The investors wanted lots of promotional material with Shannen Doherty. They also wanted some with the others, expecially Alyssa Milano, but it was easier to have it done with Shannen Doherty because of the aggressive contract they had made her sign.

Do you remember the awards show where Shannen Doherty accidentally wore a see-through black dress.

Well, it was no accident, it was part of the promotional material, calling attention to the Charmed show. The investors had made her wear that and it worked wonderfully to call attention to Shannen Doherty and the show she was in at that time. Charmed.

Another event is the now-famous accident where Shannen Doherty was wearing a short skirt at a glamour party. It was only evident that she was not wearing underwear under the short dress, until she lifted her arm and waved at some photographers. A nice even, painstakingly organized by the Charmed producers to call attention to the show.

For the second season, the Charmed producers made this wonderful poster for the show. They were so happy with it, that they had in fact already produced 2000 posters before finally deciding not to use them.

The investors liked having lots of nude material of Shannen Doherty and they had lots made as it was in her contract anyway. In addtion, the producers like making it. That’s why they made a habit of shooting a few nude sessions after each day of shooting. Here is one example from one of such sessions.

The photo above was argued to have some relevance to the show but gradually the producers cared less and less about the relevance and just wanted some really sexy and hot nude shots.

Some times the other girls joined in, after all they also agreed to do some nudity on the show – but mostly it was just Shannen.

The escalation

It was one scene in season 2, episode 11 where the activities with Shannen Doherty escalated. As part of the plot of the episode (a segment never aired) she had been tied to a ship and stripped of her clothes, as the demons suspected she might be hiding some secret tricks somewhere.

When the scene ended and the day of shooting also ended, all the actors and actresses went home, but the producers left Shannen tied to the ship and took some more pictures. This is when several crew members went to her and grabbed her butt and shook her breasts while the camera was still running.

One guy stuck his finger into her vagina and poked around in there with Shannen squirming and giving muffled screams under the tape.

They finally let her go and took the tape off. She was furious! Yelling at everyone, asking them who they think they were and what they thought they were doing. After calming down a bit, she still told one investor:

“I signed to do any scenes you want, but ONLY on the show OR in promotional material!” she said “this was neither, so you have violated the contract! And me!”

“No Shannen” the investor said calmly “this was promotional material. Do we really have to actually publish this material in order to categorize it as promotional? If that’s what you want, we’ll gladly publish it…”

Shannen was quiet. They had fondled her to make promotional material. That was bullshit, anyone could see that. But on the other hand, she did not want to insist that only published material is promotional material, because then they would HAVE to publish EVERYTHING they had made of her so far, not to speak of the abuse she had just endured.

She didn’t know what to say and just went home.