"Cleveland Plain Dealer Article"
Article from Cleveland Plain Dealer, on April 7th 1996:
'Clarissa' fans can catch Hart in bewitching role of 'Sabrina' Tom Feran Television Critic
Nickelodeon's sunny sitcom "Clarissa Explains it All" ended 2 1/2 years ago with Melissa Joan Hart's title character going off to work on a New York newspaper before starting college.
The show's young fans have been waiting for more ever since. Hart, whose own life has had some parallels to Clarissa's, says a sequel is still possible. Meantime, she returns to TV as the star of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," a made-for-cable comedy movie based on the Archie Comics character. It debuts at 8 tonight on Showtime, as one of its monthly "Original Pictures for Kids," and is being spun into a weekly series on ABC, which ordered 13 half-hour episodes for fall. Not straying far from Clarissa, Hart plays a bright, down-to-earth high school student-- only one who discovers she has magical powers, after going to live with her eccentric aunts in the Archie town of Riverdale. Sabrina proved a physically more demanding role than Clarissa. Hart spent the first two days of filming strapped in a harness and suspended 14 feet in the air to "float" magically over her bed. She also worked strenuously with a personal trainer for the various athletic competitions in which Sabrina faces a snobby rival-- though she quickly notes that a stunt double, 17-year-old gymnast Joanne Hudson, completed her crash landings, and Canadian Olympian Adrianne David, the world's third-ranked female diver, did the fancy work in pool scenes. Sabrina, at 16, is also younger than Clarissa and the 19-year-old Hart. "I still play like 16," she acknowledged in a phone interview from New York. "I guess it's my look. And the energy of teenagers. I seem to be able to capture that, I can play that really well." She also plays young, but to different effect, in "Twisted Desire," an NBC movie scheduled for broadcast in May. "It's a different 17, a completely evil, 'Melrose Place' character," she said. "She plots with her boyfriend to kill her parents. It was definitely a change for me, but a change in good ways-- a lot of fun to play it, and kind of a challenge." Even more than most series stars, Hart made a direct connection with viewers during her three-year run on the Emmy-nominated "Clarissa." Each episode opened with Clarissa Darling talking into the camera about one of life's little mysteries, leading into the week's story involving her friends, brother, and parents. "Definitely a big thing about the show was disproving what everyone said, that boys would not watch girls on TV," Hart said. "'Clarissa' proved that was wrong. The stories about problems with school or friends and sibling rivalry just draw you in. TV shows in general are personal, but talking into the camera makes it so much more so." Fans frequently recognize her on the street, often feel free to rush up and hug her, and usually comment that she's shorter, at 5-foot-3, than she appears on TV. CBS originally planned a sequel series to take "Clarissa" from cable to a network audience, but "it got twisted in a way we didn't want to go, so it didn't go," Hart said. Still, there is talk of a reunion movie, and a proposal to make 34 new episodes for local stations in syndication. Nothing is firm, especially because of Hart's schedule with the "Sabrina" series, which starts production in July. She is a second-year student with an undeclared major at New York University, but technically still a freshman in her program of individualized study because she takes off every other semester to work. She started young, shooting her first national TV commercial at 4, made her Broadway debut opposite Martin Sheen in "The Crucible," and, more recently, starred in the NBC movie "Christmas Snow" and guest-starred in the current season-opener of CBS' "Touched by an Angel." She developed "Sabrina" with her mother, Paula, who is a producer and president of Heartbreak Films (sic), for which Hart is vice-president. "We were sitting around, coming up with ideas, and someone pulled out the comic book and we thought it was a great idea," she said. "We bought the rights, sold the project to Viacom and Showtime, and then ABC picked it up three weeks ago." Hart lived in an on-campus dorm at NYU last year but plans to have her own apartment by fall. She currently lives in New Jersey with her mother, stepfather, and five younger brothers and sisters ("I'm really close to them"), who also are getting into acting. But she isn't home much more than she is in school. "Sabrina" was filmed in Vancouver, B.C., and the series will be shot in Los Angeles. "Clarissa" was shot at Nickelodeon Studios in Florida. Hart also travels occasionally to Utah to visit her boyfriend ("We've been together for a year") and anticipated spending the past week with him and her family in Hawaii. She will shoot an episode of Nickelodeon's "Doomrunners" in Australia and plans a trip to the Riviera for a co-production with the BBC. As if that weren't enough, she auditioned for a prospective ABC series spinning off the movie "Clueless," and expects to get into feature films-- having been approached, most recently, to play Judy in a movie version of "The Jetsons." She also is working on the script for a movie, an idea she had a couple of years ago. Especially without a collaborator, it's one area where she has found the going a bit slower. "I'm trying to do it myself," she said. "I made it into a treatment, and I've got the opening. Eventually, I'd like to produce and co-direct it myself. But I'm such a bad writer-- I can't put it down on paper."
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eric@ezz.u-net.comEric Last, 25/5/97