Melissa Joan Hart Recalls Almost Being Fired From 'Sabrina The Teenage Witch'

Melissa Joan Hart is opening up about her Sabrina The Teenage Witch days and recalled the moment when she was almost fired from the role.

As a guest on the Pod Meets World podcast where she looked back on her guest starring gig on Boy Meets World with the cast (it was a mini-crossover event), the 47-year-old actress shared the reason why she was almost booted from the show.

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Fans will remember that Melissa pushed some boundaries over doing a cover photo shoot for Maxim in 1999, where she appeared in her underwear.

“While I’m at my party that’s at Planet Hollywood, some of my clothes were being dedicated there,” she remembered. “My lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photoshoot for Maxim magazine? You’re being sued and fired from your show, so don’t talk to the press, don’t do anything.’”

Melissa said that she had done the shoot with encouragement from her publicist then: “I did a photo shoot for Maxim. It’s Maxim! Like of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.”

However, it seems that the big deal about how it tied into her being almost fired was that the cover mentioned not Melissa‘s name, but Sabrina.

“The magazine wrote, ‘Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch,’” she shared. “So in my contract it said I would never play the character naked. So here they were thinking I was in breach because I’m playing the character.”

Melissa looked at it was a silver lining though, as the movie she was in at the time, Drive Me Crazy, got a ton of press from it.

“I was like, ‘No, that was supposed to be me promoting my movie, it wasn’t supposed to be the character. I had no control over what they wrote on the cover. The silver lining here is that for weeks, the top news: ‘Can Melissa be sexy’?’ ‘Why is she being fired from her tv show?’ And all this drama. But it made for Drive Me Crazy to come out and be a huge success. It was insane.”

So, what did it take for her not to be fired? “I wrote an apology letter, and it was all gone.”