Rose McGowan claims Charmed bosses would ‘check her weight’ every season: ‘inspecting their product’

Rose McGowan alleged that executives on her series Charmed would monitor her figure every season to see if her weight had changed.

She acted on the series from 2001 to 2006, replacing the outgoing Shannen Doherty and joining a cast that included Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs.

Now, nearly a decade after her allegations against Harvey Weinstein ignited the Me Too movement in 2017, McGowan is leading a life away from the spotlight in Mexico but has broken cover for a long-ranging interview about her life and career.

The 52-year-old actress was scathing about her time on Charmed, claiming that brass at the WB fantasy show kept an eye on the size of her frame.

‘They would circle around me to check my weight when I came back from season to season. I think it was just really inspecting their product, you know,’ she said on an episode of the podcast We Need to Talk.

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

The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Warner Brothers and McGowan for comment. 

Rose McGowan (center) claimed executives on her series Charmed would monitor her figure every season; pictured on the show with Holly Marie Combs (left) and Alyssa Milano (right)

McGowan is leading a life away from the spotlight in Mexicobut has broken cover for a long-ranging interview about her life and career on the We Need to Talk podcast

‘But I think it is different,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. People are like: “Do you think Hollywood’s changed?” I’m like: “I don’t know.”‘

She added: ‘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.’

McGowan also claimed she was threatened with a lawsuit that would consume all her earnings from her subsequent job if she left Charmed. 

She recalled that a ‘cool’ friend of hers in the art department was fired from the show because he was allegedly discovered ‘smoking a joint’ on the set.

When she was informed of her friend’s dismissal by ‘five white dodos in suits,’ she replied: ‘If I smoke a joint, will you fire me? Can I leave?’

According to McGowan, she was then allegedly warned: ‘If you go work at a pharmacy, we’ll sue you. No matter what job you get, we’ll take your wages for the rest of your life, and then we’ll go after your family.’ 

McGowan stepped into Charmed in 2001 as the sister of a character played by Shannen Doherty, who left the show after the first three seasons.

Doherty claimed she was fired after her feud with Alyssa Milano culminated in the latter issuing an ultimatum and threatening to sue for a toxic workplace environment – a story Milano denied, insisting: ‘I did not have the power to get anyone fired.’

(from left) McGowan, Combs and Milano are pictured in a 2002 publicity still for the program, which began in 1998 three years before McGowan joined the cast

McGowan is pictured with Gabriel Olds (left) on a 2004 episode of Charmed, which she starred on from 2001 to 2006, replacing the outgoing Shannen Doherty

Charmed was a Hollywood comeback for McGowan, who pivoted to TV after she was – per her version of events – blacklisted from movies after reaching a $100,000 settlement with Harvey Weinstein in 1997 over her sex crime claims against him.

McGowan kick-started the Me Too movement in 2017 after publicly accusing Weinstein of having raped her at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.

Amid his fall from grace, Weinstein fiercely denied McGowan’s characterization of their sexual encounter, which his lawyer insisted was ‘consensual.’ 

McGowan took a cynical attitude towards the mainstream Me Too movement, sneering at the ‘Hollywood fakery’ of female stars wearing black at the Golden Globes in 2018 as a gesture of protest against sexual predation.

She also offered a blistering appraisal of her Charmed co-star Alyssa Milano, who popularized feminist activist Tarana Burke’s ‘Me Too’ slogan in Hollywood.

‘I don’t like her,’ McGowan said when ABC News Nightline co-anchor Juju Chang brought up the subject of Milano. ‘Because I think she’s a lie.’