Holly Marie Combs, one of the stars of the original Charmed series, says that she feels like the upcoming reboot is taking pot-shots at her work.
Charmed originally aired from 1998 to 2006, and focused on the Halliwell sisters, good witches who, after the death of their mother and grandmother, use their powers to combat evil beings like demons. The sisters had a special magical bond called “the Power of Three,” used a magical tome called the Book of Shadows, and were guided by a Whitelighter, a sort of magical guardian angel.
The new series, set to come out later this year, is an odd sort of reboot: it has the same basic plot as the above, but new characters, replacing the old Halliwell sisters―Prue, Piper, Phoebe and Paige―with the Vera sisters: Macy, Mel and Maggie. (Well, they kept the theme naming, even if they changed the letter.) Played respectively by Madeleine Mantock, Melonie Diaz and Sarah Jeffery, the three come together after their mother’s murder.
According to an official synopsis, the girls will be “vanquishing supernatural demons, tearing down the patriarchy, and maintaining familial bonds.” This, it seems, is part of what annoys Combs (who played Piper in the original series), as she retweeted an Entertainment Weekly commented about the show’s “feminist” direction and quipped, “Guess we forgot to do that the first go around. Hmph.”
She elaborated on this thought in a follow-up tweet, saying “I will never understand what is fierce, funny, or feminist in creating a show that basically says the original actresses are too old to do a job they did 12 years ago,” and said that she hopes the show’s execution is better than the marketing.
“Reboots fair better when they honor the original as opposed to taking shots at the original. Reboots also do better when they listen to a still passionate fan base which is what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s why we do reboots,” she added.
Combs and her fellow Charmed alumnae have expressed annoyance at the reboot since it was first announced; fans, too, seem largely leery of it, and that is likely to increase if the CW is perceived as denigrating the original. Reboots are always tricky, especially when they change so much, so whether or not this ultimately succeeds remains to be seen.
