Melissa Joan Hart says she was almost fired from ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ over Maxim shoot
Melissa Joan Hart in Season 1 of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch."
By Marianne Garvey, CNN
(CNN) — Melissa Joan Hart says she was nearly fired from “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” after she did photo shoot for Maxim magazine.
The actress was on the “Pod Meets World” podcast when hosts Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong showed a photo of Hart with Britney Spears at the New York premiere of 1999’s “Drive Me Crazy,” which Hart starred in.
Hart said the photo isn’t a good one because she had been crying all day, facing a breakup and tired from doing press all day.
After the movie’s premiere, Hart went straight to the airport in order to go film “Scary Movie” in Vancouver, she recalled.
“I was supposed to be the opening, vivacious, big-breasted one that’s like murdered or something in the beginning,” Hart said, adding, “And 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.”
While traveling to the airport, Hart got a call that she had been fired from the movie. She turned around and went to the “Drive Me Crazy” premiere party. Once there, her lawyer showed up to ask her if she had done a shoot for Maxim magazine.
“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,’” Hart said.
She added that she did “whatever my publicist told me to do at the photo shoot. Like I did a photo shoot for Maxim! It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.’”
Hart was in her early 20s at the time of the shoot. The uproar was over a cover line that read: “Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch.”
Hart recalled that it took weeks to deal with lawyers, who determined producers “had no leg to stand on” because they couldn’t control what headlines were written about Hart.
Hart starred in the ABC series for seven seasons from 1996 to 2003.
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