Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life

by Melissa Joan Hart

  * * *

  My demanding Sabrina schedule was the same as it had been for Clarissa—three weeks on, with either one or two weeks off—which Mom had suggested to the network. We rehearsed Monday and Tuesday, with a table read on Monday morning and a run-through of the entire show on Tuesday evening. We began filming Wednesday at 8 A.M., which meant I was in the hair and makeup chair by 6 A.M., and worked Thursday and Friday until the episode was complete. We put in ten- to twelve-hour days, and on Fridays, sixteen to twenty. In the beginning, we killed ourselves ironing out special-effects wrinkles, like how to make Sabrina’s spells look real or get that damn cat to talk. I’ve never felt more grateful to the Screen Actors Guild than I did during this period, since they have a strict rule that if actors work within twelve hours of a wrap time, the studio is fined a steep monetary penalty. No wonder I took frequent naps on any furniture I could find around set (okay, so my up-all-night social life didn’t help). The crew thought it was funny to take Polaroid shots of me in umpteen odd locations and costumes and, at the end of each year, hand me a photo album full of my most embarrassing, mouth-wide-open snooze pics. As my husband says, I look like a Venus flytrap when I sleep. I’m sure a spider or two has made its way into my yap over the years.

  Though Clarissa helped prep me for a taxing sitcom schedule, Sabrina was much more demanding in some ways, though at least I didn’t have to find time for school between scenes. On Sabrina, we shot thirty scenes a week, compared to Clarissa’s ten, which was tough to fit into three days, especially with various talking animals, elaborate setups, and special effects. The upside of this was that the scenes were also shorter, which meant significantly less memorization—no more four-page Clarissa-style monologues for me. Sabrina’s tone also took some getting used to. While Clarissa’s episodes were clever, zingy, and sagacious with a happy ending, Sabrina was more about escapist fantasies—skiing on Mars or visiting my eccentric Aunt Vesta, played by the fabulous Raquel Welch, at her home in the Pleasure Dome. I didn’t need to put as much effort into being a compelling, realistic, and relatable character with Sabrina, either. It was all about delivering the joke, which is a different type of skill and comes more naturally to me.

  Though I was always a professional, knew my lines, and showed up for every rehearsal and stage blocking, I worked hard but rarely went that extra mile. Part of the reason for this is because Sabrina’s directors didn’t push me as intensely as Clarissa’s did; maybe it’s because I was an adult, or because I was the show’s executive producer, or because I wasn’t afraid to push back. Also, for the first time ever, my life was much bigger than just my job. I had a serious boyfriend, partied at night, and made the most of living in Los Angeles as a newly minted transplant. I often thought about that Bush song “Come Down”—I don’t want to come back down from this cloud/It’s taken me all this time to find out what I need—and hoped the other shoe wouldn’t drop. I had Mom on set, James coming by, close friendships with the cast and crew, professional freedom—and it all felt really good. There was little work/life separation, but whatever. Why fix what wasn’t broken?

  The only unusual consequence of this overlap was that I sometimes internalized Sabrina’s personality. If the character was in a crummy mood in my script, I’d be in a terrible mood all week while shooting. If Sabrina was addicted to pancakes, I found myself eating more of them that week, too. If Sabrina was having boy trouble, I’d get pissed off at whoever I was dating until we moved on to a new episode. In fact, Sabrina spent most of the final season in 2003 preparing for her wedding to Aaron, played by Dylan Neal, and sure enough, I’d also become engaged to my real-life husband, Mark, and was planning a wedding. I wish I could say I was going all method, but when work and life overlap the way mine did, it’s bound to leave an impression on both. By the time my wedding day rolled around, I was a pro at lifting all that lace and taffeta to use the toilet.

  During my first few seasons, I spent a lot of free time with Eryn and Christine in makeup, Ralph in hair, and Kimi in wardrobe. When your face sits inches from someone else’s for as many hours as mine did, you can’t help but develop feelings for them. I’d brought my friend Colleen with me from Clarissa as my key hairstylist, since we had a special bond; she was the first to inspire me to take care of myself with Denise Austin workouts, aromatherapy, massage, wheatgrass, and praying to Saint Theresa. During Sabrina’s hiatuses, I took lots of trips with friends from the glam squad. It wasn’t hard to turn buckets of tequila, impromptu tattoos, and a black eye into “remember when?” stories with these women. They’re all a little older than me, and were constants in my life, so our friendships grew at a healthy, steady pace. I made Kimi my son Brady’s godmother, partly due to how close we became during a Live with Regis and Kathie Lee press appearance in the Bahamas, where we broke into a waterslide park after hours while wearing our jeans. And even now, Eryn, Kimi, Christine, and I keep a “ya-ya book,” inspired by the one in the novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. We pass the scrapbook to each other when there’s been a significant moment in our lives—childbirth, Emmy nominations, new homes, divorces, weddings—and record them for posterity.

  I became fast and furious friends with the cast closer to my age too, though most of these relationships fizzled after the show ended. Even so, we were good for each other at the time. A lot of us were new to L.A., ready to take the city by storm, and in my twenties, that was plenty. I spent a lot of time with a redheaded stoner named Parker, who was a production assistant (PA) on set; a laid-back surfer named Todd, one of our camera assistants; my music-loving costar Nate, who played Harvey and was always up for anything; and Michelle, who I’d met on the set of Showtime’s Sabrina, where she played Marnie but now was Jennie, Sabrina’s best friend. (It was basically the same role, but with a new name.) My boyfriend, James, was also part of the gang, since like him, all the guys came from small or suburban towns and had that in common. Mainly, we threw hot tub parties and rowdy BBQs, and took trips to see bands and comics around the city. We also hung out at the beach, the lake, or the mountains. By the show’s second season, Michelle was replaced by Lindsay Sloane, who, during our first season, worked on the soundstage across from us on a show called Mr. Rhodes, which was later canceled. She and Nate had already fallen hard for each other during his first season on Sabrina (no other on-set, or on-lot, romances—sorry!), so when she was part of the cast and our clique, she played my newest friend and became one in real life.

  * * *

  Sabrina’s first four seasons ran on ABC from September 1996 to May 2000, and the final three on The WB Television Network from September 2000 to April 2003. While I had a great run on Nickelodeon, I was thrilled to learn how a big-time network gives your show every opportunity to succeed. We had loads of advertising and promotion, press, and a budget that made sure we were all well paid, our special effects wowed, and our guest stars were big names. ABC also personally treated us like royalty. Because its parent is The Walt Disney Company, they sent us on special trips to Disneyland for charity work or to shoot an episode that promoted their newest theme park, Animal Kingdom at Disney World in Orlando. Mickey Mouse is the ultimate boss.

  ABC also gave me a chance to do more than act: this was the first time I’d executive produced a sitcom. In this role beside Mom, one of the things I enjoyed most was helping to round out the cast with the other leads and supporting actors. I loved being part of auditions, because as a fellow actor who’s suffered through these intimidating and humiliating feats, I know it helps to have a real actor read the script’s other parts, instead of the usual casting director. Too many times I’ve had to profess my love for a boy, while staring into the eyes of a middle-aged woman—who, by the way, was criticizing and judging my every facial twitch. Having me stand in also helped us all make casting decisions based on who I felt a great connection with.

  Whether I was on a show or in a play, I’d always wanted to be at its helm and help impact its final look. And because of Sabrina
, I got my Directors Guild of America (DGA) card. Though Clarissa directors were always generous with their time and insights, most directors got annoyed with my constant refrain: “Wouldn’t it be better if…” and “What about if I just…” So when Mom and the network asked me to direct an episode, I was ecstatic. Every time I read a script, I imagined the scene in a specific way, so I was excited to be able to make that visual come to life now—if only I could do it justice. I was also scared that I couldn’t handle a cast and crew while acting myself. How would I prepare to say my lines and yell “Action!” at the same time? Could I perform and guide those around me? Was it possible to do this without pissing everyone off?

  To watch me juggle two jobs at once, you’d think I was acting in some kind of farce—but believe it or not, this is how it’s done. So first, I got my makeup done while positioning the cameras. I ran on set, had my first AD (assistant director) call “Action!” and then I delivered my performance. While I was acting, I watched the other performances with a director’s eye and yelled “Cut!” when the scene was over, even if I was in it. Then I ran back behind the camera to either watch what we’d just done replayed on a monitor, or, to save time, trust the camera operators to tell me if we got the shot “in the can.” This was physically and mentally draining, not to mention embarrassing when I got naked in front of the crew for a quick wardrobe change because I didn’t have time to run back to my trailer.

  The best advice I got about how to direct a good scene, which I still use to this day, is to remember that it’s all about storytelling. As a director, my job was simply to build a narrative, one element at a time. Harder, I found, was learning to trust my instincts when I did this. I remember setting up a shot for a coffeehouse scene, and I wasn’t sure how to open it. I asked Bill, our director of photography (DP), or cinematographer, for his input. Bill was my close friend when I wasn’t directing and a bit of a bulldog when I was. His tough-love response: “I don’t know. You’re the director.” I was shocked that he’d hang me out to dry on my first directing gig, but it was really his way of reminding me that I had to crystallize my vision, so I could manage naysayers and any challenges that came up. It’s a lesson I still appreciate—that the director has to be prepared to make quick, solid decisions at a moment’s notice. For the scene, I went with a dolly move right across some fake jack-o’-lanterns in the foreground and pushed into the cast at the coffee counter. It was a smooth move, I have to say.

  Bill’s words rang truest, though, during one of my proudest directing moments ever, ever, ever. During a Christmas episode, the script required a shot at the end of the show in which Soleil Moon Frye, who played my college roommate Roxie, and Kate Jackson, as her mom, ice-skated on a pool that Sabrina had magically frozen from her hotel room above. With me in the window, I wanted to shoot from Sabrina’s point of view: looking down on the two women ice-skating below. But without a real pool, ice, or even ice-skates on set (it was a cement stage), Mom and the other producers discouraged me from doing it. They suggested I shoot from below the actors, chopping off their feet above the Rollerblades and tilting up.

  Their idea didn’t match my vision of the story, so I decided to trust my instincts. I got down on the floor with a broom, called in four chorus singers we’d used throughout the episode, and asked Cindy from set-dressing to bring me a very long swag of green Christmas garland from the living room set. I arched the garland, as if it was on the outside edge of a pool, swept all the clumped, fake snow against it as if they were frozen ice chunks on the surface of a pool, surrounded the area with the chorus kids, and finally put Soleil and Kate in Rollerblades, just below frame so that the shot started at their ankles and you didn’t see their actual skates. A little ingenuity made the shot shine from above, just the way I wanted it. My mom and the producers were so impressed, and I felt beyond validated. The move gave me real cred with the cast and crew, not to mention the confidence to take chances during future directing challenges.

  One of the reasons I think I get so much pleasure from directing is that I’ve always been enamored with “the magic of television,” and the ability to make fiction look like familiar reality. A good example might be how Sabrina took place in Boston but was really shot in L.A. on Paramount’s Stage 14, or on the New York backlot street. Every great Hollywood lot has a New York City street set—one of the many tricks of the trade. They’re only a few blocks long and include fake storefronts and brownstone steps that resemble Manhattan’s. Since Boston’s streetscapes can look like New York’s—if you tilt your head and squint really hard—we got away with fudging this when we needed a street scene on Sabrina. The rest of the time, we got visually creative. For Aunt Hilda’s wedding, an episode I directed, we used a small, hedged area at the front of the studio by the main gate, and for the Spellman family secret episode, when my evil twin and I are about to be sacrificed on top of a volcano, we stood on a ledge made from two-by-fours and papier-mâché, in a parking lot where my car was parked two feet away. Possibly the best sleight of hand from that episode, though, was how you’d never know I spent most of the volcano shoot puking my guts up from a nasty flu. The glam squad kept my hair and makeup neat and smudge-free, and our wonderful key grip Phil stood behind the ledge the whole time to catch me if I passed out.

  Some of Sabrina’s most fantastical stunts were about the magic, from a vacuum that flew to clothing that changed itself. Even during the opening sequence for the first three seasons, I posed in front of a magic mirror in the same three costumes and then—poof!—the fourth look was different every week and worked back to a quip about the outfit. We took this cue from The Simpsons, whose credits always began with Bart scribbling a new sentence on the blackboard and ended with the whole family on the sofa in an unexpected arrangement every time. Though the final result of our opening titles looked professional when it aired each week, the process did cause some unscripted giggles around set. We shot a handful of title shots at the end of one Friday a month, so I’d wear a baseball player costume one minute and change into a fruity Carmen Miranda costume the next. And since Fridays were our late nights during those first few years, we were already really punchy. As I tried stuff on, Eryn, Kimi, and I came up with dirty versions of what I could say about my outfit. One of my favorites went with a reindeer costume for the Christmas episode: “I’m a horny little piece of tail. Nice rack, huh?” Viewers never saw these, but the crew looked forward to when we’d air the gag reel at our wrap party each season.

  Then, of course, there’s the best trick of all: Salem, the talking cat—a clever, devilish sweetheart. Everywhere I go, people ask me about that animal. Was he real? Who made him talk? And of course, they always want to know as I’m bolting through the airport or down the sidewalk chasing my kids. For a while, I considered walking around with a black sock in my back pocket to use as a puppet when it came up to throw people off (and when I was busy, get them to leave me alone). But honestly, I was always amazed at how many moving parts brought Salem to life.

  First, there were live felines. When we shot a real cat, there were actually about seven Salems per scene, plus our animal trainer, Cathy, and her crew of wranglers to help them “act” out their parts. Each cat had a different talent: one liked to be held, one liked to lie down, one liked to run, one liked to chase things, and so on. I was fond of Witch, the cuddly older Salem who liked lying in my arms, and one of its kittens, named Warlock, who never met a ball of yarn he didn’t attack. Of course, the real cats didn’t always behave according to the script. Sometimes they wandered, sometimes they scratched. By the end of each season, our sets reeked like tuna-flavored Fancy Feast from all the food placed under tables or next to props to entice the kitties to do their stunts.

  In addition to the real cats, we had two animatronic ones and two stuffed kitties that shared the name “Stuffy.” Stuffy looked just like the animatronic version but without the mechanics inside. He was mainly used during rehearsals to show the cat’s placement and blocking, but onc
e in a while, we’d tie a string around Stuffy to drag him behind a moving prop, or throw him across doorways or out from behind the couch. I always laugh at those scenes, because with all the money we spent on special effects, we still pitched toys across the room like in an SNL skit (Stuffy versus Laser Cats! I’d pay to see that battle). To make Salem look like he was talking, we had three highly trained puppeteers, two of whom stood off to the side with remote controls that looked like the kind that manipulated toy boats and trains. One puppeteer controlled Salem’s mouth and cheeks, and a second, its ears and eyes. Then there was Mauri, our third hand, who had the least comfortable job of all: she moved Salem’s body and tail from hiding spots, like under a cramped table or tucked inside a cabinet. Lucky for her, she was tiny. (Her big, red, curly hair was the hardest part to hide.) Every time we finished a Salem scene, the whole crew yelled, “Power down, Mauri!” to tell her she could shut off the cat and come out from her hiding spot. It became one of our inside jokes. Beyond the tight squeeze, Mauri’s job was scary dangerous when other wild animals shared the spotlight with Salem. Cathy, our wrangler, also brought these each week—elephants, donkeys, and lions, oh my. Once an alligator snatched a sofa cushion and did the death roll with it, while Mauri was under the couch. The reptile’s force shoved the furniture backward, and Mauri with it. When a panther got loose on set, Mauri had to stay in her hiding spot for an ungodly amount of time. I wasn’t there for either fiasco, thank goodness, since I was never allowed on set with the wild animals. The network thought I was too expensive to be eaten.