The actress recalled that day being one of the worst days of her life.
When it rains it pours. Just ask Melissa Joan Hart, who recalled the fateful day in 1999 when she broke up with her boyfriend, got canned from Scary Movie and -- following a Maxim photo shoot -- and nearly got sued and fired from her iconic show, Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
The 47-year-old actress recalled the ordeal while on the Pod Meets World podcast, after its hosts -- Boy Meets World's Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong -- brought up a Sept. 29, 1999, photo of her and Britney Spears at the New York premiere of their romcom, Drive Me Crazy.
After the trio referenced the photo, Hart shared that she wasn't her usual smiley self that day. And, if anyone needed evidence, Hart said to take a closer look at the photo (shown below).
"If you look at my eyes, I'd been crying all evening," she said.
She said she was "breaking up with a boy that night because I decided I no longer wanted a relationship with him." Making matters worse, Hart had been up since 4 a.m. promoting the film. At the premiere, she posed for photos with Britney, but she wasn't exactly in the mood to crack a smile.
"At the time, I thought this was like the worst day of my life," Hart said.
After posing for photos with Britney, Hart said she was driven to the airport to catch a flight to Vancouver, where she was supposed to film a scene in Scary Movie. But, while on her way to the airport, Hart said she got a phone call and was told she had been fired from Scary Movie. So, the limo turned around and drove her to a Drive Me Crazy party at Planet Hollywood. She was psyched about going to the party, but then she saw her lawyer there.
"My lawyer shows up and goes, 'You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?' 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 phone call on my cell phone from my mother -- my producer -- who's like, 'What did you do?'" she continued. "I'm like, 'I don't know. Whatever my publicist told me to do on the red carpet or at the photo shoot. Like, I did a photo shoot for Maxim. It's Maxim! Like, of course, you're gonna be in your underwear.' They're like, 'What did you do?' I'm like, 'I don't know.' They're like, 'We're being fired form the show.' I'm like, 'Oh, my god.' So, I'm crying."
Hart ultimately revealed that the reason why she almost got fired from the hit sitcom -- which aired from 1996 to 2003 on ABC and the WB -- was because she was accused of violating her Archie Comics contract, which she said read, in part, that she "would never play the character naked." She said that the Maxim story included a line that read, "Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch."
But the firing and lawsuit never materialized, Hart said, because Archie Comics "had no ground to stand on." She also wrote an apology letter to the company, and that seemed to appease Archie Comics brass.
In a statement to Variety, a spokesperson for Archie Comics said it "knows nothing and has heard nothing about this, and it was decades before the current administration at Archie. It's ancient history."
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