Remember growing up in the 80s and
90s watching your favorite TV show on Nickelodeon, such as, Hey Arnold, Cat Dog, All That, Kenan and Kel, Rugrats, and finally, Clarissa
Explains It All? Well here is
a book that Melissa Joan Hart wrote herself. She was known for playing two
iconic roles, one on Nickelodeon’s teen show, Clarissa Explains It All and the other on ABC’s TV show Sabrina The Teenage Witch. If you
remember Melissa Joan Hart entertaining you on TV then I would recommend that
you read her story.
Melissa
Joan Hart first started her acting career by the age of four years old
appearing on TV commercials. By the time Melissa was twelve years old, she
appeared in over a hundred TV commercials! Such as: Twinkies, Life Savors Fruit Flavored Snacks, Barbie, Tylenol, and the
first commercial for the Chrysler Minivan! She even worked on a Jell-O TV
commercial with Bill Cosby as the director. Besides working the camera for TV
commercials, Melissa also modeled for catalogues and ads. Later, she went on to
act in small roles for featured films, live stage, and guest staring on TV
shows. One TV show that Melissa
was a regular in was called The
Adventures of Con Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which starred the famous
Hollywood actress, Drew Barrymore. The TV show was similar to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but plot
was about a girl named Con. Two examples of a TV shows that Melissa guest
stared in were, The Equalizer and Touched By An Angel.
After
filming dozens of TV commercials, modeling, acting in films and TV shows,
Melissa did get her own TV show on the hit children’s TV network, Nickelodeon,
in Clarissa Explains It All. It was
the network’s first teen sitcom and Melissa played a teenager named Clarissa
who tried to explain to the rest of the world how teenage life can be a
difficult life at times. Several
examples that Clarissa explained on her show were: juggling with school drama,
homework, family drama, and other “adult” responsibilities with a twist of her
own sense of humor. Clarissa Explains It
All first aired in 1991 and it ran for four consecutive seasons. One interesting fact that Melissa
mentioned in her book was before she got the part of playing Clarissa she knew
that the executive producer, Mitchell Kriegman, wanted any girl that was a
brunette to play the part of Clarissa, until he decided that Melissa would make
a wonderful Clarissa even though she was blonde. Crazy! Finally, in 1995 when Clarissa
Explains It All was finished filming, CBS wanted to do a spin-off TV show
called Clarissa Now, but Mitchell and
Melissa thought the show wasn’t right and the audience would despise it, so in
the end no such plan was mentioned again.
Besides
Clarissa Explains It All as being on
of Melissa’s iconic characters, the character that Melissa Joan Hart was most
known for was the role of Sabrina Spellman on one of ABC’s hit show, Sabrina The Teenage Witch. How Melissa got the part of Sabrina was
an interesting story. First, Melissa’s mother created her own film production
company called HartBreak Films (Hart-Break) because she didn’t want
Melissa to be in films that were not appropriate for her age. Next, Melissa’s
mother bought the rights of the comic book series and the characters from Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Finally, she
later sold the rights to Showtime so they could make the movie, Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Melissa did
play Sabrina in the movie along with teen hottie Ryan Renolds as one of her
costars. After the movie, ABC wanted to do a TV series and behold! Melissa
played the role of Sabrina in the hit TV series Sabrina The Teenage Witch that premiered in 1996. During the later
seasons, Melissa did not only play the role of Sabrina, she also became an
executive producer and one of the directors in some of the episodes. Finally, Sabrina The Teenage Witch TV show ran
for seven seasons on two networks, fist on ABC from 1996-2000, then on WB since
ABC would only renew their contract for one more season, for the last final
three seasons from 2000-2003.
Finally,
since Melissa’s mother owned the rights to Sabrina
The Teenage Witch and also has a film production company (that Melissa
helps run as well). Hartbreak Films created a TV animated series of Sabrina The Teenage Witch but changed
the title to Sabrina: The Animated Series,
which tells the story of Sabrina being a preteen witch living with her Aunt Hilda
and Aunt Zilda. Anyways, the voice actress who did Sabrina was Melissa’s little
sister, Emily, and Melissa did the voices for Sabrina’s aunts, Hilda and
Zilda. Two words: Mind blowing! Oh! By the way, I loved watching both Sabrina
shows growing up.
In concluding,
besides talking about her life acting as Clarissa and Sabrina, Melissa Joan
Hart also talks about her family life, dating life, married life, and her motherhood life raising three boys. So if you were a
fan of either Clarissa Explains It All or
Sabrina The Teenage Witch, then I
recommend that you read Melissa Explains
It All so you can know the full story from Melissa Joan Hart herself.
Trivia Questions:
1) How many siblings does Melissa have?
2) Where did Melissa's mother meet her second husband?
3) How much money did Melissa's mother spend on to get the license for the characters for Sabrina The Teenage Witch?
Hart, Melissa Joan. Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life. St. Martin's Griffin, 2015. Print.
