Rose McGowan Regrets Not Getting to Know the Late Shannen Doherty Sooner

Rose McGowan was charmed by the late Shannen Doherty, but she does wish their friendship had started sooner.

McGowan, who replaced Doherty on Charmed when the latter left the WB show in 2001, opened up about their friendship on the August 22 episode of Let’s Be Clear, the podcast Doherty started months before she died from cancer at age 53 this July.

“I have any regrets, I wish I could have gotten to know her sooner,” McGowan said. “I don’t know how that would have happened, but I wish we could have.”

She added that she and Doherty both shared an outsider status, both preferred directing to acting, and both despised what McGowan called “corporate feminism… like slogans and fake activists and people that are just doing it for the clicks and the glory but without putting in actually the work and the trauma that it takes to do that work.”

McGowan also relayed her impressions of Doherty, saying, “She lived life on a grand scale with gusto. And just badass fun. One of the things we learned, I think, from each other by being outspoken was actually how much more similar we were than different.”

And McGowan told listeners that she and Doherty got to spend quality time together — “just me and her, for the first time ever” — about a month before Doherty’s death.

“We actually didn’t want the night to end,” Doherty said. “And it was both wholesome and — that word is so dorky, but here we are — it was sweet. She told me stuff that I had never known, and I told her stuff that she didn’t know. And she had some questions for me, and I answered them and vice versa.”

McGowan said that Doherty asked her to join her on the podcast and told McGowan she was starting an experimental treatment.

“And I had a feeling when she said about the treatment, I just had this feeling that this was not really going to go well,” McGowan told listeners. “And she looked frightened for the first time. She was frightened. And I gave her a big hug, and I told her I loved her. I do regret not doing the podcast with her. But at the same time, I think, because so much of our relationship had played out publicly, that to have that period of time just for us, was really special.”

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McGowan publicly reached out to Doherty on Instagram in 2016, after the latter revealed her cancer diagnosis. “As young women, we were pitted against each other for society’s pleasure,” McGowan wrote at the time, in part. “The rules of Hollywood engagement brainwashed into us were truly vile. The men [and] brainwashed women in our business made it so we couldn’t be friends, I regret that. We were cast in this weird, fake reality show where we were supposed to be enemies. I resented it greatly. I regret not being awake enough to articulate this to you at the time. … Instead of understanding that we were a different breed, they tried to crush us, but they couldn’t. I send you strength.”