Rose McGowan reflects on 'weird' experience of replacing Shannen Doherty on Charmed, refusing to 'start a war with her'

Rose McGowan is looking back at the strange experience of replacing Shannen Doherty on Charmed after her unceremonious ouster, observing that her late friend "was vulnerable on that show."

McGowan, who joined the series in season 4 as the Halliwells' half-sister Paige following Doherty's departure the season prior, appears as a guest host of the newest episode of Doherty's Let's Be Clear podcast. Remembering her "brave" friend through stories of their first meeting and becoming good friends, McGowan recalled how "very weird" it was on set "from the get go" and how she refused to "start a war" with Doherty as they were pitted against each other.

"At the time I joined Charmed I did not understand the backstory," McGowan said. "I was just told she was fired and nobody talked about her." McGowan was "just trying to keep my head above water at that point," she said. "I was very famous at that point, but I was persona non grata, non-hirable. I caused disruptions everywhere I went. This is something that Shannen [and I] later talked about that she related to: the weight of what it's like to have the media machine lie about you."

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"She was very vulnerable on that show," McGowan said. "Knowing what I know now, that she had left 90210 in a kind of cataclysmic way."

When she joined the show, "It was just strange," McGowan recalled. "I was told over and over: 'No show survives a major cast change.' You only have like 200 something jobs on the line and far more behind the scenes of people you can't see in administration, but no worries if everybody loses their jobs because you joining is going to tank the show."

Being relentlessly told that she would fail made her determined not to fail, she said. "I was in a very vulnerable position. The thing in Hollywood is if you got fired as a woman from a job, you didn't get a second chance, so it was already a miracle that Shannen was there in the first place. I think that's certainly what made her vulnerable to the operation behind the scenes that took her out. . . she was preyed upon in that way. I don't think there's anything wrong with someone wanting things to be better. They made it sound like she was difficult."

McGowan said she and Doherty refused to be pitted together by the media and production. "From the get go, every question was like, ‘Do you think Shannen Doherty hates you?’ ‘Do you think she's jealous of you?’ ‘What do you think?’" she recalled. "And I refused to take the bait. They wanted me to start a war with her, and I was like, absolutely not. And to her credit, she absolutely did not do that either."

Doherty died July 13 from breast cancer at 53. Her mother, Rosa, intends to continue her daughter's podcast to honor her legacy. "This podcast meant so much to Shannen because it allowed her to tell her story and tell her truth," Rosa explained in the Aug. 14 episode. "And of course, I'm not her. I could never be her. I'm not as well spoken as she was, but I'm here for all of you and I hope you're here for me."

Listen to McGowan's thoughtful episode in full above.