Melissa Joan Hart was almost fired from Sabrina after racy Maxim shoot

23 August 2023 , 19:57

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Melissa shared how she was almost fired from the hit show over a photoshoot

Melissa Joan Hart delighted fans young and old as the titular character in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but she was almost kicked off the beloved show for doing a Maxim photoshoot.

The now 47-year-old appeared on the podcast Pod Meets World, a Boy Meets World rewatch podcast hosted by actors Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong. The hosts showed Melissa a photo of her and Britney Spears at the premiere of her 1999 rom-com Drive Me Crazy, which Britney provided the titular song for. Melissa pointed out: "If you look at my eyes [in the photo], I'd been crying all evening."

The Sabrina actress had one of the "worst days" of her life that day. She said she had been up since 4amx doing press for her movie, plus she was planning on breaking up with her boyfriend at the time, who also starred in the film. She had to wait on the red carpet at the premiere for Britney to arrive. “They wanted me to wait in my car for like an hour for Britney to show up so we could do photos together," she remembered, "And I was like, ‘Can I just go, start doing the press?’ [They were like,] ‘Nope, You’ve got to wait for Britney.'”

She called the day one of the 'worst' days ever (Abc/Viacom/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)

The actress appeared on the Pod Meets World podcast (FilmMagic)

After the red carpet, she got back into her limousine and headed to the airport to shoot her scene in the horror parody movie Scary Movie in Vancouver. If you don't remember her role in the film, you're not crazy because she got a call that she was fired from the movie while in the limo. "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," she said.

After all that, Melissa ended up going to the afterparty for the film at Planet Hollywood. And to add to her already stressful day, she was approached by her lawyer. "My lawyer shows up and goes, 'You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?'" she recalled and told her lawyer she did. To which they responded: "Well, you're being sued and fired from your show, so don't talk to the press don't do anything."

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Melissa played the main character on the hit show (ToMerlin)

She said she told her mother at the time: "I did a photo shoot for Maxim! It's Maxim, of course you're going to be in your underwear." It turns out the photos weren't the problem. The magazine cover read: "Sabrina, your favourite witch without a stitch," which Archie Comics said violated her contract because it said she would never "play the character naked".

After a few weeks, the issue was resolved because the suit had "no ground to stand on" because she "had no control over what they wrote on the cover". But even so, the teenage witch star remembered ending the fateful night crying in her father's arms. "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 said.

Tatiana Krisztina