We can all agree that Sabrina the Teenage Witch was one of the more iconic shows of the ’90s. Salem the Cat filing his nails? It simply doesn’t get more powerful.
But apparently there was some kind of (read: completely) ridiculous behind-the-scenes drama after Melissa Joan Hart did a photoshoot for the 1999 issue of Maxim.
During a convo on the Pod Meets World podcast (via E! News), Melissa said, “While I’m at my party that’s at Planet Hollywood, some of my clothes were being dedicated there, 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.'”
She added, “I did what my publicist told me to do, I did a photo shoot for Maxim. It’s Maxim! Like of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.”
Turns out, the Sabrina Powers That Be specifically took issue with Maxim using the name “Sabrina” on the cover—despite Melissa doing the shoot to promote her movie Drive Me Crazy. As she put it, “The magazine wrote, ‘Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch.’ 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…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.”
Melissa ended up having to write an “apology letter” to smooth things over, and said “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.”
Mehera Bonner is a celebrity and entertainment news writer who enjoys Bravo and Antiques Roadshow with equal enthusiasm, She was previously entertainment editor at Marie Claire and has covered pop culture for over a decade.
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