Sabrina the Teenage Witch Star Melissa Joan Hart Was Nearly Fired Over Maxim Photo Shoot

Melissa Joan Hart starred as the titular character on Sabrina the Teenage Witch from 1996 to 2003, but her time casting spells almost came to a sudden halt in 1999 over a photoshoot. During a recent appearance on the Pod Meets World podcast (via Entertainment Weekly), hart revealed a photoshoot for Maxim magazine that featured her in her underwear nearly got her fired from the popular series in what she called “the worst day of my life.”

Hart explained that in the course of one evening, she broke up with her boyfriend, was dropped from a movie, and found out that she might be being fired from Sabrina the Teenage Witch over the Maxim photos.

“I was breaking up with a boy that night because I decided I no longer wanted a relationship with him,” Hart recalled of how her evening — the night of the Drive Me Crazy movie premiere in 1999 — started. “I had to wait on the red carpet. They wanted me to wait in my car for, like, an hour for Britney [Spears] to show up so we could do photos together. And I was like, ‘Can I just go, start doing the press?’ But nope, You’ve got to wait for Britney.’”

Hart went on to explain that after they did the photos, she left to. head to the airport to go shoot Scary Movie where she was supposed to appear as the character murdered in the beginning and she was already crying and upset over the boyfriend situation, but before they got to the airport, she got a call saying she’d been dropped from the film and needed to go to a Planet Hollywood after-party event instead and that’s when things got even worse for Hart.

“While I’m at the party, my lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?’” she said. “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.’ So, I get a 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.”

As it turns out, Hart was accused of violating her Archie Comics contract that said she’d never play her character naked and Maxim had ran their cover with the line “Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch.” Ultimately, Hart was not fired because they “had no ground to stand on” and she had to write an apology letter.

Will there be a reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch?

While the Archie Comics series of the same name got a darker Netflix adaptation with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, there have been no plans for a reboot of Hart’s series, though she’s not entirely opposed to the idea.

“I think it would be so much fun to be back with those people,” Hart said. “I would want to assemble the same crew and cast. I see the appeal of it, for sure. And I would like to see what kind of storylines they’d come up with, but it would have to be done right.”

She added, “I would say, ‘Never say never.’”

Sabrina the Teenage Witch Recently Moved to Prime Video

Earlier this year, all seven seasons of Sabrina the Teenage Witch became available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Sabrina the Teenage Witch first debuted in 1996 and ran for seven seasons — the first four airing on ABC and the final three on The WB — with the series ending in 2003. The series followed Sabrina (Hart), a teenager who learns on her 16th birthday that she has magical powers. She lives with her aunts, Hilda (Rhea) and Zelda (Broderick) who happen to be 600-year-old sorceresses themselves, as well as Salem, a talking cat who is actually a 500-year-old witch sentenced to a century as a talking cat for trying to take over the world.