Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life

by Melissa Joan Hart

  Besides my hectic work schedule, I was frequently wiped from the intense energy I had to exert when we rolled tape; subscribing to the Nickelodeon school of acting was no stroll in the park. We’d have long, twelve-page scenes that we arduously rehearsed, and when it was time to shoot, we’d easily work on them for another hour and a half. I’m sure you’ve noticed that child actors on kids’ networks are abnormally peppy and overly expressive. My Clarissa peers and I were already energetic kids with a ton of personality, yet for some reason, this was never enough to satisfy directors. They wanted us to act like we were hyped up on nondrowsy cold meds. One of my favorite directors, named Chuck, was great at getting us pumped after ten draining takes by joking around, and if that didn’t work, telling us to “Shoot this one out of a cannon!”—as in, the scene—which became known as “Cannon take!” for short. Every time I heard those words, I had to blast ’em with more pizzazz than what felt natural. No wonder I had a hard time transitioning to more subtle and serious roles later in my career.

  The cast and crew worked six days a week, but only rolled cameras on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. When it came time to shoot, I was terrified that I’d mess up the five long monologues my character had to deliver, straight into the camera, every week. Because of this shooting style, there was no room for error, and if I made a mistake, we couldn’t do pickups, since monologues can’t be spliced together in editing. I had to get every single word correct or start over. That kind of pressure, in front of seventy-five-plus adults just watching and waiting to go home to their families, was intimidating. And though the monologues scared me, I also loved the adrenaline rush of nailing them in one or two takes. It was a welcome challenge, and I never back down from a challenge. I took great pride in knowing my lines, blocking, and even knowing other peoples’ lines; and I rarely, if ever, went blank when the cameras were rolling (or when I was up on stage earlier in my career, come to think of it). I also really loved shooting the flashbacks and dream sequences, since they let me act a little ridiculous, take on another character, and learn only a half page of lines, as opposed to the usual ten-page scene.

  * * *

  My Clarissa cast and crew made it a memorable place to spend four years. I’ve always been so lucky to work on shows that have a close-knit group. It sounds clichéd, but like a lot of actors who spend years on a hit television show, I thought of my Clarissa coworkers as a second family. They were all warm, caring, and loving to me in a way I’ll never forget. When you spend more time with over seventy-five new friends than your eight-person family, it can either be really special or really horrendous—and Clarissa was definitely special.

  We worked hard, but we also knew how to have a good time. Our young, mostly single crew went to a bar called Florida Bay nearly every Friday night, which gave me the social life I craved. Though I was underage, the bar let me tag along with my coworkers once they realized I wasn’t there to get wasted, not that I could convince anyone to sneak me some booze anyhow. It wasn’t until the show was about to end that my friend and dresser Michele, and her fiancé, David, ordered me my first tequila shot at Florida Bay. It was my drink of choice for years.

  Sean O’Neal, the actor who played my friend Sam, was a particularly good sport and sidekick. His role on the show was to be my close friend, and because Mitchell didn’t want him to go up the stairs or through the front door and talk to her parents every time, he made him come up a ladder through the bedroom window so we could start interacting faster. Sam was one of the first sitcom buddies who refused to use the front door, besides Vinnie on Doogie Howser, M.D. Joey on Dawson’s Creek, Bruh-Man on Martin, and Shawn on Boy Meets World soon followed. That ladder was only three rungs high and attached to hinges on the cement floor, so poor Sean had to lie flat on the floor with only a furniture blanket to cushion him, with the heavy and awkward ladder lying across his belly, for as long as it took us to get to his part of the scene. When his cue came, he’d throw the ladder against the windowsill, wait about three seconds, and then slowly crawl to his knees and eventually up the three rungs, over the sill, and into the room. If Sean was not a young able-bodied teen at the time, I doubt he would’ve been able to do this for four years without a lot of wear and tear to his body. And no, we never hooked up in real life, though I may have had a minor crush on him when we first started. Of course, after two days of working together, I knew we were more like brother and sister.

  My other on-set cohort was Jason Zimbler, who played my brother, Ferguson. He was always up for hanging out. We were both Yankees from the North who traveled to work, and when the show ended, we met up in Paris for the bat mitzvah of our foreign language teacher’s daughter. It was the last time we really hung out. We always got along, but believe me, we also knew each other’s secrets and how to push the other person’s buttons, much like real siblings do. Sean and Jason were the only peers I had for four years, so if I wanted to spend time with people my own age in Orlando, they were all I had. Sometimes I tried hanging out with the kids from The Mickey Mouse Club, like Keri Russell, but with our crazy work schedules and no driver’s license, it was logistically too hard to be friends.

  For a while, I kept in touch with the warm and wonderful Elizabeth Hess, who played my mom, Janet Darling. She introduced me to yoga and the ancient art of “breathing from your knees.” This was an inside joke between us. Elizabeth had taught me how to use my breath to relax parts of my body, and though it was a head-to-toe effort, I could never seem to loosen up below the knees. So during long, tedious scenes when we’d get the giggles, the only way we could calm down and refocus ourselves was for her to announce, “Breathe from your knees!” I still think of this when I’m tired, punchy, and need a minute for myself on set or at home. Years later, I also worked with my hilarious Clarissa dad, Joe O’Connor, when he guest-starred in a Christmas episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. The rest of us just went back to our regularly scheduled lives. We have different interests and lives than when we worked on the show.

  I’ll also never forget that little beast Elvis! Clarissa’s pet baby alligator was only on set a few times, though it seemed like more because we used the same close-up shot of him multiple times each season. I was fascinated by his reptilian ways, but I wasn’t allowed to touch him. It was for his good and ours. For safety reasons, the animal wranglers made sure that nobody had a chance to upset the alligator. I was also told that if he ever got his chompers on my fingers, he’d hold on so tight that when I tried to pull my hand away, the force could potentially yank out his itty-bitty teeth. Of course, after shooting an episode about bullies, I might have been able to show Elvis who’s boss.

  The bully episode was one of my favorites. Here I fall for the jock Clifford Spleenhurfer, who picks on Ferguson at school, but I enjoyed shooting it so much because I really learned how to box! I still have a mean right hook. The absolute best episode, though, was the Brain Drain episode, where Ferguson and I compete in a Double Dare–like game show. We slid down a small slide, covered in slime, and into a pool of goo. Usually when you do stunts, you only have to do it once. But we went down the contraption twice, with a shower in between, and we were a complete mess both times. It was disgusting for sure, but still exciting to get paid for being so sloppy. I’d never been slimed before, even though it was Nickelodeon’s signature move.

  * * *

  At the end of every season, there was always the chance that the show wouldn’t be renewed, so every finale of Clarissa came with a tearful good-bye and an excuse to cut loose. Most networks that aren’t too cheap throw the cast and crew decent wrap parties with music, alcohol, and food. I treated ours like the mixers I was missing out on in high school. I planned my outfits, danced the night away, and bugged people to sneak me a drink. They never did, since they wanted to keep me, and their jobs, safe. At the end of every wrap party, the crew gathered around as the DJ played The Allman Brothers’ “Melissa.” This was always a special but difficult moment for me, since good-byes came
next. Halfway through Clarissa’s fourth season, we learned the show would end. I knew I’d miss everyone, but I was turning eighteen and anxious to start my next adventure. At this wrap party, “Melissa” was especially heartbreaking. It was now our swan song.

  Being Clarissa was a great learning experience for me. I can’t exactly say that she knew it all, but the character sure did teach me a lot as I internalized my lines. She repeated famous quotes by people like the Dalai Lama and Queen Latifah, way before people did this on Twitter. During one of the first episodes, I had to say something about Tibet, but I’d never heard of this place before, so I said it quickly and rhymed it with the sound a frog makes—“ribbit.” This happened over and over, no matter how often the producers corrected me. (I also got tongue-tied saying “sibling relationships,” which came out “sibwing rewationships.” We must have done fifteen takes before I stopped sounding like Elmer Fudd.) I was even schooled in Wall Street 101. One of my favorite lines in the show was when Clarissa wanted to be an anchorwoman like Jane Pauley and was reporting the day’s news to the viewers. She starts by giving the financial report and talking about the Dow Jones, and then says, “Now who is this Dow Jones guy, and why does he keep going up and down?” I couldn’t have agreed more with this line and Clarissa’s POV as a kid, so my delivery was flawless. At fifteen, I had no idea what the Dow Jones was, and to be honest, I’m still hazy on it.

  It’s hard to let go of something special, but you have to know when to move on. We shot the pilot for a CBS spinoff called Clarissa Now in 1995, about Clarissa’s internship at a Manhattan paper. After production wrapped, Mitchell and I felt that we didn’t have as much freedom on a network as we did on cable to keep it going the way we liked. I think fans would have been disappointed if it went to air. Same goes for a reunion show. I don’t think it could ever be as fresh or relevant as the original Clarissa was. I don’t even know how I’d play the character now that I’m so much older, and I think it’s better to reminisce about the old days than try to recapture or reinvent them. People are always disappointed with a reunion anyway. Few people like high school reunions, let alone ones on TV. It would make me feel old and fat. And we’d all get that theme song stuck in our heads again.

  Na na na na. Na na na na.

  All right! All right!

  Na na na na na. Na na na na na.

  Way cool!

  Guess we know what you’ll be humming for the next two chapters.

  Chapter 6

  IS THAT TEEN SPIRIT I SMELL?

  I worked on Clarissa Explains It All from January of 1991 to December of 1993, from fourteen to seventeen years old. This age window is when most teenagers spend 90 percent of their time worrying that if they’re left out of anything—a conversation, a party, a double date—they won’t collect enough memories or feel amply prepared for what comes next. According to Glee, Taylor Swift, and my much younger siblings, navigating high school is a really significant part of being a teen. But bouncing between New York and Florida in high school meant I didn’t have the experiences that I hear all about. Even so, I didn’t miss it, and in a lot of ways, I think I was better off. I was too busy enjoying my early independence.

  I never cared about school-related traditions like homecoming, prom, or football games; I did like junior high dances, but more for the music and dancing than anything else. And while Clarissa’s stellar reviews meant instant cred to the show’s execs, I liked that I could be part of a great collaboration in another part of the country. When I did miss my family and good Chinese food, I reminded myself that I could make my own decisions in Florida, and that was huge. In Long Island, I never decided when to wake up, what to wear, what to eat, or even how to get out the door with clean hair and teeth. Until I was thirteen years old, Mom got my day started with chipper and instruction-packed drills: “Get up, buttercup! Wear the clothes on your bed, brush your teeth, and eat the Shredded Wheat on the table!” But down in the Sunshine State, I had to set an alarm at night and make grown-up choices, like what shampoo to use (Aveda) and which skincare products would keep me from breaking out (Clinique). I had to look like the competent pro everyone wanted me to be.

  Since I shot Clarissa in Florida for three weeks and then spent two weeks in New York on break, Mom hired a series of guardians to look out for me in Orlando. When I first got the part, she and Dad had four other kids to take care of, and Mom had to go with my sister Liz on a three-month job where she sang Broadway tunes on a Caribbean cruise ship. So I spent a lot of time with a rotating door of parental stand-ins. I had a new one every season. Mom and I can’t remember the order of my guardians, but I had some influential memories with each one.

  There was Marissa, who my mom found through a friend. For one season of the show, we lived together in a studio-owned condo, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. This was the first time in my life that I had my own room, let alone my own toilet. I was also stoked to have a roommate who wasn’t a relative. Marissa and I had a ton of fun together, and since the apartment wasn’t ours, it felt like I was crashing at an older cousin’s new pad, away from the chaos of home.

  We mostly spent time together at night, after I finished shooting for the day. Neither Marissa nor I knew how to make a proper meal, so most dinners were like a science experiment in our attempts to make something edible. We ate English muffin pizzas and fried zucchini, which counted as a vegetable. We also watched a lot of TV like The Cosby Show, A Different World, and Golden Girls, and she helped me “run lines” for work the next day—i.e., memorize my dialogue. Some nights, I’d take a dunk in our hot tub with whoever else I could rope into going, usually one of the writers or cast members like Jason. He and I lived in the same apartment complex and spent a lot of platonic time in the tub. Marissa didn’t worry. She knew we were never up to any shenanigans.

  Then there was Vicky, who also worked at Nick in the PR department. I got to know her when she and her team shot the Clarissa ads on the iconic itchy orange couch, which was used for promo pieces. I spent a lot of time hanging out in her cube when we weren’t shooting, so I begged Mom to let her be my guardian. She was probably ten years older than me, and about five years older than Marissa was, but we got along like peers—this time in a different fully furnished condo. (They moved me every season, though I’m not sure why.)

  As an adult, Vicky talked to me like an adult. She told me terrible date stories, like the night she went out with a tampon salesman who opened his trunk to offer her boxes of free samples. She came home with handfuls of the cotton plugs. Treating me like a peer, though, didn’t mean her decisions were always mature or responsible. We ate cookie dough for dinner while watching Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place. And once I convinced her to let me see Basic Instinct on opening night at the Pleasure Island Disney World movie theater. When the ticket guy wouldn’t sell her a ticket for me because I was underage, she dropped her voice a few octaves and whipped out the signed document that my mom had left her. It said she had full guardianship over me.

  “So you’re telling me that I can give permission for her to have open-heart surgery, but I can’t say that she can see this stupid movie?” she asked.

  Her argument got me into the film, though Vicky regretted the decision when we both crossed our legs tight during the scene in which Sharon Stone opens hers wide. Shortly thereafter, and unrelated to this incident as far as I know, Nickelodeon execs decided it was a conflict of interest for one of their employees to look after me while I was working there.

  Next up: a friend my mom met on a cruise, named Christine. She was a magician’s assistant, and my whole family called her “the Babe in the Box.” The Babe was a sexy, wild twenty-three-year-old, with long blond hair and even longer legs. Picture Jenny McCarthy during her say-anything/go-anywhere MTV Singled Out days. Mom thought the Babe was loads of fun, and when her tour was over, she asked her to be one of my guardians. I think Mom’s unlikely choice for a role model shows how much she trusted me to make sound decisions alon
e.

  What Mom didn’t count on was that the Babe’s hot body and bottle-blond looks would be tough for me to handle when it came to guys. I had such a crush on an older guy named Brandon who worked at the studio, and though the Babe knew it, I woke up one morning to learn he’d slept over. In her bed. He’d taught me how to drive a stick in his Nissan, but all along, he was hoping to take my nanny for a ride. Sex was constantly on my mind as a teen, and her having it with Brandon stung. The babe had practically stolen my man, like when Kelly stole Dylan from Brenda on 90210, except we weren’t dating and I was more of an Andrea. It hurt too much to split hairs.

  During Clarissa, I worked six days a week with scheduled days off, and on one of the few Saturdays I had free, one of the grips invited me and the Babe to go Jet Skiing on a nearby lake. I got such a rush pushing the machine to its limit that I repeatedly raced through the water until I was thrown off. Then I climbed back on before I let imaginary water moccasins or alligators get hold of me. When we got home from the lake, I noticed when I changed out of my bikini that I had my first “red dot special,” as I liked to call it.

  I was fourteen at the time, and all my other friends back in New York had already gotten their periods. Without my mom, sisters, or friends my own age to share this experience with, my only option was to tell the Babe. How did she handle my newfound womanhood? Well, after a few months of using pads, she decided I needed to graduate to the big leagues and use a tampon. She directed me to the bathroom to figure out how to use one, and it wasn’t fun. Though she thought she was being helpful, I found the whole experience to be terrifying and stressful. Thank God my female castmates and “the glam squad”—the wonderful girls in hair, makeup, and wardrobe—took a much gentler approach with me. Elizabeth Hess was so happy Aunt Flo visited that she gave me an African bead necklace she said celebrated a female’s womanhood. Between Elizabeth’s gesture and the copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves given to me by Erin Cressida Wilson, a fellow actor in the play Imagining Brad, I was set to be a lady. Looking back, I probably told too many people about this milestone. But that’s a recurring theme in my life—I rarely keep private moments to myself, because I like to celebrate them with others. I could never be a Hollywood bouncer: I let way too many people into my private parties.