It’s all treat, no trick, as Supanova Comic Con & Gaming prepares for 2025’s pumpkin season, announcing some seriously spooky Supa-Stars for its upcoming tour, kicking off on Halloween in Adelaide (31 Oct – 2 Nov), before boarding the ‘Zombie Plane’ to Brisbane (7-9 November).
Touching down in Adelaide this weekend is none other than Holly Marie Combs, who is best known for her work in the smash-hit TV series Charmed.
Holly is an American actress who grew up in New York, and who started in front of the camera from an early age with print ads and commercials. Her first onscreen credit was in 1988 with the film Sweet Hearts Dance, a rom-com starring Don Johnson and Susan Sarandon.
Holly had bit parts in several films before landing the starring role of Kimberly in the television series, Picket Fences.The show ran for 4 years, winning Holly critical acclaim and a Young Actors award.
Holly spoke to Glam Adelaide in the lead up to Supernova and spoke about her time on Charmed, filming Sweet Hearts Dance and if acting was what she always wanted to pursue as a career.
“I wanted to be a marine biologist from a very young age – I actually got my scuba diving license when I was 13. So that was kind of my big passion from a very early age. It was my mom who actually wanted to be an actress. We moved to New York City when I was about eight years old. It was tough. It’s highly competitive, especially in New York. She tried to go through all the routes – print ads and commercials, and she did some modeling. It was just a tough business for her to navigate. We’re not far apart in age. She was a very young mom. She one day said to me, ‘Maybe you should try and get picked up as an actor’. I said yes and it all really started for me when I was about ten. It wasn’t really my passion or dream, but there came a time when I was about 18 where I realized I couldn’t be just like a kid skating by, you know, being cutesy or selling toothpaste or something like that. I needed to decide if it was actually going to be a career path. And thankfully, at that time, I got Picket Fences and I was just thrust into this group of actors that were so dedicated and lovely and really loved what they did. It was, as I call it, my training ground.”
Holly shared what it was like when she started filming Sweet Hearts Dance.
“I was so young and so green that I didn’t really know who they were at that time. I knew I had to step up my game and I knew I had to blend in and I had to be real. My family at that time was just me and my mum and a man who became my stepdad – I have a very small family. In Picket Fences and Sweet Hearts it was tough for me to emulate what it was like to be part of like a real big nuclear family. So I had to learn, but that’s what this business gives a lot of people like me – a tribe, this instant family. As a kid, it was hard once filming was done and wrapped, because so were a lot of those relationships – you all go your separate ways.”
Working on a film set is a very different pace to working on a TV series, as Holly explained.
“It’s very tight. As an 18 and 19 year old, I got in trouble for not being on time all the time. It can be a grueling schedule. It’s a lot of hurry up and then wait. On movies, you have a few days to do a few scenes, where on TV shows, you have five scenes in a day,”
Charmed first aired in 1998 and ran through to 2006. It follows the lives of three sisters who discover they are powerful witches. Holly shared with Glam Adelaide the story of how she landed the role of Piper.
“What was funny is that I was friends with Shannen Doherty and it was pilot season. We don’t really have pilot season anymore because shows are just made year-round now, but pilot season used to be a big deal where all the new shows for that year were filming or casting hoping to get picked up, and sometimes you could have three to four auditions a day. And I got in Shannen’s car and I noticed that one of the scripts that I had read was in her back seat, kind of thrown on the floor – it was Charmed. We both went through the audition process and went into the production office together. They wanted me to play Phoebe and for her to be Piper. They originally saw us as better fits for younger roles, so we actually had to slide our drivers licenses over to prove just how old we were and that we would be perfect for the older sisters.”
Holly is still amazed at how popular the TV series is, even today.
“I’ve noticed in talking to people that what happens is they share it with their family members. They share it with sisters, brothers, cousins, even dads, granddads. It’s kind of become a family generational thing. We’re on our third generation right now and it’s pretty dang cool. We never anticipated it. We were just always kind of trying to keep the wheel rolling. For me, who took it very seriously, I’m just so grateful that it meant and still means something to people as much as it did to me. But it’s still unreal.”
This weekend Holly will be appearing at Supernova, where attendees will have the chance to meet her in person.
“I love attending Supernova events. The thing I love the most is honestly hearing the stories. Some of them can be tough to hear. Some of them are from family members who have lost other family members and Charmed reminds them of being with them. So it is very emotional most of the time with us and we just try to take it all in. For us, we’ve traveled around the world as a cast. I think I’ve been doing this for 16 years. We’re just so grateful that we still get to be a family of sorts, and travel together and meet people who value the show as much as we did. It’s just pretty great. I’ve done two other shows that did well and nothing has translated as much as Charmed has into people’s hearts and homes and families. It’s just got a special something that none of us can define.”
Supanova Comic Con & Gaming
Adelaide Showgrounds
31 Oct – 2 Nov 2025
https://www.supanova.com.au
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