With so many great TV shows and movies to choose from today, sometimes we can forget the classics. Some may remember the charming television series “Bewitched” from the 1960s starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York as Samantha, the witch, and Darrin, the mortal. In the later seasons, the role of Darrin was played by Dick Sargent. The premise of the show is that the two characters meet, fall in love and end up having a family together.
Samantha agrees to live the life of a typical suburban housewife and hides her magic from the rest of the world. However, she still uses her magic at home, and it often gets her, Darrin, and a whole other cast of characters into some trouble. In the end, the couple always embraces and reflects on overcoming their obstacles together. The show included the notion that witches and their male counterparts, warlocks, use physical gestures along with their incantations. For Samantha, it was her signature nose twitch that helped her create a spell.
In the third season of the series, Samantha and Darrin had a daughter, Tabitha, who was played by actress Erin Murphy. The role of Tabitha was shared with Murphy’s fraternal twin sister, Diane, for 18 episodes, and then their appearances began to differ, and only Erin continued to play the role.
Now that she is an adult, Murphy looks back on her years growing up on “Bewitched” fondly. She has even said that she considered Montgomery and Sargent to be surrogate parents to her.
Read on to learn more about Murphy and her large family with six children, and to see what she looks like now at age 60.
Time On “Bewitched”
Murphy was born on June 17, 1964, in Encino, California, and began working as an actress at the age of 2 in 1966. As Tabitha on “Bewitched,” Murphy appeared in 103 episodes from the series’s third season until the last original episode in 1972. During that time, she had the chance to grow up on a television set, which she describes as a very positive experience.
Acting was always Murphy’s calling. “From the time I was a baby, I loved it,” she shared. “I liked the lights and loved being on my set. My sister used to cry when they would bring her on set. Even now she hates it.”
Part of what made filming the show so great was her co-stars, Montgomery and Sargent. In an interview with ABC News in 2015, Murphy shared: “I always called her ‘Mantha Mommy, because I couldn’t say Samantha, and I called Dick Sargent, Darrin Daddy. That’s what I knew them as. They really were like parents to me.”
Murphy continued: “A lot of people who knew Liz well and knew me told me how much I’m like her. 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.”
Being only 2 when she began filming, by the time the series was over, Murphy was 8 years old.
“I have memories, obviously, from what I see on camera. But I also remember things about, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the day when … ,’ and I remember something we had for lunch that day, or I remember, like, the things that happened behind the scenes. So it’s great to have the shows to watch, but I remember a lot of it. I remember the scenes and the animals that were there — we had chimpanzees and elephants — and all the people. Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York were wonderful people and I learned a lot from all of them. And they loved kids.”
One of Murphy’s favorite people to spend time with on set was Agnes Moorehead, who played Samantha’s mother, Endora. The actress told ABC News:
“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.”
The series “Bewitched” is still beloved today. “People like the magical aspect of it; I think everybody wishes they could do magic. And I think it translates well to other languages, because it’s a very visual show and there are different things that appeal to different people. For instance, the show was so enormously popular with the LGBTQ community, because the main character was a witch and hidden in the closet. She couldn’t be herself. And that’s it: it translates across so many different things and it holds up,” Murphy said to Closer Weekly.
After “Bewitched”
After the series ended, Murphy went on to appear in “Lassie” and in the film “Deadly Fighters.” She took a break from acting after her family moved from Los Angeles to Orange County when she was in the sixth grade. This ended up being good for Murphy, who described her childhood as having “the best of both worlds.”
Murphy explained to Closer: “I was offered jobs right after ‘Bewitched’ and I turned them down. I went to Girl Scout camp instead of doing a part on ‘The Waltons.’ So I kind of walked away from the business. We moved down to Orange County and I continued to go up to L.A. when there were guaranteed jobs, but I stopped doing the crazy auditions where I’d be sitting in a room with a hundred kids who looked just like me being rejected.”
Despite the difficulties, Murphy looks back at that time in her life positively. “I actually loved the auditions. I had friends that I would only see at auditions, so I loved that part of it. If you’re there for the fun of it and you actually love the work, the audition process isn’t terrible. Even now when I do things, I don’t audition very often. I’ve worked in casting; it’s kind of fun seeing everybody. Again, it’s about the right attitude,” said the star.
In a world where so many child actors face hardships after growing up, it is wonderful to see Murphy so satisfied with her time as an actress. “I’ve just had amazing life experiences that are only because I was a kid actor. You can look at the long, hard hours, or you can look at all the positives. And for me, there are so many more positives than negatives,” she said.
After graduating from El Toro High School, where she was a cheerleader and homecoming queen, Murphy went on to model for Hang Ten swimwear. She was also in over 100 commercials and worked behind the scenes as a casting director and makeup artist on some film and TV projects. Murphy is a busy person and also has experience working as a fashion stylist and an acting teacher, and she was also the stunt double for actress Virginia Madsen.
Murphy has also worked as a television host and correspondent for T.V. Land, Fox Reality Channel and the E! Network. She has been in a number of infomercials for products such as the SomaTrac Inversion Table. Since 2014, she has been the co-owner of Slim Chillers, which are frozen low-calorie vodka martini popsicles.
Murphy has worked as a motivational speaker and will often speak out on the subject of autism, as one of her sons has the disorder. She told Closer:
“I have a strong belief that you need to give back. I’m really lucky for the life I have and the opportunities I’ve had. And you could either let them take you to do the wrong things or figure out how to use those opportunities to do something good.”
Murphy has been married three times in her life. Her first husband was Terry Rogers, and they were married from 1984 to 1989 and have two sons together. In 1993 she remarried Eric Eden, and they have one son. Unfortunately, the couple divorced in 1998. That was the same year she married her current husband, Darren Dunckel, with whom she has three sons. In 2020, Murphy shared with Closer that her youngest son will graduate high school in three years.
Murphy said of her children: “It’s great seeing them all do things that they love. Parents could kind of impose their choices about everything on their kids, or you can see what the kids are really interested in and encourage them to live their lives. That’s what I do. I have six boys who are as different as six people could be, and they’re all amazing.” As a motivational speaker, Murphy is an extremely positive person, and she has passed those lessons on to her children. She explained:
“Something I’ve always taught my kids is you have no control over what happens or how other people act. You have total control over how you act. You could choose to be happy in any situation. I could choose to sit in a corner and cry, but why would I?”
Murphy continued in her interview with Closer Weekly: “What I usually say is if I’m going to be on a red carpet, I would rather talk about something important than talk about my shoes. It’s kind of an obligation as a parent to show your kids that side of the world. I’ve raised some really, really optimistic kids who take advantage of things and enjoy things, and they have my philosophy. You can choose to laugh or cry.”
When she was commended by the interviewer for her strength and optimism, Murphy replied: “The truth is, I’ve always kind of wanted to do everything, go everywhere. I’ve always had a lust for life. So my life philosophy has always been if an opportunity comes to you, take advantage of it. You kind of go with life and try to do different things. I don’t want to just sit around and do nothing. I would rather jump off a cliff than sit on a couch.”
Whether it is facing rejection during auditions or just handling life’s surprises, Murphy always looks on the bright side. She said: “To be honest I continue to be an eternally optimistic person. I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve had so many great opportunities and actually know people like Carol Burnett. When she gets up and talks at the Golden Globes that everybody’s watching, I’m thinking, ‘I know her!’”
In the last decade, Murphy became the owner of the company Erin Murphy Knits, which sells hand-knit wear made completely from alpaca fur. The star stays busy with so many projects but always has time for family. She told Closer in 2020:
“This last year I bought my dream car, which is a Tesla. I bought my dream house on the beach. I still have three kids at home and I’m just kind of, you know, figuring out what I want to do for the rest of my life; whether I want to work or just do a couple of fun projects. You see a lot of people and they work and they work, and they never take the time to enjoy themselves. So I’m making sure that I enjoy myself along the way.”
We don’t know what the future holds for Murphy, but we are sure she will make the most of it. She said of her current plans to return to acting: “I haven’t had an acting agent in years, even though I still do a few acting jobs every year. I do a lot of theater now. I’ve done a bunch of web series and pilots, basically as favors to friends. I’m committed to being a parent and I have one son with autism, so that takes a lot of my time. I have no complaints. Life is great.”
