Melissa Joan Hart on Mourning ‘Melissa & Joey’ & Why ‘Clarissa’ Deserves Another Chapter

Melissa Joan Hart has practically grown up on television starting as a toddler in commercials. From there, she gained initial fame through her teen years first on Clarissa Explains It All and then playing the titular character on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Over recent decades the actress, who also works as a producer and director, has evolved into adulthood as career woman and mom Mel Burke on Melissa & Joey. 

These days she has enjoyed challenging herself past comedy including the most recent Lifetime movie Killing the Competition. This project makes a dozen films for the network where the 48-year-old dipped her toes into true-crime.

Here Joan-Hart looks back on her favorite roles and updates us on an iconic one she’d love to revisit most. 

On Lifetime you started with Christmas movies and then veered into drama. What do you like more right now? 

Melissa Joan Hart: I like both. The Christmas movies are so nice and romantic and pretty. It’s really fun to do a little comedy with some lighter fare you know people are going to lean into in the wintertime. Then to be able to get gritty with this true-crime stuff has been really fun. Dirty Little Secret was about a hoarder. It was really interesting to get into the psychology of this hoarding mindset. I talked to a psychiatrist and talked to a bunch of people about hoarding behavior. I love that aspect of it. Like [Killing the Competition] where it’s why would someone do this? Why would they behave like this? 

Not to mention Would You Kill for Me? The Mary Bailey Story. 

I love that one because it was told from three different perspectives of a murder mystery of whodunnit. They are really fun. For that one, I had to understand why a mom and a grandma, because I was playing a grandma, I spanned 40 to 55 in the movie. Eventually, I’m a grandmother of a 12-year-old. I can’t understand what happens from my perspective. I have a fiercely protective mama bear personality. So I didn’t understand why she stood by and let her daughter and granddaughter be abused by this man. Why wouldn’t she stand up to him? Then I had to dive into abuse psychology cycles within families. I gave her bad posture. I took  it slow. I thought I’m going to be a hunchback. I’m going to flinch when I hear a loud noise. I love all that layering in these personalities and learning. It’s why we get into acting. We put on different skin and become different people and tell different stories. With the true-crime, I get to do that. 

 

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On social media you marked that it was 10 years since Melissa & Joey ended. How do you look back at that time? That’s one show I’d love to see more of. 

It was amazing. I wish I could have enjoyed it more. We had just moved to the East Coast. So, for five years I had to end up going to the West Coast doing that show. Unfortunately, most of that show I was missing my family. Until I had my son Tucker. Then they moved back to California for a little while half the year. It was a little tough for me personally in that way. Man, though did we have fun. What a crew. What a writing staff. What a cast. We respected each other. Every night we would say a prayer before we went out for the live show and say, “Let us give someone a laugh who needs it.” That’s what we’re in it for. We’re not here to cure cancer. We’re not there to get a guy to Mars. We were there to make someone laugh. That was our job. We took that job very seriously while also realizing it’s not that serious, people. We were so blessed to be doing what we were doing. 

How hard was it to walk away? 

The hardest part of doing that sitcom is you never know if the show will be one season like my show No Good Nick on Netflix was or 10 seasons. You don’t know if you’re in this for a year or 10 years. Your personal life suffers a little bit while you navigate how long is this show going to last. You’re hoping it does. I’ve never grieved a character like I grieved Mel. Mainly, probably because I didn’t know the shows were definitely ending. Sabrina, we were lucky because we got picked up for three seasons. We knew we were coming back for a few years. Then when we wrapped up the seventh season we were like, “We might not come back, but we’re supposed to come back in the fall. Who knows?” Clarissa, I always thought we were ending and then came back. 

I never got to grieve for the character. Playing Mel was the greatest Joy. She was such a flawed character in so many great and funny ways. It was kind of the sweet spot of my life. I had my kids, but I’m still feeling good. Waking up without a crick in my neck. Still young enough to not need glasses to read the script on set. All the sweet spot stuff. I had a baby and was able to bounce back. Then I was able to be really hilarious with this character. In the weeks we knew it wasn’t coming back, man, I cried. “I’ll neve get to play her again!” With other shows it was more, “Okay, time to move on.” This one I was more, “I never get to be her again. She will go away and neve come back “ 

You never know with reboots and revivals. 

I know. I think Fuller House was just starting at that time, so it wasn’t really a thing yet. Unfortunately, I think with Melissa & Joey that network doesn’t really exist anymore. A lot of people found the show during COVID and didn’t watch it when it was initially on. So that was interesting. 

So you’d do a sitcom again? 

Oh yeah, any time. Anytime. I’m always up for sitcom. I’ll go guest star on something. Actually, I’m directing a lot of them just because I love humor. They say laughter is the best medicine, and I believe it’s true. 

Melissa Joan Hart and Valerie Loo in Killing the Competition. (Lifetime)

You’ve been on set on other shows for maybe an episode or two. What’s one set you wish you could have spent more time on and a character more time with? 

I did have fun on That ’70s Show. I got to play a good Christian girl who ends up having a bit of a wild side. She ends up with Fez (Wilmer Valderrama). I did an episode of Just Shoot Me!. That was weird because I wasn’t used to the sitcom life audience situation and how a script can change from Monday to Friday. I feel like for Just Shoot Me!, the script we read at the table read on Monday was completely different from the one on Friday. I had never worked like that before. We’ve always made changes within and maybe there were chunks of scenes that got fixed. I swear you could have shot Monday’s episode and it would be totally different than on Friday. 

I got to play David Spade’s prom date. It was a little bit Never Been Kissed where David Spade’s character had to go undercover at a high school and pretends to be a high schooler and takes me to prom. That was really fun. I put myself in The Goldbergs because I was directing. There was a role for the flight attendant, and I was like, “Can I play the flight attendant?” I had actually never been more nervous after directing a few episodes of a show, and then all of a sudden stepping in front of the camera for one scene and all of a sudden I was shaking. Like now I have to act when they’ve only seen me direct. 

Melissa Joan Hart on Clarissa Explains It All; Nickelodeon/ Courtesy: Everett Collection

A couple of years ago fans were excited about possibly getting more Clarissa Explains It All. Talks reportedly stalled. Is it really dead in the water or is there a glimmer of hope we might see Clarissa Darling again? 

Let me put it this way. There is so much red tape. The business of it, between network and studio and the production companies involved and who owns it. All that is so complicated. Getting these shows up and running again isn’t as easy as I want to do a show again. Although I do think Clarissa deserves another chapter. More so than Sabrina or Melissa & Joey. I feel like those capped off really well, as much as I’ve flirted with the idea of doing any of them. Clarissa seems like the right one to bring back because it’s more of a cult sleeper hit. 

It wasn’t popular at the time. Then people saw it in reruns and now it’s able to be streamed on Paramount+. Now people are finding it again. I think there was one season that was released on VHS and that was it. There was no way for people to see it, but now it’s easier to see people are sharing it with their kids. It’s started to get a second life. I feel like her story didn’t end. It sort of stopped. We didn’t have a happily ever after. A closing of the book, the end. I feel like it could just keep going. I don’t know. I’m not going to say I’d never do it. I’m just saying it would be really difficult and I’m not sure who owns it and where it lies. 

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Where do you think she’d be now? 

We did do a CBS pilot Clarissa Now. We did  after Clarissa. We shot it in New York City. It was with a stellar comedy cast. Clarissa goes and works at a newspaper in New York City. She takes a journalism job and moves to New York. We shot it over two weeks at Silvercup Studios. I was living in New York and working in Orlando for Clarissa. I was in Los Angeles for Sabrina and moved there, too. I moved to Connecticut doing Melissa & Joey. I’m in Nashville for No Good Nick. I’m always moving around. To do that pilot, I was dreaming that if I had a series in New York City, it would be so cool to be at Silvercup Studios. I grew up in Long Island. It’s such a big deal. There is a pilot floating around somewhere but I think she would be in journalism in New York City. She belongs in the East Village doing what she loves. 

Killing the Competition, Mylifetime.com with a cable subscription and on VOD platforms such as Amazon and iTunes.