Shannen Doherty’s Final Act Was a Podcast That Put It All Out There

It did not take long for Shannen Doherty to establish that hers was a different sort of celebrity podcast.

Doherty began recording episodes of “Let’s Be Clear” from her home in November 2023, as she received treatment for a recurrence of breast cancer. As the podcast’s title suggests, the assertive star of “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Heathers,” “Mall Rats” and “Charmed” — as famed for her acting as for reports of her on-set infighting and partying — reckoned with her life and career with a candor that distinguished her project amid a glut of often aimless celebrity podcasts.

Doherty was similarly confrontational as she wrestled with her own mortality — not in the abstract, but in wrenching specifics. She matter-of-factly recounted getting rid of her collection of antique furniture so her mother wouldn’t be faced with clearing out a storage unit after her death. On another episode, Doherty described selling off a property in Tennessee and choked up over what the decision meant.

“I felt like I was giving up on a dream and what did that mean for me?” she asked rhetorically before taking a deep breath. “Did it mean that I was giving up on life? Did it mean that I was, like, throwing in the towel?”

Doherty, who died Saturday at 53, didn’t do rewatches or share cute behind-the-scenes stories. Neither did she make oblique references to unnamed power brokers. Doherty faced the past and present head on, hosting former co-stars, directors, an ex-boyfriend and an ex-husband in conversations that sometimes exonerated her and that other times offered her the chance to assume culpability.

In one of the earliest episodes, Doherty dived deep into the dispute with her former “Charmed” co-star Alyssa Milano that led to Doherty’s departure after the third season of the show, which was reported at the time as a voluntary decision.