Sabrina the Teenage Witch alum Melissa Joan Hart details one truly horrific day that saw her dumped from a major franchise role, held up at a movie premiere waiting for Britney Spears, and actually fired from her starring role in the ABC sitcom.
Melissa Joan Hart had a day, and says you can see it in her eyes if you look at photos of her standing alongside Britney Spears at the New York premiere of her 1999 romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy — and it’s all Maxim’s fault!
The risqué magazine that built its name on photo spreads of scantily clad ’90s and ’00s starlets made a decision about the trade dress of Hart’s cover shoot that got her in huge trouble with Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but that wasn’t even the worst of her day!
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The whole thing came out while discussing the aforementioned photo from the Drive Me Crazy premiere while Hart was hanging with Boy Meets World alums (and fellow ABC TGIF stars) Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong on their Pod Meets World podcast.
While they were digging on the photo, Hart pointed out that if you look closely enough at it, you can see “i’d been crying all evening.”
She explained that it started with her up early to do press for the film at 4am. Beyond that, she had decided to breakup with her boyfriend at the time, who also happened to star in the same film … so not awkward at all!
And even that was just the beginning. When she finally got to the red carpet premiere, she was told she couldn’t get out of her limo. “They wanted me to wait in my car for like an hour for Britney to show up so we could do photos together,” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Can I just go, start doing the press?’ ‘Nope, You’ve got to wait for Britney.’”
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Once she’d finally finished her press obligations, clearly already emotionally drained as evidenced by the photo, she was “whisked away” at around 11pm to film a scene for this new horror parody called Scary Movie.
“I was supposed to be the opening, vivacious, big-breasted one that’s like murdered or something in the beginning,” she said. “I was put in a limo, and I was taken away, and I had just broken up with my boyfriend while we were in the movie, and I’m crying and I’m upset.”
But things only went from bad to worse, as she said she got a call en route that she was fired from Scary Movie. While she doesn’t specify, it sounds as if she might have been referring to the opening role that went to Carmen Electra, parodying Drew Barrymore’s iconic Scream opening scene.
With her evening free, Hart pivoted back to the film premiere and went to the Planet Hollywood afterparty, where she got even more bad news.
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“My lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?'” she said. “I’m like: ‘Yes, I did.’ They’re like, ‘Well, you’re being sued and fired from your show, so don’t talk to the press, don’t do anything.'”
The actress said she was confused because her publicist had known she was going to do the Maxim photo shoot. “It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear,” said Hart.
It turns out, though, that the problem was Maxim using the line “Sabrina, Your Favorite Witch Without a Stitch” on the cover. It was seen as a violation of her Archie Comics contract which Hart said assured she “would never play the character naked.”
Ultimately, Hart said she apologized while also pushing back because she had no say in what the magazine chose to write on their cover, so the violation wouldn’t have been hers in the first place.
She was also representing as Melissa Joan Hart, not “Sabrina,” explaining that the shoot was her promoting her movie and not the television show.
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“The silver lining here is that for weeks, the top news [was] ‘Can Melissa be sexy’?’ ‘Why is she being fired from her TV show?’ and all this drama,” Hart recalled. “But it made for Drive Me Crazy to come out and be a huge success. It was insane.”
Despite her argument, Hart said it took weeks for her to sort it out, with her uncertain if she even had a job on a hit sitcom anymore throughout the tumultuous experience. She said that it all hit her at once that first night.
“I’m crying even harder because my daddy’s hugging me, I’m being fired from my show, I was just fired from the movie, I just broke up with my boyfriend,” she remembered.
Ultimately, Hart was not fired from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was good news for her, the network, and the production team. The show would eventually run for seven seasons, finally signing off in 2003 after 163 episodes and three made-for-television movies.
You can check out Melissa Joan Hart on the Pod Meets World podcast below.