Melissa Joan Hart Says She Was Almost Fired From ‘Sabrina’ After Racy Maxim Photo Shoot
Melissa Joan Hart revealed that she was almost fired from “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” because of a racy photo shoot with Maxim magazine in 1999, in which the actor posed in her underwear.
As a guest on “Pod Meets World,” a “Boy Meets World” rewatch podcast, Hart said she found out she was “being sued and fired” from “Sabrina” while at a Hollywood party during the “worst day of my life.”
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Show producer Archie Comics responded to Hart’s comments in a statement to Variety, writing: “Archie Comics knows nothing and has heard nothing about this, and it was decades before the current administration at Archie. It’s ancient history.”
“While I’m at the party, my lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?'” Hart said on the podcast (via EW). “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 continued, “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.”
But what caused a bigger issue than the suggestive photos was Maxim’s cover line, which read: “Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch.” Apparently the actor was accused of breaching her contract with Archie Comics, a producer on the series, as Hart agreed to “never play the character naked.”
Hart remembered crying in her father’s arms after receiving the news from her lawyer.
“He comes up to me and goes, ‘You okay?’ I was like, ‘No,'” Hart said. “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 [‘Scary Movie’] and I just broke up with my boyfriend.”
Nonetheless, Hart said Archie Comics “had no ground to stand on” in relation to “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” After she wrote the company an apology letter, she was apparently in the clear.
Hart did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
“Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” based on the Archie Comics series of the same name, ran for seven seasons from 1996 to 2003.
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