Sabrina the Teenage Witch star Melissa Joan Hart admitted her younger brother was ‘tortured’ by her racy underwear cover shoot.
Back in the 90s, Melissa – who was a kids’ TV icon at the time, aged 23 – stripped off to appear in Maxim mag, and almost got herself fired from the show and sued for breach of contract.
Thankfully neither of those things happened in the end, but her family was still left bearing the brunt of her decision to pose for the lads’ mag.
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Opening up on the Unzipped podcast, Melissa recalled her younger sibling being hounded at school over the pictures.
She explained: “I was asked to do the cover of Playboy, but I was like, no, because my little brother might see. I’d already done the cover of Maxim and I knew my dad and my brother had people coming up to them.
(Image: Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
“My brother in high school, and my dad at work had people coming up to him, showing him my covers.
“[My brother] was like, ‘Thanks a lot. I’m seeing you in your underwear everywhere’.”
She added: “Can you imagine if I was completely naked?! And thank god, because now I have three boys.”
(Image: Maxim)
On the Pod Meets World podcast, the Sabrina star echoed the thoughts at the time, explaining that back in 1999, everyone was asking: “Can Melissa be sexy? She’s 23, is she allowed to be sexy? What’s going on here? Is it allowed? Is it OK? Why is she being fired from her show? And all the drama.”
46-year-old Melissa is the oldest of eight siblings in total – sisters Trisha, Elizabeth, Emily, Alexandra, Samantha and Mackenzie; and one brother, Brian.
Eventually, Melissa was forced to issue an apology over the Maxim shoot, as the magazine had unwittingly mentioned her character name in the story – despite her contract stipulating she could never play Sabrina naked.
(Image: Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
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“What happened was the magazine wrote ‘Sabrina, your favourite witch without [a stitch]…’ I’d never heard of someone being on the cover of a magazine and not using their name, they used Sabrina,” she explained.
“So here they were thinking I’m in breach because I’m playing the character. No, that was supposed to be me promoting my movie, it wasn’t supposed to be a character. I had no control over what they wrote on the cover.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
