Social Media May Be Bringing Back Charmed

"It's still astounding to me that the show still means so much to people," Combs says, speaking to The Music ahead of her visit to Australia for Sydney and Perth's Supanova pop culture events. "It feels like we're almost on, like, a third generation of fans, because families that watched it together when kids were little are now looking at me going, you know, 'I was 11 when I started watching your show, and now I'm 21,' and I'm like, 'Oh! Well you make me feel older than ever!'" she laughs. 

Not that Combs has rested on her laurels in the decade since Charmed wrapped, of course; younger TV fans will undoubtedly be familiar with the actress for her work on cult-favourite series Pretty Little Liars, the seventh season of which will keep Combs busy for much of this year. Despite her more current pursuits, however, it's Charmed that remains the biggest base among Combs' fans.

"To be able to be so familiar and aware of the fans' reaction so instantly is just something that still is a new thing for me."

"When we were doing the show there was no social media, you know; there were some message boards and stuff, but it was never like the instant response that certainly Pretty Little Liars gets, and that Charmed still gets," she says. "We had our ten-year anniversary of the show being off the air the other day, and I only noticed because the fans noticed and there was essentially this Twitter frenzy of 'it's been ten years off the air', and they were tweeting CBS and Netflix incessantly, all day long, for a reunion. So to be able to be so familiar and aware of the fans' reaction so instantly is just something that still is a new thing for me."

For a show with such a vociferous fan base, Combs says the realisation they had a global phenomenon on their hands was something of a slow burn, due in part to multiple time-slot shifts at the hand of then-parent channel, The WB.

"The popularity sort of grew over years and, now, over a decade later, it's kind of like, I look at my Twitter feed and there's still probably more talk about Charmed these days than there is Pretty Little Liars on my feed," she says, "because it's reached this level of like, 'Why is everybody else getting a reunion and we're not?' I'm not in charge of these things, people!"

Although she doesn't have control of the situation, Combs has turned around on her willingness to take part in any possible reboot. While she says that, a couple of years ago, she wouldn't have pursued it, "I think the volume level is increasing and people keep asking about it and they keep tweeting CBS and Netflix, so there's only so long, I think, they can ignore it. But I think, you know, we were able to wrap up the show in such a nice way, and a lot of shows don't get the opportunity to have a finale like we did, where we wrap up everybody's story," she says.

"At the same time, it's not even that I think we have stories left that were untold, it's just that I hear people saying 'I miss it and it was my favourite and it brought me up on my worst days and brightened my day,' and to me that makes it more important than it was to me 15 years ago."