The war of words continues between former Charmed co-stars Shannen Doherty and Alyssa Milano, with the former tearfully speaking out once again about her ouster from the hit series.
"A lot of things have been said and a lot of them are very hurtful," Doherty said during a MegaCon panel with Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan in Orlando, Florida, over the weekend.
Fans will recall that it was Combs who was a guest on Doherty's podcast, Let's Be Clear, in December and alleged that Milano played a pivotal role in Doherty's firing from the hit series in the early 2000s. Then, on Friday, Milano offered her response during a Who's the Boss? panel at MegaCon, where the subject was broached.
While Milano didn't directly deny the claim at first, she said she's "most sad for the fans" because she knows the show "has meant so much to so many people" but now "has been tarnished by a toxicity that is still to this day almost a quarter of a century later still happening."
The next day, Milano took to Instagram and added more context to the ordeal before plainly refuting that she got Doherty fired.
"I don’t know one other show that has had the success that Charmed had where the cast still speaks ill of the experience a quarter of a century later. This is 15 movies and 13 TV shows ago for me," she wrote, in part. "This was 11 years before my 15-year marriage and 13 years before having my first child. This was so long ago that any retelling of these stories from anyone is just revisionist history."
Upon learning of Milano's statement, Doherty prepared a response of her own, which she read out loud to fans.
Doherty claimed that she and Combs had actually "edited out" commentary on the podcast that they thought would "cause more drama," opting to simply tell "the truth."
"The truth actually does matter, but we wanted to try to save you, the fans, from heartbreak as much as humanly possible," she said. "At this point in my life, with my health diagnosis..."
At this point, Doherty broke from her statement to apologize for her forthcoming tears. The 51-year-old star is currently battling stage 4 cancer.
"Sorry if I start crying," she said. "With fighting this horrific disease every day of my life, it is also incredibly important to me that the truth actually be told as opposed to the narrative that others have put out there for me."
She want on to deny several of Milano's claims, including that there was a mediator on set.
"I recall the facts as if I were still living in them, and what I will say is that what somebody else may call drama is an actual trauma for me that I have lived with for an extremely long time," she continued. "And it is only through my battle with cancer that I decided to address this trauma and be open and honest about it so that I can actually heal from a livelihood that was taken away from me, a livelihood that was taken away from my family, because someone else wanted to be number one on the call sheet. That is the truth."
After pausing for applause from the audience, McGown jumped in to add, "We protected you for a long time, we've done it as long as we could."
She continued, invoking a quote she heard from comedian Katt Williams, "Winners do not let losers rewrite history."
In 2021, Milano reflected on their complicated history while telling ET that she and Doherty were "cordial."
"I could take responsibility for a lot of our tension that we had. I think a lot of our struggle came from feeling that I was in competition rather than it being that sisterhood that the show was so much about," she said. "And I have some guilt about my part in that."
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