Phoebe Halliwell - Casting and Development

Casting and Development

Piper: "To my three beautiful girls. May this give you the light to find the shadows. The power of three will set you free. Love, Mom." We never did figure out what this inscription meant.

Prue: Well, we should send it to Phoebe. She’s so in the dark, maybe a little light will help.

In 1998, the Warner Brothers Television Network began searching for a drama series, and looked to Spelling Television, which had produced the network's most successful series 7th Heaven, to create it. Expanding on the popularity of supernatural-themed dramas, the production company explored forms of mythology to find mythological characters they could focus on with contemporary storytelling. In order to create the series, Constance M. Burge was hired as the creator as she was under contract with 20th Century Fox and Spelling Television after conceiving the drama Savannah.

The character of Phoebe Halliwell was conceived by Burge, who wrote the pilot script for Charmed. The pilot script was based around three mismatched sisters who are initially based on Burge and her two older sisters, Laura and Edie Burge. Phoebe is based on Burge herself. On creating the Halliwell sisters, Burge states "Phoebe was honestly the easiest. It just grew from within." Executive Producer Brad Kern claims Phoebe is written into the series as the classic younger sibling and states that at the start of series Phoebe is "trying to find her own identity by living life large and not really having a care in the world."

When the series was in its first development stages, actress Lori Rom was cast in the role of Phoebe. Rom played the role in a 28-minute test pilot (the "unaired pilot", never aired on network television) with which the series was picked up by The WB. Rom later pulled out from the series before a 45-minute version of the pilot could be filmed for proper network television, leaving the role of Phoebe vacant. TV producer Aaron Spelling then turned to actress Alyssa Milano, who was previously cast in another television series produced by Spelling Television, Melrose Place. While Milano was in Hawaii shooting an episode for Fantasy Island, Spelling phoned Milano and asked her to consider joining the series. After receiving a copy of the original pilot and the script, five days later Milano began shooting the re-shot pilot episode.