Alyssa Milano addresses The CW's Charmed reboot: 'I wish that they would have come to us'

Original Charmed stars Holly Marie Combs and Shannen Doherty have already addressed The CW’s upcoming reboot. Now the third sister is sharing her thoughts.

“I wish that they would have come to us and we would have been involved since the beginning,” Alyssa Milano said during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “But having said that, I do hope that it reaches the newer generation and impacts that generation the way ours was able to do for its generation.”

The CW greenlit the self-described “fierce,” “funny,” “feminist” reboot with Sarah Jeffery, Melonie Diaz, and Madeleine Mantock as three sisters who discover they’re actually witches. They must then try to balance their life in a college town with supernatural demon-hunting.

Milano costarred with Combs and Doherty in the original series. Rose McGowan came on as long-lost half sister Paige when Doherty’s Prue character was killed off.

Combs, especially, has been very vocal about the reboot. “Let me say first that I appreciate the jobs and opportunities the Charmed reboot has created,” she wrote, in part, through a statement. “But 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. I hope the new show is far better than the marketing so the true legacy does remain.”

Doherty had also tweeted initially that the concept was “offensive.” She added, “I love Charmed. I also want it to be respected. I’m simply choosing to be constructive about it because negativity has no place in my life.”

The new stars and producers have responded to the pushback, also coming from certain pockets of the original fans, multiple times. During the Television Critics Association tour, Mantock said, “Of course, you can’t help but feel disappointed because I think the script is fantastic. I really hope maybe [Combs will] see it and like it.”

Executive producers Jennie Snyder Urman and Jessica O’Toole also noted how the original show “wrapped up everything up so wonderfully” and they “didn’t want to mess with that mythology, obviously, because it was eight years.”

“None of us from the original cast to the original creators, producers, or writers have anything to do with it,” Milano said in a recent interview with Parade. “The way I feel about it is this, and I’ll just be super, super-honest: If the reboot can give the joy that it gave to our generation to a new generation, then I think that’s really beautiful. Time after time, I’ve heard story after story about how that show meant so much to people, because it was a show that they found while they were battling cancer, or it was a show that they watched with their father, and that was the only thing they could connect with. It really resonated with people in a profound way, and if a new generation can find that, then I think that’s really beautiful.”

She suggests the new showrunners “shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but really take what was so great about the original and find a way to make it their own.”

“I’m just glad that it’s here finally, because we’ve been hearing about this reboot for however many years, what has it been, maybe four years now?” she added. “And I feel like it’s either going to succeed or not, and if it succeeds again, a whole new generation will be exposed to the beauty of what Charmed was able to be for people, and if it doesn’t succeed, then we don’t have to hear about it anymore.”