Rose McGowan’s weight was repeatedly checked by Charmed executives, she claims in a new podcast interview.
The 52-year-old, who played Paige Matthews on the show from 2001 to 2006, told “We Need to Talk” listeners on Tuesday that higher-ups “surrounded” her to evaluate her appearance.
“Every season when I came back,[they]would check my weight,” she recalled, quipping that the men were “testing the product.”
The “Grindhouse” star recalled that this “cold” act was considered “totally fine” on the “terrible set” at the time.
She expressed mixed feelings about how “different” Hollywood is these days, claiming the industry “pays lip service” to the idea that it has evolved.
McGowan said earlier in the interview that filming Charmed was “difficult” because it was his first time dealing with the dynamics of a “super-large corporation.”
She once asked “five white dodos in suits” if they would “fire” or “let me quit” if they were caught smoking a joint.
“They said, ‘If you go to work at a pharmacy, we’ll sue you. No matter what job you take, you’ll get paid for life, and then they’ll go after your family,'” McGowan claimed.
She accused the entertainment industry of being “much worse than the (Children of God) cult that (she) grew up in.”
In 2018, McGowan said in the documentary series Citizen Rose that he needed hypnotherapy to get through his time on The WB.
“The repetitive days were so contrary to my natural rhythm that I ended up feeling sick many times,” she told viewers about the “very stressful environment.”
The “Scream” star added, “I started having panic attacks because I was pushing myself so hard. I got sick four or five times a season. … The pace was grueling. Two years in a row I had a fever of 102 degrees and got thrown in the trash for a stunt. It was always my worst day.”
She gained 10 pounds for the role, and explained in her memoir Brave from the same year that her goal was to appear “very unthreatening” as a replacement for Shannen Doherty’s Prue Halliwell.
When McGowan dyed her hair bright red before the second season, the series’ “furious” executives “flipped out.”
But McGowan “loved it, so I kept it.”
