McGowan replaced Shannen Doherty on the WB drama in its fourth season.

Rose McGowan says Charmed executives checked her weight every season: ‘Inspecting their product’

McGowan replaced Shannen Doherty on the WB drama in its fourth season.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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January 9, 2026 10:16 p.m. ET

Rose McGowan as Paige Matthews on 'Charmed'. Credit:

Mitchell Haddad/The WB

Rose McGowan says that the higher-ups on *Charmed* were always very aware of her weight — and they weren't subtle about it.

"They would circle around me to check my weight when I came back from season to season," the actress recalled, referring to unspecified TV executives, on a recent episode of the *We Need to Talk* podcast. "I think it was just really inspecting their product."

McGowan joined the cast of the supernatural drama in 2001, for the fourth season, replacing Shannen Doherty. The show, which also starred Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs, centered on three sisters navigating the modern world — and often saving it — as powerful good witches.

When podcast host Paul C. Brunson noted that people say it was a different time then, McGowan somewhat agreed with the sentiment.

"There was no chill with it. It was completely fine to be that way," she said. "Now they have to kind of pay lip service to being different."**

Rose McGowan in London in 2025.

Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty

*Charmed* was produced by Spelling Television and aired on the WB, neither of which exists today. ** has reached out to multiple *Charmed* producers for comment on McGowan's remarks.

Since her time on *Charmed*, McGowan has emerged as an outspoken voice in the #MeToo movement and one of the first women to go public with claims of sexual assault against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. (He has denied the claims.)

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So, Brunson asked, is Hollywood different now than when McGowan's body was so closely monitored?

"I don't know," she answered. "People are like, 'Do you think Hollywood's changed'? I'm like, 'I don't know. I don't know. But, I mean, definitely in a lot of ways, in the sense that it's not really a major player on the world stage anymore."**

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McGowan has also spoken in the past about her rough experience replacing Doherty, who was famously fired from *Charmed* amid on-set tensions.

Doherty died of cancer in July 2024, and the following month McGowan appeared on a special episode of the late actress' *Let's Be Clear* podcast. "At the time I joined *Charmed*, I did not understand the backstory," McGowan said. "I was just told [Doherty] was fired and nobody talked about her."

McGowan, who at the time had appeared in movies such as *Scream* and *Jawbreaker*, was "just trying to keep my head above water. I was very famous at that point, but I was persona non grata, non-hirable," she said. "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."

Watch McGowan on *We Need to Talk* above.********

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