An out of this world creature like a witch marrying an ordinary man and wanting to lead just a normal life of a typical housewife sounds like something I would like to see unfolding on the TV screens. But wait, the series Bewitched which ran for eight seasons between 1964 and 1972 is exactly about that. If you haven’t seen it yet, maybe you should search it and check it out.
One of the characters in Bewitched, that of Tabitha, was played by twins Diane and Erin Murphy, who took turns to act.
Diane and Erin are fraternal twins and they don’t look like one another today, but when they were young they were very similar and could play the same role.
Speaking of the time they got to be part of the show, Erin told Fox in 2017, “They had previously shown it in black and white, so the big push of the third season was that the show was going to color and that they were going to focus more on the character of Tabitha. So they were looking for someone who looked like Elizabeth Montgomery and wasn’t afraid of the lights. I auditioned with my fraternal twin sister Diane and we got the part.”
Eventually, during season four, it was Erin who took over the role as the girls didn’t resemble one another that much any longer.
The show represented a unique experience for the sisters, especially Erin who said she enjoyed being on set and around so many famous actors and actresses she remained close to after the show was over.
“I loved working on Bewitched, and it gave me some very unique and wonderful experiences, but eventually, I wanted to lead a more regular life. So I quit the entertainment business when I was thirteen years old,” she said.
“A lot of people who knew Liz well and knew me told me how much I’m like her,” Murphy told ABC. “And I think it’s because we spent 12 hours a day together growing up. I looked to her as a parent, and she would tell me what to do like a parent. In a lot of ways I’m so much like her than I am my own mom, which is hilarious.”
She also said how she remembers spending a lot of time in Agnes Morehead’s dressing room, who played Endora, Tabitha’s maternal grandmother. “She was probably my favorite person on the show in retrospect,” Erin said.
“I loved her like a grandparent. I had grandparents who lived in other states I didn’t get to see and she didn’t have grandchildren, and we had a really great, loving relationship. She’d do little things like draw little cartoons for me in between scenes. She’d tell me stories. I loved going into her dressing room because everything was purple. I just thought she was the most colorful, most beautiful person.”