Melissa Joan Hart has said she was nearly sued and fired from Sabrina The Teenage Witch after posing for an underwear photo shoot.
The actor, who starred in the sitcom throughout its seven-season run between 1996 and 2003, appeared on the cover of men’s magazine Maxim in October 1999. The cover featured the headline: “Sabrina your favourite witch without a stitch.”
While the shoot was to promote romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy, Hart was accused of breaching her contract, which stated that she “would never play the character naked”, due to the cover line.
Speaking about the incident on the Pod Meets World podcast, Hart recalled how she was approached by her lawyer during an after-party following the film’s premiere in New York.
“While I’m at the party, my lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photo 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.’”
She added: “So I get a phone call on my cell phone from my mother, my producer, who was like, ‘What did you do?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, whatever my publicist told me to do at the photo shoot. I did a photo shoot for Maxim! It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.”
Asked by podcast hosts Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle if they did take any legal action, Hart said: “No, nothing came of it. They had no ground to stand on.”
She added: “I wrote an apology letter and it was all gone.”
Hart described the day of the party as “the worst day of my life”, after she was dropped from a role in horror spoof Scary Movie and broke up with her boyfriend prior to the threat of legal action.
Recalling how her father approached her later in the evening, Hart said: “He comes up to me and goes, ‘You ok?’ I was like, ‘No.’ And he hugs me, and I was crying even harder because my dad is hugging me, I’m being fired from my show, I was just fired from the movie, and I just broke up with my boyfriend.”
Released in 1999, Drive Me Crazy was a success at the box office, partly boosted by Britney Spears track ‘(You Drive Me) Crazy’ which featured on the film’s soundtrack.
