Within the newest episode of Charmed rewatch podcast The Home of Halliwell, Holly Marie Combs recollects the assist she acquired from co-stars Shannen Doherty and Alyssa Milano throughout an extremely troublesome time.
Whereas discussing “The Energy of Two,” an episode from Season 1 that initially aired in Could 1999, Combs shares the extraordinarily private story behind her character’s noticeable absence for a lot of the hour.
“They’d discovered a reasonably massive tumor in my uterus throughout this season, and it saved rising at a price that was not wholesome,” the actress, who performed center witch sister Piper, says. “They have been afraid that it was most cancers, so we wanted to have it eliminated.” As Combs later recollects, “Alyssa would stare at me by way of the automobile window and say, ‘It’s not most cancers. It’s not most cancers.’” Fortuitously, she was proper.
Manufacturing shut down for 2 weeks whereas Combs recovered from surgical procedure, throughout which period her TV sisters have been by no means greater than an orb away.
“We acquired very shut, all of us, throughout this time,” she says. “Shannen would depart my hospital room, and Alyssa and her mother would are available. After I went house, Alyssa’s mother had made me rooster soup and meals for the week as a result of it was a extremely main surgical procedure. The women actually pulled collectively throughout this time for me.”
Based on Combs, her tumor was “the scale of a baseball” after being eliminated. One element she will’t keep in mind, nonetheless, is why Milano selected to call the tumor Jonathan.
Combs ultimately returned to movie Piper’s scenes for the episode, most of which concerned her sitting as a result of “strolling was not enjoyable at that time.”
When you’re questioning why you’ve by no means heard this story earlier than, Combs explains, “I don’t promote it so much. I’m very protecting of the present and my half in it, however I’m additionally very protecting of the moments that we had like this. Nobody has any thought how a lot each Shannen and Alyssa did for me throughout this time. That’s the s–t that actually bugs me. Nobody has any thought how a lot we went by way of behind the scenes, and the way a lot we did collectively, and the way shut we have been. Alyssa was in my hospital mattress with me. I used to be like, ‘You’re on my catheter, child, you’ve acquired to get off.’”
New episodes of The Home of Halliwell — hosted by Combs, Brian Krause (aka Leo) and Drew Fuller (Chris) — drop each Wednesday on Apple Music and Spotify.