“I was just jumping right in, and of course, the dynamic of the other girls not knowing if the girl that I replaced was their best friend or not,” Alyssa said on “The Women of Charmed.” “And I knew that the two of them [Doherty and Combs] had been friends for a long time, so I was nervous about that. But that lasted all of six hours.”
Doherty, who played big sister Prue, said after the first season, “Alyssa and Lori are so completely different and the show is completely different because the dynamic that Alyssa brings into it.”
Alyssa said of her character, ““Actually, Phoebe’s a lot like I am in the sense that she finds humor in every situation and I think she represents that 22-23 year old who is driven but doesn’t know by what, And I think that the witchcraft sort of gave her a purpose.”
Critics called the series “'Charlie’s Angels' with broomsticks,” comparing it to another Aaron Spelling production from the 1970s that featured three beautiful young ladies fighting evil.
Classic TV Beauties 1990s Countdown
ALYSSA MILANO as Phoebe Halliwell in "Charmed"
The cute and adorable girl from “Who's The Boss?,” Alyssa blossomed as an adult actress, playing the rebellious youngest (and then middle) sister in this series about the supernatural. As a Charmed One, Phoebe, named by AOL as the seventh greatest witch in TV history, developed a number of magical powers, including premonition, levitation, and empathy.
“I did really love Phoebe,” said Alyssa, who starred in all 178 episodes, in an interview with the website www.sheknows.com. “I thought that she was fun and had a great sense of humor about life, demons, and all the ridiculous situations that they were put in every week. That would be the one character that stood out. It was such a big part of my life, it was pretty much all of my twenties.”
“Charmed” revolved around three sisters who were good witches and whose destiny was to protect innocent lives from demons and warlocks. Each possessed unique magical powers. Starring Alyssa, Shannen Doherty (who was replaced by Rose McGowan after Season 3), and Holly Marie Combs, "Charmed" aired for eight seasons (1998-2006).
Alyssa wasn’t the original actress cast as Phoebe; Lori Rom unexpectedly quit after the majority of the pilot had been shot. Executive producer Aaron Spelling called Alyssa, who was in Hawaii shooting an episode of “Fantasy Island,” and asked if she would read the script.
“Everybody talks about Alyssa’s beauty and talks about her great figure,” Spelling said on the TV special “The Women of Charmed.” “I saw eyes that were windows and not mirrors. When we were looking for somebody for ‘Melrose Place,’ to bring in a young and exciting person… there’s nobody else we thought of.”
Combs said she could tell that Alyssa was extremely nervous when she first showed up to shoot “Charmed,” adding that Alyssa had an upset stomach and was very quiet.
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“I can see the comparisons,” Combs said. “Three girls and it’s a Spelling show and we always have great hair and make-up and great clothes. So it’s hard not to draw comparisons. It was a great show so it doesn’t bother us that much.”
Spelling originally called the show “House of Sisters,” but executive producer E. Duke Vincent convinced Spelling that the show should focus on family values and be about “three sisters who happen to be witches, not three witches who happen to be sisters.”
When the pilot aired in October 1998, “Charmed” received the largest audience for a series premiere in The WB’s then three-year history, and was rated as one of the network's top 3 shows all eight seasons it aired.
“It was so embarrassing. I started developing and wearing a little bra, and a couple of weeks later, I turned up for a table reading and the episode was called “Sam’s First Bra.” And the first time I got my period, instead of being home with my mom I was with Tony Danza! I didn’t tell Tony, but I told Judith Light…she told me through the bathroom door how to put a tampon on.”
“Who’s The Boss?” aired from 1984-92 (196 episodes) and Alyssa earned a Young Artist Award for Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series and Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards for Favorite TV Actress twice.
Alyssa was 19 when “Who's The Boss?” was canceled, but she wasn't disappointed because she was ready to move on to adult roles.
No longer forced to play a nice, goody two-shoes, Alyssa starred in several movies in which she appeared nude, including “Embrace of the Vampire,” “Deadly Sins,” and Poison Ivy II: Lily.””
Born in Brooklyn to a fashion designer mother and a film music editor father, Alyssa was raised in an Italian-American family that moved to Staten Island when she was young.
In an interview with FHM magazine, she described her folks as “60s parents. They went to Woodstock, and nudity was very free and open in my house. My mom walked around naked… There were copies of Playboy in the house, and it wasn’t like nudity was ugly or weird or bad.”
At age 7, Alyssa’s babysitter, an aspiring dancer, dragged her along for an open audition of the first national tour of “Annie.” As it turned out, Alyssa was one of four from among 1500 girls chosen for the role of July, one of the orphans.
“My parents didn’t want me to go [on tour] because they’d heard the nightmare stories about child actors, but I locked myself in my room and I wouldn’t eat,” she said in the FHM article. “I guess they felt if they didn’t allow me to do it, it would be an even more nightmarish story.”
She toured the country for two years, then returned to New York and acted on Broadway.
“I was an only child until I was ten. The way I kept myself occupied was to put on shows like interpretive dance in the living room,” Alyssa said in the interview with www.sheknows.com. When she began to get paid to act, she said, “It was no different than what I did in the living room at home. There were just more people applauding. That’s the thing about starting in theater. It is really about the performance.”
Alyssa was 11 when she was hired for “Who’s The Boss?” as Samantha Micelli, the daughter of Tony Danza's character, and the Milano family uprooted from New York and moved to California.
“I had to deal with a certain amount of guilt that accompanied being successful at a young age,” she said. “The guilt that my parents gave up their dreams, friendships, and the only life they knew to make my triumphs a possibility.
“When I got ‘Who’s The Boss,’ that was a huge transition. All of a sudden I was in people’s living rooms getting recognized. Luckily, I had a strong family that kept me grounded.”
She didn’t count on the “Boss” writers using her real-life experiences as storylines
“When I got off [the series] I couldn’t even get a meeting for a film,” she told the New York Daily News. “I kind of took the roles that came along, and I wasn’t really thinking about what effect it would have on my image. And the truth is, people aren’t going to line up to see me as the girl next door because they saw it on TV for 10 years.”
She also attracted attention in shedding her wholesome image by posing in skimpy outfits in men's magazines, including a nude pictorial in Bikini magazine in 1993 which didn’t please Danza. “I worried about her, but it wasn’t my place to say anything, I played her father, but I wasn’t her father,” he said.
FHM listed Alyssa as No. 4 on its Sexiest Women list in both 2001 and 2003, and at No. 6 in 2005. Stuff placed her as No. 5 in 2002.
One year before “Charmed” was created, Spelling hired her for “Melrose Place” as Jenny Mancini, a character Alyssa called “very sweet, just a slut.”
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Until “Desperate Housewives” was created, “Charms” claimed the title of the longest running hour-long series featuring all female leads. Although “Charmed” never garnered high ratings on The WB, it developed a loyal following that today supports it on reruns on TNT.
“A show like 'Charmed' has been such a lovely part of my life simply because the fans have been so loyal,” Alyssa said in an interview with www.theflickcast.com . “That’s why we were on the air for as long as we were, on a network that wasn’t bringing in great numbers at the time.”
A huge baseball fan and a Dodgers season ticket holder, Alyssa combined her love for sports with her business acumen in 2010 when she created Touch, a line of women's clothing featuring professional sports team logos.
“I just tired of going into the stadium shops and not seeing anything fashionable or that fit my body to buy that was going to fly the team colors and still look cute,” she said. “I used to bring a change of clothes if I was going out after a game. I'd wear whatever Dodger T-Shirt I could find and usually it was a kid's size and then change after the game.
“I looked around the stadium and saw all these women. I thought to myself, there's got to be women out here looking for something that's cute and fashionable. I pitched the idea to Major League Baseball... they gave me the licensing.”
