.: Witch Fulfillment :.
Charmed Magazine: 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. [Laughs] 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 routine in my life [when I was younger]. I moved around a lot with my mom, and I didn’t have what you would call a typical childhood. So to be one place for eight years with basically the same people and come to the same job day in 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 show 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 few 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 of doing a spin off, and we talked about it, and I thought about it, and I was, like, “Wow, it would really have to be the right, right thing, and it would have to be creatively fulfilling for me, yet let me have a schedule where I could be a mom, because I think I owe him that much.” And so it’s a tough decision for me. On one hand, work has always been my savoir, 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. [Laughs] I just work in trailers, live in trailers. But it has been my saviour to have 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 need’s you to be around more than you need to be on set.” And it’s a tough adjustment for me, because I don’t know where I would be without acting. So in a way, it gives me great perspective, because I’m very thankful to have a job, and I know it’s made me the way that I am, and its kept me from being someone that I didn’t want to be.

Not a lot of people in my family have 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. [Laughs] So they just look at me like i'm some sort of alien. They’re like, “What the hell happened with her? We told her to just have babies and just sit down, but no. She had to go off and do all this strange stuff, and 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 its great to come from that kind of background 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 to 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 to school in New York, I was able to be subjected to all these different kind of cultures and people, and on every movie set I met a whole bunch of different people, and I was just exposed to a whole world 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 to be more important than the most important thing in my life is quite a transition for me. So I think that, as much as I love this show, and I love the characters, I think its going to be time for me to give some time to somebody else in my life.

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

Yeah

One of the benefits from you’re success on Picket Fences and Charmed is that you were able to put you’re mother through 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 legalised, 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 there night school. They just didn’t want her to be seen as 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, obviously, 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 chance 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 she wanted to go to college. And it was more than about the diploma or the degree. It was about personal fulfillment that she felt 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! [Laughs] So it was a great thing for me to be able to do it, it was a 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 grandmother was there, and I was there in the audience. So it was pretty funny to have three generations 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 an 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; ‘The Good, 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 budget 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 deal 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, there’s a lot of green-screen, a lot of different personalities, and it’s a tough show to do. And I wouldn’t take this show as my first gig, that’s for sure. [Laughs]

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 favourite episode or memory of the show? You know, I do kind of have a favourite episode, and it maybe 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. Its our “Camelot” episode 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 helps a tremendous degree. I think ‘Morality Bites’ is one of my earlier favourites; everybody loves that one. Shannen’s Western is one of my favourites 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 favourites! [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 defiantly have died the most out of everybody here, that’s for sure. I’m really running out of ways to do it well, though. I really am! [Laughs]

Are you under pressure to do it differently 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 failure.

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.

~ Credit goes to Amy for typing this up for the site. Thank you!