Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life

by Melissa Joan Hart

  When the limo dropped me and Jonny off, I crashed, but wasn’t asleep for thirty minutes before my car service arrived to take me to a shoot for Maxim. Earlier that year, I’d made Maxim’s “Hot 100” list, and they ran a photo of me in a long skirt and tight sweater, so I didn’t realize their audience was horny men. The magazine’s readers wrote in a lot, asking to see me on the cover, so an editor called my people about it, and since I had an adult movie coming out (okay, PG-13), I was down. What I didn’t realize was how long the X would last after the Playboy party, and that I’d still be high when I got to the studio.

  Senses impaired, I knew I was there for a cover shoot but felt unfazed when I saw the wardrobe rack full of bras, panties, and nothing else. (I’m sure my publicist was there to protect me, but I was in no position to remember details.) I’d been at shoots before where they tried to get me to wear barely anything, but I would never consent to that. This time, however, after having just come from a party full of naked people, with me in my skivvies, and still coming down from rolling, I wasn’t feeling like my more modest self.

  I was in hair and makeup for nearly two hours and spent most of it asleep. Nobody said a word to me about the state I was in, and thank God the magazine had scheduled an interview on a different day, so I didn’t need to be articulate. The shoot began with pics of me half-naked in bed—first, with a white sheet concealing just my breasts, which is the shot that made the cover, and then with my legs open to the camera but the private stuff covered. After lunch, the photographer wanted to try a picture from below and between my legs, but I had the good sense to at least say I’d need to approve a test shot first (this was before digital cameras came along). It was a terrible and trashy photo, so I tore it to pieces and turned to the side, which turned out to be my favorite picture from the day. I’m leaning forward, tits heaving, on a set of stairs. In the final photo, I was lying on a sofa, and I’m pretty sure I passed out a few times, because I remember the photographer yelling, “Wake up!” When it ran in the magazine, I can’t guarantee that they didn’t airbrush my eyeballs onto the image.

  For publicity reasons, the story was timed to hit the stands with the release of Drive Me Crazy. During the after-party for the New York movie premiere at Planet Hollywood, I was sipping a martini when my concerned-looking lawyer pulled me aside, very seriously, and insisted that I avoid the press until further notice. Apparently, Maxim had just hit the stands and Archie Comics wanted to have me and my mom fired from the show for breach of contract since I was allegedly representing their character in a tawdry way. Hearing this, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I stepped outside to have a cigarette and called Mom. We were both really scared, and she was also pissed off at me, wondering what I’d done on this cover that was so damn sue-able. (Archie dropped it after my lawyer and I sent an apology letter.) Frankly, I wondered, too—I could hardly remember. All I could hope was that it’d be good press for Drive Me Crazy, and at the very least, show some range and sex appeal. That month I was also on the very first cover of Cosmo Girl, which targeted young teens—a very different demographic.

  Sure enough, the Archie threat only made the press more interested in me, Maxim, and my first starring role in a major motion feature. My name and the movie’s were mentioned almost every day in the media, including by Jay Leno, Regis and Kathie Lee, and in the New York Post. (“Melissa Joan Hart Sheds Teen Image: Sabrina, the Bare Witch Project”—ba dum bum.) Suddenly, everyone cared about whether the star of ABC’s biggest Friday night family sitcom should be posing suggestively on the cover of a men’s magazine. Good thing they didn’t know I did it while coming down from a high. Mom publicly got my back by saying we were just showing people that I was a grown-up, which was true to a large extent. I mean, I was in my twenties, far from underage, and had already been in my panties for the cover of Details magazine a few years prior, which nobody seemed to bat an eyelash over. The real problem, I later learned, was that Maxim’s cover line said, “Sabrina: Your Favorite Witch Without a Stitch,” and using Sabrina’s name, near an undressed image, allegedly made it look like I was playing the character naked, which was against the contract. But I’ve never heard of an actor having any say over what a magazine writes on its cover, so to my mind, Archie should’ve tried taking Maxim to court, not me. I didn’t do anything illegal; I was just promoting my film. Anyway, Drive Me Crazy opened to great numbers, thanks to all the scandalous press, and I took some friends and cast members to Cancun for a celebratory margarita to toast the fact that the movie grossed more than it cost to make.

  * * *

  As you can tell, I’ve always liked to take a risk, push my limits, and feel some kind of immediate gratification from it all. This is the main reason I got into racing cars. In 1997, the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach asked me to be in their competition and offered to send me to training camp to learn how to drive like a pro. I turned the invite down, since I was busy with Sabrina, but for the next twelve months, I regretted the decision every time I sat at a red light and wondered if I could take the car next to me. So on and off for the following five years, I jumped at their invites and raced a white Celica beside George Lucas, Alyson Hannigan, Donny Osmond, and Coolio. I did really well each time, but I never won. Also revving my engine: pro driver and NASCAR hottie Casey Mears, who I dated for a few months during this time.

  While living in my house on Wonder View Drive after James and Parker had moved out, I constantly threw parties—it was the go-to spot for weekend BBQs or a dip in the hot tub or pool after a long night of dancing. A lot of chlorinated, wasted strangers came and went, often without an invitation. Most of the memories are an intoxicated blur to me. I do remember that twice I tried to kick Ashton Kutcher out, when he made smartass remarks to me after I asked him not to smoke in my house, but he never wanted to leave, and since I’m not burly enough to intimidate him into going, I eventually gave up. And another time, I went to soak in the hot tub and found Marlon and Shawn Wayans hanging out, though I’d never met them before. Others who came and went included Andy Dick, Geoff Stults, Wilmer Valderrama, and Ben Foster. They were usually drinking, smoking, and having a good laugh. During this party phase, I met another young actor—let’s just call him “Weenie,” since I later found out that’s what my friends called him behind my back. He and his brother ran in similar circles, and I liked his charm, persistence, and intense features. It was also clear that he was a loose cannon. He had delusions of grandeur, acted like he was invincible, was occasionally paranoid, and got obsessive about a monthly interest, whether it was working out, art, or acting. Weenie’s personality was dizzying, but since he held down a job on a TV show for teens, I figured, how messy could he be? We were a couple in no time.

  After six months of dating, I began to find strange things lying around Weenie’s place and mine, like broken lightbulbs. His apartment was really dark, because he’d screwed every bulb out of its fixtures except one. Then, while cleaning out his pockets on laundry day, I found the outer casing of a pen, with the ink cartridge removed. I called a friend in town, since I suspected drugs; I thought she might know better from being around Hollywood types longer than I’d been. I’d done some shrooms, ecstasy, and pot, but that was it; I didn’t know much about anything harder. I’ve never snorted or shot anything into my body, and the one time I was offered coke, which happened to be by Paris Hilton, I turned it down. (She asked to bum a Parliament Light, and, as she dipped the recessed filtered end into a baggie, asked if I wanted some. It pissed me off that she wasted my cigarette for that.)

  My friend told me to touch the tip of the pen to my tongue to see if it was bitter. I did and it was. If Weenie was doing drugs, that could explain why he’d act so focused and upbeat one day and then tired, irritable, and depressed with me the next. I broke up with him after this, but we got back together and were on again/off again for the next few years. We went to counseling together, where he said things like, “I think you need therapy more than me.”
He told me he still got high before auditions to help him focus, and before shrink appointments, just to see if the doc could tell.

  During one of our breakups, I went out of town for a few weeks and needed someone to watch my dogs, so I asked my friend, an actor named Angelo “Spizz” Spizzirri, to stay at my place. After I saw how Spizz lovingly cared for my home and animals while I was away, I asked him to be my roommate. Spizz was a faithful, protective sidekick when we went out, and it made me feel safe to have a man in the house when we got home. We liked to party but kept it under control most of the time, which was a refreshing change from Weenie’s increasingly erratic behavior. When we went to Sundance to see a movie that Spizz was in, my boyfriend encouraged me to take the psychedelic drug mescaline, which he told me was like a pill form of shrooms. It’s not. It can create an altered sense of time and self-awareness and made me think the girl across the room was speaking to me with her brain waves. I tried to take off running down the snowy street, and it was Spizz, not Weenie, who stopped me and calmed me down.

  Spizz also appreciated my brassier side, which Weenie seemed to barely notice. Spizz once told me that one of his favorite moments from living together was when he brought some friends home late one night from partying to hang out in the hot tub. I was asleep because I had a big day on camera the next morning. I heard loud voices and a ruckus outside, since my room was just above the hot tub, so I ran to my balcony in delirious anger and screamed at the guys, “Shut the fuck up! Some of us have to work in the morning!” One of Spizz’s best friends, a guy named Danny, the drummer for the hard rock band Tool, was there. He was shocked to learn that all women aren’t like the eyelash-batting, doormat groupies he was used to. Spizz got a kick out of this for years.

  Though I was respectful of people’s schedules when we got our drink on, Weenie never seemed to care who had to work when he wanted to party. The night before Sabrina’s season six finale in the spring of 2002, in which Aunt Hilda marries her true love after meeting him at a mall in the Other Realm, I begged Weenie to come home around 10 P.M., so I could get a good night’s sleep without hearing him rustle around. I was both acting in this episode and directing it, and because the show was a season finale and a wedding, it was an expensive, arduously produced, and heavily promoted stressor. Though I explained all of this to Weenie a million times, he still called at 9:59 P.M. to say he was staying out a little longer instead of coming home when he promised. After fighting on the phone and getting a restless night of irritated half-sleep, I heard him knock on my door at 3 A.M.

  I let the guy in but told him to sleep on the couch, and then went to work an hour later. From the makeup chair, I furiously called my friend and assistant Kerry and asked her to pack up his stuff and make sure he was out of the house before I got home that day. Spizz helped, and for weeks after made sure Weenie stayed away, often while wielding a baseball bat. I was done for good—finito, no mas. I’d dealt with my boyfriend’s selfish immaturity, narcissism, and instability for two years and realized I wouldn’t have a future—hell, I couldn’t even have a present—with a man like this. I couldn’t trust him, rely on him, or be with him in a way that made me happy for more than a few days. The breakup also made me realize that Weenie wasn’t the first guy I’d taken care of, and I was tired of that too. As the oldest child in my family, I had the protective nurturer thing down pat and went into autopilot with those who needed it. It was time to find someone who could take care of himself and—here’s a novel idea—me, too, when I needed it. I’ve always been strong and self-sufficient, but carrying two people in a relationship wasn’t working for me anymore. I was worn out.

  A few years after I met my husband, Mark, who met all of these needs and then some, we faced an unspeakable tragedy. In 2007, my friend Spizz took his own life. I was in unbearable pain from it, and I still find myself praying that he feels at peace and always knew how much I loved him. Spizz’s death also marked the end of an era for me, and the severity of his passing issued a reality check on my rowdier years. James was a free spirit, Weenie needed help, and Spizz had his own stuff to deal with. But me? For the most part, my antics were part of growing up and into myself. I liked staying out late with friends more than drinking and getting high; hell, I barely like to drink a lemonade in one sitting, much less chug a fifth of vodka. And when I did tiptoe on the wild side and experience the darker corners of Hollywood, I was still what they call a “normie” in AA. All things considered, I’d call it a compliment.

  Chapter 12

  THE ONE THAT NEVER GOT AWAY

  I’m rarely a betting woman, and here’s why. When I went to the Kentucky Derby in May 2002, I put money down on a few horses but swore I wouldn’t get serious with any man I met there. By the end of the weekend, I lost about five hundred dollars at the races and fell for my future husband.

  For the second year in a row, I was invited to the Mint Jubilee, a celebrity-packed gala held during the Derby to increase awareness and funding for cancer treatment. Since I was on a guy-atus, so to speak, I took my close friend and assistant Kerry as my date. We couldn’t wait to feel spoiled and to hobnob with Southern gentility. And sure enough, when we got to Louisville, we had a full escort team ready to take us to fancy events, complete with a police car as our ride.

  One of the stops along the party route was a local hostess’s mansion. I’ll never forget her massive and impeccably organized closet full of awesome designer shoes. Looking inside it was actually part of the official house tour. Once we were done gawking, we mingled. I talked about Louisville’s famed food and music with upper-crust donors and even ran into my old classmate from PCS and NYU Jerry O’Connell, who was on NBC’s Crossing Jordan at the time.

  Jerry hardly showed me any attention when we were at school or bumping into each other around Manhattan, but that night, he followed me around like a puppy dog. I was flattered by his persistence, but I stopped myself from seeming too available. I bantered with Jerry, but I was being playful, not trying to initiate a hook-up. I’d broken up with Weenie only two months before, and I’d been cheated on twice and dated Weenie while he was courting an addiction, which is a different type of sneaking around but painful nonetheless. I wasn’t anxious to trust or open myself up to anyone soon. If experience taught me anything, it’s that charismatic flirts are rarely boyfriend material—and Jerry sure thought a lot of his own charms. I also wanted to give him a taste of his own standoffish medicine, since he pretended to barely notice me for four years even though we saw each other all the time.

  By the next night, Jerry was out of my mind. Kerry and I got really dressed up to attend the actual Jubilee event, where an elaborate dinner and entertainment awaited. We made the most of an open bar with Howie D from the Backstreet Boys, actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, and plenty of other recognizable faces. Halfway through the night, a man with a walkie-talkie asked if I’d mind introducing the next band. I said I’d be honored. I quickly ran backstage to learn what I needed to say about the Southern rockers from Alabama called Course of Nature.

  I was studying the index card with my lines on it backstage. As the more outgoing members introduced themselves, the tall, broad-shouldered lead singer made his way to me more slowly. I kept my eyes on him as I shook hands with everyone else. Before we could say a proper hello, I was called to do my thing, and when I was done, I’d missed the chance to meet that mysterious hottie. I walked back to my table very carefully, standing up real straight to make sure my new crush didn’t see me trip or slouch, all while making sure to suck in the belly.

  Back at my table, I told Kerry about the head-turning front man and decided to ask my publicist to introduce me to him when the group was done with its set. She was already on it, thinking we’d make a cute couple. When the band finished and walked past our table to the bar, they didn’t stop to say hi. I had to make a move first. So much for my break from chasing guys.

  I told all five men—four band members and the tour manager—how much I liked their musi
c. We took pictures together, and I learned that the lead singer’s name was Mark and that he liked tequila. Bingo. Mark and I decided to do a shot, but when we got to the bar, they were out of the Devil’s water. We didn’t want to leave each other’s side, so we did a shot of vodka instead. I’ve been told that when Russians drink vodka, it constitutes a very special ceremony. If I’d known this at the time, my inner romantic would’ve swooned about what this might foreshadow down the road. But I don’t think it would’ve made the rocket fuel go down any easier.

  After a few more drinks, Kerry and I walked the guys to their bus to say good-bye. Mark’s mom, Jen, was touring with them at the time, so I briefly met her and then spent a few minutes smoking a cigarette and chatting with Mark. I don’t even remember what we talked about, because I was so mesmerized by his gentle, puppy-dog blue eyes. He literally made my knees go weak, and I knew right then that he was the most handsome man I’d ever met. But he had to get back on the road. Mark’s tour manager, Eric, gave me his business card and said to keep in touch.