Krista Vernoff may currently be working on Grey’s Anatomy, Station 19, and Rebel, but once upon a time, she was heavily involved with the original Charmed.
Now, two decades later, Vernoff has revealed that she exited her writer/producer post on the series due to a mermaid storyline on Charmed Season 5.
As you will recall if you watched the original series, Alyssa Milano’s Phoebe Halliwell became a mermaid during a particular arc that season.
“I signed on because Charmed was a girl-power show,” Vernoff explained The Hollywood Reporter a profile of her career in the business, “and about halfway through there was an episode where Alyssa Milano comes out in mermaid pasties and there was a huge spike in male viewership.”
“And then every episode after, the question would come from the network, ‘How are we getting the girls naked this week?’”
Vernoff was processing the death of her father while weighing up whether to remain with the hit series, which also starred Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan.
“They were throwing money at me, and the number keeps going up, and there’s all this pressure,” she explained to the outlet.
“And all I can think is, ‘I’m creating something that’s now bad for the world, and I’ve had enough bad for the world in my life.’”
Vernoff followed up Charmed with the drama series Wonderfalls on FOX and revealed that it was the first time everything she wrote was rewritten.
“I went from, ‘I’ll double your money,’ to ‘You can’t get a word through,’ and it was humbling,” she says, revealing that she had to match Bryan Fuller’s voice, which was no easy task.
Charmed originally aired on The WB from 1998-2006 and focused on sisters who learned they were the Charmed ones, aka the strongest witches on the planet.
The series has since been rebooted on The CW, but none of the original cast is a part of the update, which focuses on another group of Charmed ones.
That series was recently renewed for a fourth season.
Vernoff’s latest passion project is the Erin Brockovich-inspired drama Rebel, which features a cast led by Katey Sagal.
The new series is set to launch April 8, giving Vernoff three hours of ABC’s primetime schedule on one night.
What are your thoughts on Vernoff’s reasons for exiting?
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Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.