Holly Marie Combs Claims Alyssa Milano Gave Ultimatum to Get Shannen Doherty Fired from Charmed

The Halliwell sisters and their “Power of Three” were at the heart of the supernatural series, so it was genuinely shocking when Doherty left the show after just three seasons.

The show pivoted by introducing Rose McGowan as a long-lost half-sister, who would stay with the show for its remaining five seasons, but fans were still scratching their heads — surely this wasn’t the plan all along?

At the time, Doherty announced that she had “quit” the show, leading to some backlash against her. She was depicted as someone who was difficult to work with, due to her also leaving her previous long-running show, Beverly HIlls 90210, after just four seasons.

Now, Combs is claiming that Doherty didn’t quit due to a feud with Milano, as was reported at the time. Rather, she claims Doherty was fired because Milano gave producers an ultimatum … her or me.

Speaking with Doherty on her Let’s Be Clear podcast, Combs said she went straight to the source, show producers Jonathan Levin, in the early 2000s to find out the real story behind Doherty’s departure.

“He said, ‘We didn’t mean to, but we’ve been backed into this corner. We’re basically in this position where it’s one or the other,'” said Combs. “‘We were told [by Milano] it’s her or [Doherty] and Alyssa has threatened to sue us for a hostile workplace environment.'”

Combs further claimed that Milano had been documenting “every time she felt uncomfortable on set,” as if she was building a case against Combs and Doherty. She further said that while there might have been some friction between the ladies, she’d never witnessed anything significant, so it came as a huge surprise.

In fact, she said no crew or guest stars or anyone really noticed, so far as she knows. “It was all behind the scenes,” she said. “There’s not a director that wouldn’t work with you again. There’s not a crew member that didn’t have a great time working with you. So by today’s standards, it wouldn’t f–king fly.”

Doherty said that she spent that first year after her firing “sort of replaying everything in my brain and really trying to find those moments … and I couldn’t find them. I don’t ever remember being mean to her on set.”

She also said she wishes she’d had a little more years and experience under her belt at the time because she would have rejected her legal advice and sued and been honest. After all, her agreement to say she “quit” didn’t stop rumors from following her for years afterward.

According to the podcast, Doherty was advised against suing for fear it could cost her work. The agreement reached was that she could say she had quit the show without having to admit she wasn’t getting paid out, per her contract, and that she’d been given the boot.

A few months after she departed the show, Doherty told ET, per Us Weekly, “There was too much drama and not enough passion for the work.” She said she was too old for the drama, adding, “I’ll miss Holly a lot and that’s really the only thing I want to clear up.” She did not mention Milano.

As for forgiveness, Doherty said it’s more about accepting what happened. “As you get older, you accept that a situation happened. Acceptance and moving on with your life does not equate to forgiveness,” she explained. “You just learn a lesson and look at somebody differently and move on.”

Back in 2013, Milano addressed Doherty’s departure from the show on Watch What Happens Live, telling Andy Cohen, “I don’t know if she got fired; we never really found out what happened,” while acknowledging there were “definitely some rough days” on set.

In 2021, she told ET that she takes “responsibility for a lot” of what happened between her and Doherty, saying much of it was due to her “feeling that I was in a competition rather than it being that sisterhood that the show was so much about. And I have some guilt about my part in that.”

In the previous episode of Doherty’s podcast, she said she’d heard about Milano talking about that unexpected “competitiveness” between them in her book, but she had no intention of reading it, “because it’s [titled] ‘Sorry Not Sorry,’ it tells me you’re not friggin’ sorry. Why even mention something in that case?”

She also claimed that Milano and her mother had kept her from seeing Combs in the hospital shortly after a surgery; Milano’s mother publicly denied that claim, per TMZ, questioning how that would have even been possible.

When it came down that Doherty was leaving the show, Combs said she wanted to walk away with her longtime friend. “She didn’t want to do it without me,” Combs recalled saying at the time. “Therefore, I don’t want to do it without her and that should be fairly clear.”

Unfortunately, per Combs, Levin threatened to sue her if she quit the show, which she said felt like “blackmail” at the time, and so she stayed as McGowan came on the show. Combs would remain with the show alongside Milano and McGowan until its conclusion after eight seasons.