Piper Halliwell - Casting and Development

Casting and Development

"Piper was always the middle sister. So she was trying to get Prue and Phoebe on the same page, and get Prue to understand Phoebe."

—Producer Krista Vernoff on Piper's role as the middle sister during the start of Charmed.

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 Piper 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. Piper is based on Burge's older sister Edie. On creating Piper, Burge states "The middle sibling typically tends to be a real people pleaser and very funny, tends to deal with life with a lot of humour. That really applied to my sister, Edie and so I could see the character of Piper ." Executive Producer Brad Kern states that Piper is written into the series as "the middle sister just trying to keep the peace, trying to find love, trying to find her career, and trying to keep Prue and Phoebe from killing each other."

When the series was in its first development stages, Shannen Doherty, an actress from a previous Spelling Television series, Beverly Hills, 90210, originally auditioned for the role of Piper while former Picket Fences actress Holly Marie Combs auditioned for the role of Prue Halliwell. By the time the roles were officially cast, the actresses had switched characters. Combs played the role of Piper in a 28-minute test pilot (the "unaired pilot", never aired on network television) alongside Doherty and actress Lori Rom who played the youngest sister Phoebe Halliwell. By the time the series aired on The WB, Rom had been replaced by the former Who's the Boss star, film and TV actress Alyssa Milano.