were right at the end of production when Brian De Palma called me out of the blue. I was at the end of the season when he called and we were able to work it out. I played this extra who thinks she’s really made it big. Somebody asks her, ‘Aren’t you trying to break into movies?’ And she’s in a Cleopatra outfit. ‘Mister, I’m in the movies!’ But then you look out and you see 10 extras all dressed in the same exact outfit. And it’s time to get on the bus to go to work that day at the studio, which was a very common sight in LA. You just go ‘Awwww.”

Elvis and the Black Dahlia are likely a taste if what people can expect from McGowan post-Charmed. She’ll return to her Gypsy habit of just doing whatever catches her fancy.

“This has been strange doing Charmed,” she notes. “Doing a show like this, it’s so structured. Not doing it will be a bit like a freefall: it feels like that during the off-season. “Wait, every minute of my life isn’t accounted for. What’s happening here?” But I adjust very quickly. I’ll miss this crew. I love them all very much. When we wrapped last season we didn’t know if we were coming back or, if we were, if everyone was coming back. Some people in the crew went and got new jobs because they weren’t sure we were coming back fir an eighth season. So that was really hard and I imagine it will be even harder this year because this time we know it’s the end.”

To Be or Not To Be
So, is the end REALLY nigh for Charmed? Probably. The ratings are down bit again this season, but not precipitously. Still old shows are expensive to produce, even after budget cutting. Plus, it’s well known that the contracts of the leads are up this year. On top of all that, Kern reports that the WB is once again offering no hint of their plans for Charmed. ”The silence has been deafening,” he says. ”They’re not even discussing it. It doesn’t mean they wont because it is awfully early, but it is a little unusual that we haven’t even entered into any conversations about a ninth season of Charmed. We barely made it to the eighth! Yes, we’re still the networks fourth or fifth highest-rated show. But the truth is that their future lies in new series. So we’re all going with the assumption that this is the last season, and we’re writing the last 10 or 11 episodes accordingly.”

http://www.rosemcgowanonline.com/press/2005/148/

[Superstar]

This is Rose's last season too? This is the last season for sure.

[Dean Winchester]

Originally Posted by Superbowl

What’s even more amazing is that we are the longest running show in television history with female leads.

well, I hate to disagree, but I know One Day At A Time, Facts Of Life, Alice and Roseanne all made it to nine seasons and were "female lead shows" as well.

However, Rose may have a point when it comes to genre... Buffy, Charlie's Angels, Alias (still on but this season has been confirmed to be the last), Wonder Woman, Xena, etc... all ended before season 8