Holly Marie Combs has forged her acting career by appearing in shows with strong female leads.
From Charmed to Pretty Little Liars, the focus has always been on women, and the former was still subversive even in the ’90s. To have a hit family-orientated show that didn’t stigmatise witches or Wicca was an incredible thing. In fact, Charmed was so magical that people still flood to conventions such as Sydney’s forthcoming Supanova Pop Culture Expo to meet the cast almost 20 years after it began.
“It’s surprising to me, especially when we do these conventions where we’ll talk to people a few minutes at a time about how much the show meant to them,” says Combs. “When doing the show, I just wanted to make it the best I could possibly make it. We didn’t have Twitter at the time, so there was no instant response like there is now. There certainly wasn’t any face-to-face because we were in the trenches. We weren’t doing conventions, so we really didn’t get to meet the fans.
“Now we meet families and people will come up to me and tell these incredibly lovely and sad stories like, ‘My mom died and she had cancer and we would watch the show together. Every time I watch it, it reminds me of her.’ I never anticipated the show meaning that much to anyone else. It meant a lot to me because I was terribly personally invested in it and it was eight years of my life. But it’s pleasantly surprising to me and I’m never not amazed when I hear what it meant to someone.
“If a show that I did for so long and invested so much into is still living on in people’s hearts, minds and families, then I could never complain about that. I wanted it to have a lasting effect – I just didn’t know it would be anything like this.”
Unsurprisingly, even a decade after the show finished, people still want to see more Charmed – and the idea has occurred to Combs, too.
“Now with all the reunion shows the fever pitch of the fans is reaching this crescendo,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Why is there is no reunion? Why is there no movie?’ I don’t know if I’m too old to play Piper anymore or if I remember how,” she laughs. “But after hearing so many stories and meeting so many people, I wouldn’t be able to say no to those who kept it close and alive for so long.”
Some actors are afraid of being typecast or never being able to escape from their iconic characters. Combs, however, has wholeheartedly accepted and embraced her position. “It can be hard when you get identified with one character. It’s funny because on Pretty Little Liars, half the time the kids don’t know what my character’s name is – they just call her Aria’s mom. Then there are other people who say that to them I will always be Piper. There are even people who watch PLL who expect me to freeze someone,” she laughs again.
It should come as no shock that Combs has also encountered and spoken with a lot of Wiccan fans of the show since Charmed first hit television screens.
“We talk to them at the conventions all the time,” she says. “In the beginning it was really tricky because we had people complain that we were being too accurate and that we were conjuring up things in the universe, but then others complained that we weren’t accurate enough. We wanted to be as accurate as possible without offending anyone, getting anything wrong or cursing anyone in real life.”
As it turns out, they may have inadvertently done just that. “So many people are actually convinced that my house is haunted,” Combs laughs. “I’ve had house-sitters that have even refused to come back and girlfriends who won’t sleep over. My boyfriend even said the other day, ‘You may not want to see it, but there are things going on here.’”
One of the most iconic aspects of Charmed was its focus on female empowerment in a positive way that still fit into a family-friendly time slot. “It’s funny,” says Combs, “because a lot of that came from a man. It was [executive producer] Aaron Spelling who insisted that it should be three women, that we would be good witches and that there would be a family or social message even though it was supernatural. He was someone who was so appreciative of women and valued his stars, and I think it came through in his shows. It gave us a bit of weight being a show about sisters that struggled with normal family problems, struggled to be good people. It was inspirational the way he saw the show and shaped it to make us interested.”
Similarly, Pretty Little Liars boasts an all-female leading cast that is evidence of just how far the industry has come.
“The girls on PLL are incredible to watch and they are so invested in themselves,” Combs says. “They are also very different from my generation. We liked to go out and work hard, but these girls are so diligent and serious about their careers even at such a young age. Shannen [Doherty] and I loved what we did and do and were very dedicated, but these girls make us look like slackers. They’re very empowered – there’s no stopping them and they’re very inspiring for me.”
Holly Marie Combs appears atSupanova Pop Culture Expo 2016, along withTravis Fimmel, Juliet Landau, Brianna Hildebrand, Sean Astin, Shannen Doherty and more, at Sydney Showground,Friday June 17 – Sunday June 19.
