Charmed's Demon Lover
By Kate O'Hare

He's handsome, mysterious, part human and part demon, a longtime killer turned from the path of evil by his love for a good woman. She's pretty, sometimes blonde, strong, well versed in fighting, has superpowers and fights evil with the help of friends and family.

Vampire Spike and Slayer Buffy perhaps? Not at all. It's primetime's other star-crossed supernatural lovers, Cole and Phoebe of The WB's Thursday night drama "Charmed" (reruns of which air the following Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET, on TNT).

Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) is one of a sisterly trio of good witches fighting a non-stop stream of demons and other creatures of darkness in San Francisco. She's recovering from the loss of the eldest sister -- Prue, played by Shannen Doherty, killed off in last season's finale -- and coping with the arrival of a long-lost younger half-sister, Paige (Rose McGowan).

As a result, Phoebe, who has acquired some kick butt fighting skills in addition to her ability to see into the future, is coping with now being the middle sister, behind Piper (Holly Marie Combs).

This sibling shuffling is hardly the biggest challenge facing Phoebe as she battles for the life and love of Cole, played by strapping Australian Julian McMahon. He's a half-human/half-demon (in his demon form, Belthazor, he looks rather like Darth Maul on steroids) sent to kill Phoebe and her sisters, who found himself falling in love and has abandoned his demon ways to help the Charmed Ones in their mission to save innocents and defeat ultimate evil.

To do this, he has made himself the target of bounty hunters out to destroy him for his treachery against demon-kind.

Asked if Cole is really a good guy at heart, McMahon, who suppresses his Australian accent for the show, laughs heartily. "Kinda, sorta, maybe, not really? Have you spoken to Brad [Kern, the series' producer]? He's always better at divulging this sort of stuff than I am, because I always let the cat out of the bag, and then I get in trouble for it."

"Basically we started off the season with what you saw, then we try to get Cole to become a good guy. He obviously struggles against that, because it's not just his nature. Then, as the season evolves, we get to many different places in his evolution of becoming a good guy. Probably the best way to describe it is, he turns on and off toward the dark side."

But in the mythology of the "Charmed" universe ...

"Crikey, that scares me," McMahon interjects.

... one wonders if demons can become good.

"Well," says McMahon, "then I guess we're getting back to the question of what's good and what's not. I guess the 'Charmed' mythology would have to be towards the fact that witches are good, right? Don't forget, they kill a number of people each episode."

But they only kill evil people. "See, there lies the irony. Can a demon choose to be good? I think they can choose to be good, but whether or not they actually will be or can be is a different matter. Oh god, these are all such deep questions."

As Phoebe struggles to understand why she loves Cole, it begs the question of just how much of someone's past can be forgiven, especially when that past contains evil and violence.

"That comes down to the person who's forgiving," says McMahon. "We all have different standards, and we all have different priorities by which we live. It comes down to the individual who wishes or wants to forgive that person."

"I've always been somebody who's strongly believed in forgiving people wholly. Although, I guess, when I think about forgiving people who have caused other people physical harm or death or something like that, it's a different thing."

"Once again, when placed in the concept of this show, it's a little different from the way I would answer that question in reality."

McMahon also thinks it speaks well of Phoebe that she can overlook Cole's past deeds in light of his present. "Once you've traveled life's path, you realize that you do make mistakes. You're going to do the wrong thing. You're going to be wrong in people's eyes, even when you felt you were right. You're going to be labeled as this or that, and that can be by an individual or en masse."

"The reality is, the longer you live life, hopefully the more mellow you become with it. Maybe Phoebe is at such a level of depth and humanity that she doesn't need to know."

"I feel like, if I fell in love with you right now, the person that you are, I couldn't give a damn about your past. But I guess when you're looking at the reality of it, and you're talking about a serial killer, I wouldn't mind if somebody brought that one up before I started dating them."

In the meantime, McMahon works hard to keep Cole strong in a cast dominated by women. "That's something that's difficult when you have a show oriented around three women. It's very difficult for any type of show to get its lead cast to bow down to others."

"It's a fine line. One thing I've definitely tried to do with Cole is to be sure that he maintains his masculinity, particularly in a show with three leads that are all female. For something to be ongoing, to be entertaining and exciting, you need to have the dynamic between the two -- male/female, yin/yang, whatever the hell it is."