Melissa Joan Hart as Sabrina: The Teenage Witch.
Once again, I have decided to open up the interview vault and revisit some of the many interviews I have had the pleasure of writing over the years and that just appeared in-print and not on-line. Today's interview is with Melissa Joan Hart, who talks about making magic as Sabrina: The Teenage Witch. Enjoy, and keep coming back for more familiar faces and shows!
If you grew up reading Archie comics or watching him and the rest of his friends on Saturday morning TV then you may remember a certain teenage witch named Sabrina who was part of his cartoon gang. She made her comic book debut in 1962, and seven years later the character began her animated life as part of The Archie Show. She went on to star in several of her own cartoon shows including Sabrina: The Animated Series, which ran from 1999 to 2000. Melissa Joan Hart was the voice behind Sabrina’s wacky Aunts Hilda and Zelda Spellman, while her sister Emily Hart provided the voice of the teen witch herself. However, prior to this, in 1996, Melissa and her mother, executive producer Paula Hart, had brought the character to life for ABC in Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.
“One day, a friend of the family gave me and my mother a copy of the [Archie] comic strip featuring Sabrina,” recalls the show’s leading lady Melissa Joan Hart. “Like my mom, this woman is also a producer and she said to us, ‘I think this would be a great project for Melissa.’ So we took the idea to Viacom and they were interested in turning it into a film. We then met with the Showtime network and they agreed, so we shot the first Sabrina TV movie. My mom had felt that the concept would also make a terrific TV series. So we cut together a short trailer from the film and showed it to all the major networks. Three networks ended up bidding on it at the same time and we went with ABC.”
A veteran film, TV and theatre actress at the age of 26, Hart was already a familiar face on the small screen from having played the tile role on Nickelodeon’s award-winning TV series Clarissa Explains It All. Over the course of four years and 65 episodes, the actress endeared herself to the show’s viewers by creating a believable character in Clarissa. She has managed to do the same on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.
“Sabrina was very naïve during the show’s first two seasons,” notes the actress. “She was a young girl who wasn’t sure of herself and didn’t know how to fit in. Of course, it only added to her troubles when in our first episode her aunts told her she’s a witch. To be honest, though, it sometimes got a bit boring playing that kind of character. A lot of people thought Sabrina was similar to Clarissa because they were both high school students. However, they were, in fact, quite different. Clarissa was headstrong and resourceful. She could figure her way out of most situations. Sabrina, on the other hand, was always going to other people for help.
“As the series went on, I wanted to make Sabrina more appealing to the audience because I knew that a whiney, wimpy character only works for so long. So she began to take on more responsibility and became the problem solver in a lot of the episodes. She still turns to others for advice, especially Aunt Hilda [Caroline Rhea] and Aunt Zelda [Beth Broderick] as well as Salem the cat [voiced by Nick Bakay], but at least it’s not all the time. Suddenly, people are asking Sabrina for help. She tends to befriend every new character that comes on the show in one way or another. If someone is having a problem she tries to help by using magic, which usually backfires. Of course, that’s all part of the fun,” she laughs.
In the fifth season of Sabrina, the bewitching teen graduated high school and took her first step into adulthood when she enrolled in John Adams College along with her friend Josh (David Lascher). This year, friendship has blossomed into love for Sabrina and Josh, who still doesn’t know that his girlfriend is a witch. As their relationship grows it becomes somewhat more complex, especially when Sabrina leaves her job at Hilda’s Coffeehouse and takes a position as an intern at the local newspaper where Josh also works as a photographer. To further complicate matters, an old flame of Sabrina’s is back in town.
“I think Sabrina and Josh have a very mature relationship this [sixth] season,” muses Hart. “We show my character as being secure, strong and loving, which is a combination that a sit-com actress doesn’t often get to play, unless you’re someone like Patricia Heaton [Everybody Loves Raymond]. I hope that I’m portraying a good role model for girls. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the future has in store for Josh and Sabrina, although I do know that David’s contract is up this year. Harvey [Nate Richert] is back on the show this season, so perhaps he and Sabrina might become an item again. We’ll have to wait and see.
“Overall, I have to say the fifth and sixth seasons have been our best yet,” continues the actress. “First off, we’re on a new network [the WB], so it feels sort of like I got my own spin-off. I was able to take Sabrina to college and continue her development, new characters were added to the series for us to play off of, and a new writing team came in to give Sabrina a new voice. Many of these writers worked on [the sit-com] Home Improvement, and they’re wonderful at writing comedy but with a serious side that doesn’t whack you over the head. They have a very light, fun way of getting certain life lessons across to audiences. That’s not always easy on Sabrina because the people who own the rights to these characters are somewhat particular about what we can and cannot say and/or do on the show.
“There was an episode we did this year called Cloud Ten which had in it, I guess you could say, drug innuendoes. We couldn’t really come right out and tell the viewers, ‘Don’t do drugs, they’re bad!’ Instead, what the writers did was give Sabrina a choice of whether to study or go to Cloud Ten and have fun. Of course, she decided to go to Cloud Ten and, after a while, got confused, lost track of time and fell off the cloud. She hit the ground really hard and afterwards realized what she’d done was wrong. I thought it was such a clever analogy to taking drugs in order to feel good and what can happen when you come down off that high.”
When it comes to her favorite episodes, Hart enjoys those that require physical comedy. “If I can find any moment in a script where I can use my body to make people laugh then I’m going to do it,” she says. “There was one episode where Sabrina passes a little gas in front of the class. Everyone was worried that I wouldn’t like the script and wouldn’t let myself be seen doing something like that on TV. Well, I thought it was hilarious. Sabrina bends over in science class during a talk on jet propulsion and all of a sudden the whole class hears her ‘toot.’ That’s not so much physical comedy as it is kind of over-the-top humor but I still enjoy situations like that.”
Like most fantasy-based TV shows each episode of Sabrina features a number of special and/or visual effects. Was it difficult for the cast to get used to dealing with such elements? “It was a little tough in the first season because we were all new to that sort of thing and weren’t quite sure how the effects were going to be done,” explains Hart. “After six years, though, we’ve got it down to a science. We have wonderful special effects people and everyone knows what they’re doing. For instance, if we know we’re going to blue screen the grips know how to set it up, the painters know it has to be painted and dry before anyone gets there, the camera crew knows to set up in a certain place, etc.
“That’s the neat thing about this set – everyone works together,” adds the actress. “It’s not a diva set. Nobody is complaining or whining, ‘I’m not doing that. That’s not my job.’ We’re all here for the same reason, which is to make the best TV show possible, make people laugh, and then go home to our families. I made sure it was that way right from start. Heck, I’ve taken a screwdriver and helped pull up sets. I’m not about to just sit on the side and worry about my lines. I’d rather pitch in, learn new things, have fun and collaborate on this big project that we all love.”
Besides working in front of the camera, Hart has also directed several episodes of Sabrina. “Now that can be really hard,” she says. “I have to try to remember my lines along with my shots and blocking as well as everyone else’s blocking and lines. It was, I think, the fifth episode I directed. I went through all my scenes, checked the blocking, looked at all the line changes for the day, etc. I went home that night feeling as if I’d forgotten something. I woke up the next morning at 5 a.m. and realized I forgot to learn my lines. We had 20 pages of script to do that day. Luckily, my boyfriend at the time drove me to work and I sat in the passenger seat trying to memorize my dialogue. So directing can get tricky, but I also find it to be fun and exciting. It’s a challenge I very much enjoy.”
While some actors or actresses might tire of working on a TV series for a number of years, Hart’s enthusiasm for Sabrina has not waned. She is looking forward to starting work later this summer on the show’s seventh season. “I can’t imagine Sabrina ending,” she says. “I’d be heartbroken if I couldn’t see this cast and crew every day. We have a great time together. People will ask me, ‘Aren’t you tired of the show after all these years? Don’t you want to give it up?’ Not yet! When the time does come for me to move on I hope I get the opportunity to step into the shoes of different characters and explore other options in this business.
“For now, though, I’m happy playing a teenage witch.”
Steve Eramo
