Speaker 1: This is let's be clear, it's Shannon Doherty.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Rose McGowan, and I am here standing sitting with
Speaker 1: my dog Perlita little Pearl for our dear departed, lovely,
Speaker 1: amazing human, the Bravest, Bravest champion. I've known Shannon Doherty
Speaker 1: and it's a real pleasure and an honor to be
Speaker 1: able to do this. Her legion of fans worldwide, the
Speaker 1: outpouring of love and affection and from her family and
Speaker 1: friends and just and from strangers worldwide, has been magnificent
Speaker 1: to behold. I feel Shannon around, I feel her energy
Speaker 1: very strongly, and I think this would be a real
Speaker 1: good thing for her to know that we're continuing on
Speaker 1: in the bravery that she showed in telling her truth
Speaker 1: and telling her story and getting to talk about things
Speaker 1: she wanted to express. You know, there's something when you're
Speaker 1: an actor and a performer, you get the lines that
Speaker 1: are given to you, and that's what you talk about,
Speaker 1: and that's what you say. And for me when I
Speaker 1: wrote my book Brave, and for her when she did
Speaker 1: this podcast, you know, that's when you get to speak
Speaker 1: on your own terms. It's it's a very powerful thing
Speaker 1: because imagine you go to work and your lines, everything
Speaker 1: that you were going to say for yourself in your
Speaker 1: own day and your own life, coming out of your
Speaker 1: own mouth. Your thoughts are replaced by other thoughts, by
Speaker 1: other voices, by a committee of voices, and that's who
Speaker 1: you get to be, and that's who the world knows
Speaker 1: you as. And a lot of times we can be
Speaker 1: painted into a corner and we become this caricature, this
Speaker 1: kind of false identity, and you kind of can't get
Speaker 1: out from under a b you know, it's something that
Speaker 1: traps you. I know what that's like, and I know
Speaker 1: Shannon definitely knew what that was like as well. And
Speaker 1: we both kind of were trapped and painted into these
Speaker 1: corners until we kind of took a hold of our
Speaker 1: own power and unpainted ourselves. There's always backlash that tries
Speaker 1: to put you back in that corner, the false corner,
Speaker 1: I call it. But it's been a real amazing thing
Speaker 1: to watch and to know how many people she helped.
Speaker 1: I first met Shannon when I did a cameo with
Speaker 1: her in a movie called Nowhere. I had been discovered
Speaker 1: maybe ten months before this in Hollywood, standing against a gym,
Speaker 1: crying because my boyfriend had died and a woman came
Speaker 1: up to me. And two weeks later, I'm starring in
Speaker 1: this crazy movie called The Doom Generation, and the director,
Speaker 1: Gregor Rocky was doing his next feature, a movie called Nowhere,
Speaker 1: and he called and he's like, it's Shannon Doherty and
Speaker 1: Tracy Lords, who'd been in a John Waters film at
Speaker 1: that point. And I had known Shannon, like so many
Speaker 1: others from Little House in the Prairie a few episodes
Speaker 1: when I arrived in the US. I watched those and
Speaker 1: loved them, and her role as Jenny was just so
Speaker 1: amazing the fact that I can remember it all these
Speaker 1: years later, and I don't remember almost anything else from
Speaker 1: that show, just her, It's pretty special. And then of
Speaker 1: course Beverly Hills nine o two on. Oh. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because I was actually living in la for a
Speaker 1: while at that point. I was around fifteen and a half,
Speaker 1: and weirdly, because my life is a little strange and
Speaker 1: hasn't followed kind of the normal path of most people's trajectory,
Speaker 1: I was living on my own in an apartment, and
Speaker 1: I had been emancipated from my parents and was completely
Speaker 1: on my own, and I loved watching nine to two
Speaker 1: and Oh, because it felt like there was this family,
Speaker 1: this very loving family, while they're navigating this kind of wonky,
Speaker 1: weird city, this weird reality that is Beverly Hills, that
Speaker 1: is Los Angeles. And I was kind of on a
Speaker 1: different side of Los Angeles, not the Beverly Hills side,
Speaker 1: but it was still very like everybody else in the
Speaker 1: world at that moment watching that show, you know. And
Speaker 1: so the day I met Shannon, it's a very unique day.
Speaker 2: We were dressed, I.
Speaker 1: Don't know how to explain it in a completely ridiculous way.
Speaker 1: I was orange, I believe she was blue or red,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. And our hair was teased out giant.
Speaker 1: We had braces on these crinoline kind of Cindy lapper skirts,
Speaker 1: you could say. They're kind of big and puffy. And
Speaker 1: there was the three of us and we had giant,
Speaker 1: giant hair, and we're talking like valley girls, like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, did you see Eileen?
Speaker 2: I hear she lives in Whittier.
Speaker 1: And which is a I guess a suburb of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: And we were on a main street in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and they'd block some of it off for traffic, but
Speaker 1: of course we looked so strange. The first thing I
Speaker 1: really remember about being next to Shannon is that we
Speaker 1: caused a three car pile up, a giant automobile crash,
Speaker 1: like three cars like they stacked on top of each
Speaker 1: other and had steam coming out of them, and we
Speaker 1: were just quite the sight to behold. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I should have known then that our relationship started with
Speaker 1: a giant crash, that we were meant to be and
Speaker 1: destined to be intertwined for most of our lives, for
Speaker 1: the bulk of our adult lives, as it turned out.
Speaker 1: How strange, right, And that day Shannon was in a mood. Recently,
Speaker 1: the last time I was wish Hannon, she actually told
Speaker 1: me about that day and what had gone on. That
Speaker 1: somebody around us had called her then boyfriend and lied
Speaker 1: and said Shannon was kissing a crew member or something
Speaker 1: weird like that, and her and her then boyfriend, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure who it was at that time that you know,
Speaker 1: there weren't cell phone so it wasn't like you were
Speaker 1: texting back and forth blowing up each other's phones, you know,
Speaker 1: denying something. And she was in a mood. She was
Speaker 1: furious and there's just a very strange energy. And I
Speaker 1: remember at the end of that day, I mean, she
Speaker 1: invited me to sit in her car, her Mercedes with
Speaker 1: her for lunch. I sat there with her for lunch
Speaker 1: and she was just raging and I didn't kind of
Speaker 1: understand what she was talking about. And it's amazing that
Speaker 1: all these years later I finally got to understand and
Speaker 1: understand that she was justified anger, definitely justified. Being lied
Speaker 1: about at any stage and accused of something you haven't
Speaker 1: done is rough, you know. So I think it actually
Speaker 1: really impacted her relationship with that man she was with, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: And that's the first time I met Shannon. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I remember her laughing, and I remember
Speaker 1: her professionalism and they also I remember leaving there and thinking, like,
Speaker 1: whoa if, I I don't think I want to be
Speaker 1: an actor, I don't think I want a part of
Speaker 1: this world's I don't think this world.
Speaker 2: Is for me.
Speaker 1: And then I did a movie called Scream and then
Speaker 1: that hit and I kind.
Speaker 2: Of got stuck in that world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's how I knew her before I joined Charmed.
Speaker 1: And the thing is that was it's a very unique time.
Speaker 1: There was not a lot of crossover between film and
Speaker 1: television then, and I was on a very unique trajectory.
Speaker 1: I'd had four movies at sun Dance, the most anybody
Speaker 1: had in competition there at any time when something very
Speaker 1: bad happened to me, and it was a setup and
Speaker 1: the whole thing down the line from a ten am
Speaker 1: breakfast meeting with my boss. I was in the middle
Speaker 1: of my second film for this company, his company, and
Speaker 1: I had to go back and finish filming that movie,
Speaker 1: and from the outset, I was not okay with what
Speaker 1: had happened to me, and I fought it, and you know,
Speaker 1: words spread like wildfire in town. I refused to sign
Speaker 1: a non disclosure. I didn't know what that was, but
Speaker 1: when it was explained to me, I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: so I can't talk to a therapist. I had this
Speaker 1: idea that if I went to six months of therapy,
Speaker 1: I could then be fixed and I could.
Speaker 2: Be back to who I was before. And that's not
Speaker 2: how it turns out.
Speaker 1: That was just kind of a young mind approach to trauma,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really understand kind of the levels of
Speaker 1: what would happen to me at that point, and I
Speaker 1: just I felt very lost and from I'd had about
Speaker 1: four movies lined up to do that year, probably would
Speaker 1: have made around like seven million dollars or something like that,
Speaker 1: and they all fell apart and I got cast in
Speaker 1: a show called Charmed. Now I'd known that Shannon was
Speaker 1: on this show, but I never watched the show. I
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't really watch TV. I was working. I
Speaker 1: was just doing movie after movie after movie at that
Speaker 1: point until you know, kind of the breaks slammed and
Speaker 1: from then on we were like really pitted against each
Speaker 1: other in the media. And it also wasn't until recently
Speaker 1: that I understood kind of the backstory of her even
Speaker 1: leaving there, because when I got there, it was it's
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, like what Hollywood does.
Speaker 2: I call Hollywood a cult.
Speaker 1: I called it that in my book Brave, and it
Speaker 1: compares the kind of the sect, the group that I
Speaker 1: grew up in behind walls, to the cult of Hollywood
Speaker 1: and how how cults work in general. It was not
Speaker 1: about sexual harassment or assault or anything like that. It
Speaker 1: was It's an idea book and bravery and the bravery
Speaker 1: it takes to live of under under a lie that's
Speaker 1: manufactured about you. And that's something that I know, Shannon deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply understood I. However, at the time I joined charm
Speaker 1: did not understand kind.
Speaker 2: Of the backstory.
Speaker 1: I was just told she was fired and nobody talked
Speaker 1: about her, which is what happens in cults.
Speaker 2: They memory hold you.
Speaker 1: That's a term for just kind of blanking people's memory,
Speaker 1: and they don't mention the person they're kind of they kind.
Speaker 2: Of ceased to exist.
Speaker 1: And I was just trying to keep my head above
Speaker 1: water at that point. I was very famous at that point,
Speaker 1: but I was persona non grata, non hirable. But I
Speaker 1: was famous and caused disruptions everywhere I went. And I know, again,
Speaker 1: this is kind of something that Shannon we later talked
Speaker 1: about that she related to, you know, the weight of
Speaker 1: what it's like to be to have the media machine
Speaker 1: lie about you. She was vulnerable on that show. She
Speaker 1: was vulnerable knowing what I know now, you know, knowing
Speaker 1: that she had left nine oh two and zero in
Speaker 1: kind of a cataclysmic way, and then when she joined Charmed,
Speaker 1: I didn't really understand her passion for I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything really about the show at all. So for me,
Speaker 1: it was just perceived by the public as a very
Speaker 1: strange move. Why would someone in movies, why would they
Speaker 1: go do a TV show? And I couldn't explain, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm famous and I can't get any other job, and
Speaker 1: it looks interesting, and you know how it happened for me.
Speaker 1: And I've told this story, you know, on stage with Shannon.
Speaker 1: What a gift to be able to spend that last
Speaker 1: year and a half with her, really really amazing gift.
Speaker 1: But the story I told is I was in Romania
Speaker 1: doing a movie and I get a call and it's
Speaker 1: a producer named Aaron Spelling, and I hang up because
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I was like, why would Aaron Spelling be calling Romania? Haha?
Speaker 1: Click, And I had this little voice like Rose McGowan,
Speaker 1: would you like to join, you know, the cast of
Speaker 1: Charmed on a show? And I was like, I didn't
Speaker 1: really know what he was talking about, but I was
Speaker 1: open to meeting him. So I am on a plane
Speaker 1: home to Los Angeles. I'm like, okay, Universe, give me
Speaker 1: a sign if I meant to be doing this. And
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing is from never before and never since
Speaker 1: have I ever seen Charmed on any airplane offered as
Speaker 1: the entertainment on a flight and I was going from
Speaker 1: a Romania to Los Angeles, and the pilot episode of
Speaker 1: Charmed was the entertainment offering so strange, and it looked
Speaker 1: cool and moody and dark and unique, and the acting
Speaker 1: was really strong, And I said, yes, I didn't really
Speaker 1: understand what it would entail.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd still be here talking about it all
Speaker 1: these years later, that there'd be legions of legacy fans
Speaker 1: and new fans, and how interwoven we would be in
Speaker 1: people's lives. And I think Shannon definitely did understand all
Speaker 1: of that. She definitely understood the power of the medium
Speaker 1: of television in a way that I had not. And
Speaker 1: when I got there, it was just strange. And I
Speaker 1: was told over and over and over, no show survives
Speaker 1: a major cast change. You only have like two hundred
Speaker 1: and something jobs on the line, and far more behind
Speaker 1: the scenes of people you can't see in administration. But
Speaker 1: no worries if everybody loses their jobs because you joining
Speaker 1: it's going to tank the show.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. It's not your fault.
Speaker 1: And that was said to me that I was going
Speaker 1: to fail over and over, and so I just kind
Speaker 1: of refused to fail. And I also knew that I
Speaker 1: was in a very vulnerable position. The thing in Hollywood
Speaker 1: is if you got fired as a woman from a job,
Speaker 1: you didn't get a second chance. So it was already,
Speaker 1: you know, a miracle that Shannon was there in the
Speaker 1: first place, and I think that's certainly what made her
Speaker 1: vulnerable to kind of the operation behind the scenes that
Speaker 1: took her out to be blunt. That's what made her
Speaker 1: vulnerable to that, and that person knew it and that
Speaker 1: group knew it, and that was that was she was
Speaker 1: preyed upon in that way. And I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything wrong with someone wanting things to be better, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of you know, they made it sound like
Speaker 1: she was difficult. Shannon was good. She was really good.
Speaker 1: She was a damn fine actress and director. She really
Speaker 1: cared about what she was putting out there, as did I.
Speaker 1: But I was in a different way joining I knew
Speaker 1: I had no pull, and it was just very weird
Speaker 1: on the set kind of from from the get go.
Speaker 1: It was just very different universe from movies where it
Speaker 1: might turn out badly, but everybody's all in it. There's
Speaker 1: there's artists, there were artists there, you know, there was
Speaker 1: and for me, I felt the business around the show,
Speaker 1: the business people. It felt kind of like I could
Speaker 1: be working at a pencil factory in Ohio churning out
Speaker 1: things at a high volume, which was just kind of
Speaker 1: a shock to my system. And at the time, granted,
Speaker 1: they'd been on the air for quite a few years
Speaker 1: when I joined, so it was a pretty well oiled machine.
Speaker 1: They knew what they were doing. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I imagine now with hindsight, it was so strange for everybody involved,
Speaker 1: everybody there, not just me and not just Shannon, And
Speaker 1: looking back at it, you know, from the get go,
Speaker 1: every question was like, do you think Shannon Doherty hates you?
Speaker 2: Do you think she's jealous of you? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Do you think? Do you think? Do you think? What
Speaker 2: do you think? And I refused to take the bait.
Speaker 2: I did not.
Speaker 1: They wanted me kind of to continue or start a
Speaker 1: war with her, and I just was like, absolutely not,
Speaker 1: I will absolutely not do this. And to her credit,
Speaker 1: she absolutely did not do that either. And that's been
Speaker 1: something that's.
Speaker 2: A real world.
Speaker 1: Class character about her, you know. And the thing is
Speaker 1: both of us have been I just put this exactly,
Speaker 1: but I would say they use the term parasited.
Speaker 2: It's not a word. But when a.
Speaker 1: Parasite attached to the host body, they steal their creativity,
Speaker 1: they steal their work, they steal their joy, they steal
Speaker 1: their nutrients, their food, their their food supply. And that's
Speaker 1: what a parasite does to a human body. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I think there are parasites in human skin, and they
Speaker 1: wear human skin.
Speaker 2: And you know, we both.
Speaker 1: In this life and on that show and around it,
Speaker 1: and since.
Speaker 2: Had a parasite attached to.
Speaker 1: Us, I didn't understand a lot of what happened with
Speaker 1: her in a way that I kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: not know, because that way I couldn't I would not
Speaker 1: be lying in any interviews and I wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: have any feeling about it. But looking back, I mean,
Speaker 1: putting myself in her shoes, how devastating, how devastating, and
Speaker 1: how dare someone say? You know, if I, honestly, if
Speaker 1: I hear a parasite say hurt people, hurt people as
Speaker 1: an excuse for their crap behavior one more time, I
Speaker 1: will actually scream and light the world on fire. I
Speaker 1: think on Shannon's behalf and maybe my own two and
Speaker 1: quite a few people who've experienced this. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a narcissistic quality to parasites. They want what they want,
Speaker 1: they take what they take, and they feel that they're
Speaker 1: owed that, and they know that they're not the real talents,
Speaker 1: that they are not the true ones, but they can
Speaker 1: feed off other talent. And and I know that that
Speaker 1: that's that's what was done to her and later on
Speaker 1: done to me. And I think it is one hundred
Speaker 1: percent valid knowing you have a ticking clock. We all
Speaker 1: have ticking clocks, but Shannon really knew she had a
Speaker 1: ticking clock on her to to want to talk about
Speaker 1: this and to set the record straight for herself, because
Speaker 1: it gets exhausting being lied about, and when you're led
Speaker 1: about on that scale, as I have personally experienced. You know,
Speaker 1: in my case, a very very evil, evil predator that
Speaker 1: a lot of people seem to be okay with, I
Speaker 1: just was not okay with this. Bought a medium machine,
Speaker 1: bought journalists off all over the world.
Speaker 2: This is fact.
Speaker 1: This has been put in a journalist ron in Pharaoh's
Speaker 1: book and the New York Times book. Bought journalists contracts
Speaker 1: and said, you know, go after this person if you
Speaker 1: ever see them, I'll buy your I'll buy your story
Speaker 1: and turn it into a movie, and in trade, you
Speaker 1: need to character assassinate this person. So I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I've I had for me. It was twenty something, two
Speaker 1: and a half decades of stalking at the highest level
Speaker 1: and ruining my good name to a point where I
Speaker 1: couldn't fight. And Shannon knew that too. But what we
Speaker 1: both did and what I admired the hell out about her,
Speaker 1: she just kept working and both of us were put
Speaker 1: in things that we wouldn't have been doing had this
Speaker 1: not happened to us, we wouldn't have been in a
Speaker 1: different playing field, so to speak. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: this did not lessen our intention and honoring of the
Speaker 1: work that was in front of us that we could
Speaker 1: and were able to do. But it's very hard, and
Speaker 1: what people don't understand is that it's not you know,
Speaker 1: people talk about the show Charmed and Shannon leaving and
Speaker 1: firing and like as if it was it it just
Speaker 1: affected her career.
Speaker 2: That's not the case.
Speaker 1: When someone lies about you and they have a machine
Speaker 1: behind them, a powerful machine affects how people in a
Speaker 1: store where you're going to buy something, treat you. It
Speaker 1: affects certainly how the media treats you. It affects how
Speaker 1: people online treat you. It affects future relationships you meet someone,
Speaker 1: how any stranger perceives you, because they have all this
Speaker 1: like arsenal of kind of lies that they're taught to
Speaker 1: believe and not question. And why would they because this
Speaker 1: is the dominant narrative, and it's extremely hard to get
Speaker 1: out from under the dominant narrative. And I am so
Speaker 1: proud that our girl did that. She did that, She
Speaker 1: did that in the end and on her terms, and
Speaker 1: by doing it, she helps so many people, which is
Speaker 1: something that for me, I, you know, I sometimes get
Speaker 1: asked like, you know, why are you like how you are?
Speaker 1: And I'm sure she was asked that too. The bravery
Speaker 1: it took for her to share her health journey in
Speaker 1: a town where it's all about the look and nobody
Speaker 1: can ever see you weak, The bravery it took for
Speaker 1: her to be real and raw. For her, it was
Speaker 1: actually not that much, because that's.
Speaker 2: Who she is. For other people, it would have taken.
Speaker 1: That. GE's inconceivable that they would share those moments, these
Speaker 1: moments of deep vulnerability, these moments of weakness, and the
Speaker 1: fact that she knew she could help others and herself
Speaker 1: by having a community around her all the hats off
Speaker 1: and anybody suffering that I know she would want you
Speaker 1: to go on and keep fighting because she fought.
Speaker 2: She fought.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. Sorry that brings tears to my eyes.
Speaker 1: Moment for shoving it down. And what I'd love about
Speaker 1: this last year and a half, almost two years now,
Speaker 1: it was such a gift. She never complained. She complained
Speaker 1: about like stuff that, you know, why is the microphone
Speaker 1: not sounding right? Like professional stuff, like pro stuff.
Speaker 2: She's a pro. She was a deep pro. We're both pros.
Speaker 1: But she's a pro pro and like things to run
Speaker 1: like a pro likes things to run. And But in
Speaker 1: terms of her physical pain, her, if she had limitations,
Speaker 1: if she was tired, she just kept going. And all
Speaker 1: she would say is sometimes, you know, if too many
Speaker 1: people tried to hug her at once, she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's better for me not to. But she
Speaker 1: almost always gave in and would hug anyway, even though
Speaker 1: she was immuno compromised, which was.
Speaker 2: What a hero, What a heroine she was was I
Speaker 2: hate that word.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm gathering my It's hard when uh, a public
Speaker 1: warrior leaves because there's not that many. There's not that
Speaker 1: many that inspire me, inspire others because there's so many
Speaker 1: polished people, and I think what the world needs now,
Speaker 1: you know, more than ever are heroes, real ones, people
Speaker 1: you can really believe in, you know, and they're not
Speaker 1: gonna sell you out, They're not gonna lie, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna be transparent. And when I was so happy when
Speaker 1: I found out she was gonna come on this kind
Speaker 1: of reunion tour that we did.
Speaker 2: It was so badass.
Speaker 1: I loved sitting next to her on stage and like
Speaker 1: all of you out there listening, you've.
Speaker 2: Heard her laugh. God, what're a world class laugh?
Speaker 1: Right? She was fun and something I didn't know about Shannon.
Speaker 1: I mean I did know, but like watching her, like
Speaker 1: how many close friends she had and how she had
Speaker 1: love of her family around her. That's something I don't
Speaker 1: have as much and didn't have, and it forms you differently,
Speaker 1: and it's really inspiring and beautiful to know that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you do the work to heal the trauma with it,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be frightened of people that you
Speaker 1: can reach out a hand across troubled waters and join
Speaker 1: hands and join forces, as we did. And we had
Speaker 1: every reason. We were pitted against each other for so
Speaker 1: many years. She had every reason not to like me,
Speaker 1: not like personally, but just as in somebody that's attached
Speaker 1: to a traumatic period of your life. It's very hard.
Speaker 1: That's hard, and God, she had grace with that. She
Speaker 1: really did. It's like incredible, And my relationship for there
Speaker 1: was funny. She had a tough venire at first, you know,
Speaker 1: and we chipped away at it. And I was not
Speaker 1: in the best physical shape when I started, not like
Speaker 1: anything like she has, but something different that's manageable, and
Speaker 1: it was not in great shape when I started to
Speaker 1: tour with her, and as I started to get healthier,
Speaker 1: her started to decline.
Speaker 2: And so I feel like there's a reason that.
Speaker 1: We were put together in that last year and a
Speaker 1: half of her life. What a life she lived, she
Speaker 1: really she lived so many lives in one life, and
Speaker 1: that I certainly relate to. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: us can, but she lived life on a grand.
Speaker 2: Scale with gusto and just badass fun.
Speaker 1: One of the things we learned, I think from each
Speaker 1: other by being outspoken was actually how much more similar.
Speaker 2: We were than different.
Speaker 1: And about a month before she died, we got to
Speaker 1: be together, just alone, just me and her, for the
Speaker 1: first time ever and for the first time in twenty
Speaker 1: five years, and it was so cool and we just
Speaker 1: we actually didn't want the night to end. And it
Speaker 1: was both wholesome and that word is so dorky, but
Speaker 1: here we are.
Speaker 2: It was. It was sweet.
Speaker 1: She told me stuff that I had never known, and
Speaker 1: I told her stuff that she didn't know, and she
Speaker 1: had some questions for me and I answered them and
Speaker 1: vice versa. And then she told me she was going
Speaker 1: for some experimental treatment, and we talked about me doing
Speaker 1: the podcast with her, and I was like, I'll wait
Speaker 1: a little while longer. And I had a feeling when
Speaker 1: she said about the treatment.
Speaker 2: I just had this.
Speaker 1: That this was not really going to go well. And
Speaker 1: she looked frightened for the first time, frightened, and I
Speaker 1: gave her a big hug and I told her I
Speaker 1: loved her. I do regret not doing the podcast with her,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think because so much
Speaker 1: of our relationship had played out publicly that to have
Speaker 1: that period of time just for us was really special.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: To get to be on stage with her and Holly
Speaker 1: and witness their legendary friendship was really special.
Speaker 2: There's so much.
Speaker 1: About her that it's like it kind of had like
Speaker 1: she had that kind of stardust on her.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know.
Speaker 1: And if I have any regrets, I wish I could
Speaker 1: have gotten an hour sooner. I don't know how that
Speaker 1: would have happened, but I wish we could have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we both despised corporate feminism as they call it,
Speaker 1: like slogans and fake fake activists and people that are
Speaker 1: just do it for the clicks and the glory but
Speaker 1: without putting in actually the work and the trauma that
Speaker 1: it takes to do that work. That word is a
Speaker 1: bit overused, but sometimes it's actually really what it is,
Speaker 1: and it is and it takes a lot, you know.
Speaker 1: So if I have regrets professionally transparently, I regret ever
Speaker 1: being an actor. Yeah, I think that was the wrong
Speaker 1: drop for me. I was quite good at it, but
Speaker 1: like Shannon, I love directing more. And the last thing
Speaker 1: I did in Hollywood was direct a movie and it
Speaker 1: was nominated for Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, which was
Speaker 1: very very proud of because only filmmakers can vote for that.
Speaker 1: It's not a popularity contest. But behind the scenes it
Speaker 1: got dismantled by my longtime stalker and his posse, and
Speaker 1: that's when I knew that it would never ever stop.
Speaker 1: It was never going to stop. And that's what I
Speaker 1: said about for about four years, probably starting around twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: talking to journalists, following journalists all over the world on
Speaker 1: Twitter as it was then called, and and writing things
Speaker 1: in a way that they would kind of go viral
Speaker 1: about every three weeks. I kind of tricked them and
Speaker 1: I hashtag something called Rose Army based on the Trojan
Speaker 1: Horse myth and the Spartans. But I didn't have a
Speaker 1: big fake horse. I just had me in a hashtag
Speaker 1: and made it sound like there are millions and millions
Speaker 1: of us, and now there are millions and millions of us.
Speaker 1: But then it was just me, and I kind of
Speaker 1: was so unusual in the things I was saying for
Speaker 1: an industry that likes only kind of the shiny false
Speaker 1: narrative that I was shocking people. And again I saw
Speaker 1: seen so many people like say, I'm a feminist. I
Speaker 1: don't even consider myself that I don't any kind of
Speaker 1: psychological operation that's run on the public with a narrative
Speaker 1: or a name. I don't consider myself a part of
Speaker 1: always been an outsider, and Shannon, you know, was always
Speaker 1: an outsider too, in a different way. But she loved Hollywood,
Speaker 1: she loved in a lot of ways, the machine of it.
Speaker 1: I did not. I was not raised there in that way.
Speaker 1: I was raised by artists, truth tellers, scientists, very different minds,
Speaker 1: and it formed me differently the way I was formed.
Speaker 1: And for me, the things that I'm most passionate about
Speaker 1: are letting people know that they are better than what
Speaker 1: they've been told, that they're braver than what they know,
Speaker 1: and in these especially scary times, that it's really important
Speaker 1: for all of us to stitch together the little joys.
Speaker 1: I live in Mexico, and my favorite word in Spanish
Speaker 1: is allegria and that means joy. So I see it
Speaker 1: like kind of just stitching together these joys, right, little things,
Speaker 1: little things birds in the trees, that beautiful rose no
Speaker 1: pun intended, growing through the crack in the sidewalk. And
Speaker 1: you know, I regret that I had to do things
Speaker 1: that were so stressful that it gave them the ammunition
Speaker 1: to portray me a certain.
Speaker 2: Way, like the angry blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: I was angry literally at the interviewer because I realized,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a.
Speaker 2: Whole operation being run on me.
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of my interview, an interview
Speaker 1: for my book, when they said you're the face of
Speaker 1: me too, and I didn't know. I said, what is that?
Speaker 1: And then now they're joined forever. My thing was just
Speaker 1: like power abusers, back up, We the people have a voice,
Speaker 1: We matter, we count all of us. And Shannon did
Speaker 1: that in a different way. For people struggling with a disease,
Speaker 1: this crippling, brutal disease that's caused by so many factors
Speaker 1: in our environment, caused by traumatic stress that's in our lives.
Speaker 1: I mean that eats away at us. And you know,
Speaker 1: I do think her getting to speak her truth most
Speaker 1: likely helped her live longer because it relieves that stress.
Speaker 1: And I hate that she had relationship stress towards the
Speaker 1: end of her life. But we also laughed about how
Speaker 1: neither of us were particularly very good at that sort
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: Either.
Speaker 1: It's hard being the breadwinner and being very independent and
Speaker 1: strong and then being in a relationship, they don't kind
Speaker 1: of always match, and I wish that she had more time,
Speaker 1: as we talked about, to learn how to do it right,
Speaker 1: and I wish that too. I think we were talking
Speaker 1: about misconceptions, Shannon and I, and that the biggest misconception
Speaker 1: about her is that she was hard, but that at
Speaker 1: the same time it was the truth, but it's not
Speaker 1: who she natively was. And I would say that's the
Speaker 1: greatest misconception about me as well. We both just like
Speaker 1: to laugh and soft underneath it all. She was really
Speaker 1: good at being a star, better than me.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was always kind of not great at that. I
Speaker 1: was very impressed with her ability to be a star.
Speaker 1: It was really cool to witness, and I had respect
Speaker 1: for that. And I think people would be surprised to learn.
Speaker 2: Probably that.
Speaker 1: I was always very shy, very very shy, not a
Speaker 1: natural born extrovert, and not somebody that ever wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about dark things or put that on people and
Speaker 1: have them look at their own darkness in their lives
Speaker 1: and see where they could bring light to it. But
Speaker 1: I am proud of that, and I am proud of collectively.
Speaker 1: My goal was to see if I could make a
Speaker 1: ten percent difference in the world, that people could think
Speaker 1: differ differently, that they could look at each other differently,
Speaker 1: that they could treat each other differently, that the dominant
Speaker 1: narrative of this is how is always going to be worldwide.
Speaker 1: I was like, why, I think I just see humans
Speaker 1: as better and I know we can be better together
Speaker 1: and not divided. And that was my own personal little goal.
Speaker 1: I slapped a hashtag on it, but that was not
Speaker 1: it for me. It was just about being better than
Speaker 1: you had to be because I'd been told for a
Speaker 1: long long time that I was, you know, not worth much,
Speaker 1: that I was worthless, blah blah blah, the boring stuff
Speaker 1: you know that gets said, the abusive stuff from home
Speaker 1: and then out in the world. And I disagreed. I disagreed,
Speaker 1: and I still do. You know, I think we grow,
Speaker 1: we've become different than who we are who I was
Speaker 1: in the late nineties. It's different than who I was
Speaker 1: in the mid two thousands. You know, when I did
Speaker 1: Charmed for so long, I really I was looking at
Speaker 1: some fashion the other day and I got really confused.
Speaker 2: I was like, why did I look a certain way?
Speaker 1: And then after the show, like I think playing page
Speaker 1: for so long, and I love that character. But I
Speaker 1: had always kind of done more kind of artistic, strange
Speaker 1: kind of jobs, not mainstream, and I was not.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: My whole life was not like hanging out kind of
Speaker 1: with mainstream people. It was always kind of fringe artists, weirdos,
Speaker 1: unique writers, and there's kind of those who thought differently,
Speaker 1: looked differently. Certainly my first boyfriend, I was like thirteen,
Speaker 1: and this would be in the eight late eighties, Like
Speaker 1: he had a long skirt and like.
Speaker 2: Yeah so and makeup.
Speaker 1: I just always like creative, strange looking, unique people. And
Speaker 1: when I saw myself after Charmed, when I came out
Speaker 1: of Charmed, all of a sudden, it was everybody had
Speaker 1: to have a stylist and in Hollywood, and they had
Speaker 1: to have a makeup artist. That was it was totally
Speaker 1: different than when I started the show. And I hadn't
Speaker 1: really done a lot of press during that show, just
Speaker 1: only for the show, not like red carpets or things
Speaker 1: like that. So by the time I finished, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you had to have a stylist. So all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm being dressed like someone I'm not
Speaker 1: by someone who I'm paying to make me look like
Speaker 1: someone I'm not, not my taste, but I'd been un
Speaker 1: charmed for so long, I'd actually forgotten who I was.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten my own taste. And I regret that period.
Speaker 1: I regret letting makeup artists put so much makeup on
Speaker 1: me that I just looked like a kind of a
Speaker 1: drag version of myself. And I regret. I regret being
Speaker 1: lost for so long from myself. That's the one thing
Speaker 1: with Shannon is I don't think she was ever lost
Speaker 1: from herself.
Speaker 2: Illness you lose.
Speaker 1: Parts of yourself absolutely, And a few years ago I
Speaker 1: went through something really horrific. I lost an extreme amount
Speaker 1: of weight and a lot of physical suffering, an intense
Speaker 1: amount of physical suffering, and I'm really proud to be
Speaker 1: making it to the other side. And she was a
Speaker 1: big part of that. She was a big part of that,
Speaker 1: and inspiring and inspiring to me that she never lost
Speaker 1: sight of who she was, She never let relationships in
Speaker 1: her life go because of injury to her psyche or trauma.
Speaker 1: She was just badass that way, and I honestly, I
Speaker 1: think we could all do with a bit more of
Speaker 1: that kind of loving badassery.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the word, but let's make it out.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that Shannon and I were most
Speaker 1: surprised about each other was just each other. Was that
Speaker 1: away from everybody else, that we could be our soft selves.
Speaker 2: What a gift.
Speaker 1: I tried to participate in the episode right after she died,
Speaker 1: and let's be clear where people were sending I think
Speaker 1: voice memos and videos talking about her, and I tried
Speaker 1: four different times, and I would have panic attacks each time.
Speaker 1: I've never been good about shoving down emotionally, I feel
Speaker 1: something cursed, curse, curse, I've never been good at that.
Speaker 1: I definitely wear my heart on my sleeve. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I was not ready to to say was. So I
Speaker 1: want to end this on a happy note, not crying.
Speaker 1: But I know how many people miss her, and I
Speaker 1: know how many are suffering. It's pretty amazing to have
Speaker 1: been so loved in this life, and you know what,
Speaker 1: she earned it and deserved it. So hats off to you,
Speaker 1: Shannan Doherty, my friend, and that wherever you are, because
Speaker 1: I feel you all around. I think you're definitely with
Speaker 1: your mama, Rosa and all those you loved and your
Speaker 1: beautiful dog, Bowie, and I know how much you loved
Speaker 1: your fans. I don't like the word fans, but that's
Speaker 1: the word we have to offer the people in your life,
Speaker 1: those who didn't know your friends, that you had yet
Speaker 1: to meet physically.
Speaker 2: And seeing how many.
Speaker 1: People loved you at these cons that these conventions was
Speaker 1: just so so awesome, so rad so cool.
Speaker 2: For me, I.
Speaker 1: Am focusing.
Speaker 2: On getting better.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes a lot out of you when
Speaker 1: you've been you know, kind of crucified by some parasites.
Speaker 1: And I gave you know, I did my best. It
Speaker 1: was David versus Goliath. I did my absolute best, and
Speaker 1: I went to the mat for the people. Shannon laughed.
Speaker 1: She's like, you're the only one and the whole thing
Speaker 1: that didn't profit. And I'm like, yeah, I know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't my goal. It would be nice, but it's not
Speaker 1: my goal. And I'm getting back to.
Speaker 2: Art.
Speaker 1: I'm getting back to being the artist that I always
Speaker 1: was and unique in different ways, and you know, getting
Speaker 1: life from meeting people out on the road. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got quite a few things up my sleeve. It'll
Speaker 1: be cool. And I know that whenever they come out
Speaker 1: that I'll be asking for her advice and her assistance
Speaker 1: in guiding, and I asked for that now. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that was very beautiful about Shannon was
Speaker 1: her belief, her religious belief and it's not cool to
Speaker 1: talk about, but I think it is actually and we
Speaker 1: shared that, and so saying a prayer for her now,
Speaker 1: lighting a candle for her always this is let's be clear.
Speaker 1: And it's been an honor and privileged Shando, to speak
Speaker 1: with you, for you, about you. Take care,