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Television News January 9, 1997
Getting `Sabrina, the Teenage Witch' on the air isn't as easy as magic
By Kinney Littlefield
The Orange County Register
Someone is a little testy today - and we don't just mean Sabrina, TV's favorite teen-age witch.
On the set at the Universal lot, Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) of the hit ABC comedy ``Sabrina, the Teenage Witch'' is in a really foul mood, giant witchy forehead wart and all - snow storm-starting, girl-into-goat-morphing foul.
To add stress, alter ego Hart is less than happy as she rehearses playing against her visual image in a mirror, fake wart and all. Then she pretends she can't find the furniture in an imaginary backward world, for the Jan. 17 episode called ``Sabrina Through the Looking Glass.''
``Big energy, BIG energy, Melissa - remember everything is flipped around,'' creator-executive producer Nell Scovell psyches Hart, who enters Sabrina's girlishly frilly bedroom for the third time, spinning around in confusion.
It's all part of casting ``Sabrina's'' special effects-heavy spell, requiring Hart to do multiple takes of sometimes-clunky things that get magicked up in post production.
Plus, Sabrina is a novice witch whose magic is often ditzier than that of her mentors and aunts, Hilda (Carolyn Rhea) and Zelda (Beth Broderick). But that doesn't help Hart feel better about klutzing out in front of visitors and crew.
``I felt like an idiot in those scenes,'' Hart, 20, admits during one of her infrequent breaks.
She sounds gracious but tired. As the high-energy heart of ``Sabrina'' she is in nearly every scene. It's an intense gig. Still Hart, a diminutive 5-foot-3, looks near-flawless in a slim earth-colored pants suit, her hair glowing golden.
``Acting with yourself isn't much fun, especially with a wart on your head,'' Hart says, her wart now magically gone.
``Well, sometimes it's fun. But this felt kind of fake to me and that bothered me. It made me feel kind of dumb. But I'm trying to learn to just have no shame and go for it. I'm learning humility. That's what makes a good actor, and I still have a long way to go. But I'm working on it.''
Yet many would say Hart has already arrived. In a season of only so-so successes, ``Sabrina,'' from Viacom Productions, is the only new comedy with a truly fresh slant. Filled with real-life themes for teens, it also plays sophisticated enough for adults. The result - numbers as good as a witch could brew. For the week of Dec. 23-29 ``Sabrina'' ranked No. 14 of more than 100 prime-time shows.
Of course, Hart's magic started earlier, when she played clever teen-ager Clarissa in the smash Nickelodeon series ``Clarissa Explains It All.''
Then there were Hart's other accomplished lives. She shot her first TV commercial at age 4. She starred opposite Martin Sheen in ``The Crucible'' on Broadway. She won three Youth in Film awards. She appeared on ``Saturday Night Live'' and daytime drama ``Another World.''
Now she is developing her own projects through Hartbreak Films, the production company she runs with her mother, Paula Hart, who also executive produces ``Sabrina.''
Plus, she gets to work on one of the cushiest-looking sets around. ``Sabrina's'' velvet, satin and wicker living and formal dining room are killer.
``Sabrina'' is a surprisingly smart sitcom for a family show. You see its sly humor in the name of Sabrina's high school football team, the Fighting Scallions.
``I hope `Sabrina' is shooting off on all levels,'' says Scovell, who wrote the ``Looking Glass'' episode and previously worked on ``Murphy Brown'' and ``Coach.''
``Melissa has great appeal to teen-agers,'' she says, then half-teasing, ``although I find a lot of adult men enjoy her, too. But the adult appeal comes from the fact that every adult has been a teen-ager. Still, although we always knew kids would like the show, adults liking it was a surprise.''
``We'' is Scovell and Paula Hart. Paula Hart acquired the rights to the Archie Comics heroine Sabrina and turned it into a telefilm for Showtime that aired in April
``The Showtime movie was very sweet, but it wasn't especially funny,'' Scovell says. ``So I created this series changing a few of the characters and really defining the aunts. There's a sweetness to the show that I'm really proud of. Part of it is Melissa and part of it is a feeling that both Paula Hart and I had that TV had gotten too mean - and that comedy doesn't have to come out of cruelty.
``And no - I never read the Archie comic books, and I never watched `Bewitched.' I mean, I watched it when I was a kid, but I make a concerted effort not to now (in rerun on cable) because I'm always afraid we'll end up doing a show that they did.''
Hardly. Teen-age Sabrina is mucho more independent and liberated than ``Bewitched's'' wacky witch Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery), who often used her powers to try to please hubby Darrin (Dick York, then Dick Sargent) - usually with ``I Love Lucy''-like results.
In fact, Melissa Joan Hart sees Sabrina as pretty darn normal, by the standards of teen-age America 1997.
``The show is a coming-of-age thing,'' Melissa Joan Hart explains. ``Clarissa was a strong role model who helped kids out a lot and made them feel better about themselves. But Sabrina is as vulnerable as anyone and has her weaknesses and has fears and shows them a lot in the show. Kids identify with that. Whereas Clarissa was `Oh, I want to be like that,' Sabrina is `Oh, she's just like me.'
``Plus, Sabrina is just learning to use her powers, which is a whole other thing on top of being a teen-ager. Like there's a line in `Sabrina Through the Looking Glass' where I say, `I have to be a girl, I have to be a witch, I have to be a mortal and I have to be a teen-ager all at the same time.'''
No time for novice witches to relax. Hart is called back to the high school library set, where she and Sabrina's good bud Harvey (Nate Richert) discuss their joint science project about the rain forest. Sabrina favors using a dirt-filled glass globe to show the effects of global warming and deforestation. Harvey prefers a puppet monkey, which he voices.
But Bad Mood Sabrina overrules him in take after take, holding up her globe of dirt as she repeats like a broken record ``It's a BIOSPHERE.''
Meanwhile, Melissa Joan Hart's boyfriend, James Fields, kicks back quietly on the sidelines. A novice actor, he has a background role as a student in ``Looking Glass.''
And over on an unused set the new animatronic cat is a little huffy.
Or rather his handlers are. This is the fake version of Salem the cat, the wicked warlock doing time in a feline body voiced by Nick Bakay, who owns two cats. Animatronic Salem is getting his fur groomed and doesn't want his picture taken, his minions say. Maybe a bad fur day.
Actually there are five Salems - the huffy one plus four real felines for motion sequences - Elvis, Lucy and, yes, Salem and Witch.
``Elvis is the best, but Witch is the cat we use when we want to go nuts,'' Scovell says. ``We're learning what works best. Our Christmas show was a Salem-Sabrina story. They got in a fight, he ran away and got hit by a little boy on a bike who took him home, and Sabrina had to track him down. It was a real nice mix of live and animatronic.''
Because of the special effects, such as Sabrina turning high school archrival Libby (Jenna Leigh Green) into a pineapple in the show's premiere, ``Sabrina'' is not filmed before a live studio audience as most sitcoms are.
``We're more like a feature film,'' Scovell says. ``In `Looking Glass' where Melissa plays a scene with herself we have to shoot her on one side and then the other side and because we're changing camera angles she has to do the scene at least four times. And then we have to put the green screen in (where background effects are added) and she has to do it again.
``Last week she played against a talking cat and a talking trophy. In most sitcoms what you see is what you get and in ours you never know until you see the edited version. And sometimes you're pleasantly surprised and sometimes you're slightly horrified.
``But I've grown to love it because you can keep going until you have exactly the performance you want, which is a luxury you don't get in front of an audience. Our scripts can be longer because we don't have those long laugh tracks. Of course, one of our actors, Carolyn Rhea, was a stand-up comic, and she really misses the audience.''
One thing you notice on ``Sabrina's'' set - the men may be lensing, lugging and schlepping, but the women are in charge.
``We call it our matriarchy,'' Melissa Joan Hart says of her executive producer-mom, Paula, Scovell and co-executive producer Norma Vela. Plus Liz Plonka is directing ``Looking Glass.''
``Women produce this show, they write it, they direct it.''
``It's four powerful women if you count Melissa,'' Scovell adds.
This quartet has cast its own spell, stamping ``Sabrina'' with both sweetness and a signature kind of sensitivity. No raunchy sexual innuendo on Sabrina at 9 p.m., although it is commonplace on other network sitcoms at 8 p.m.
``I have a family, Paula has a family,'' Scovell says. ``We're sensitive in the sense that we are our target audience. We're only putting on things we would like to see. We work hard to have themes for each show, like how to cope with a bad mood, so it's not just a lot of goofy stuff.
``Now I don't come from a family or kids' show background. I come from `Murphy Brown,' `Coach,' `David Letterman.' `Newhart' was the first show I worked on, and I wrote a `Simpsons' episode and a `Critic' episode. It's not that we made a decision never to be overtly sexual. It just isn't appropriate.
``And I don't want to be mean. It sounds like nothing, but you watch TV and people are always telling everyone to shut up. That's one rule we have. I'm very proud of the fact that so far no one has ever said `Shut up' on our show.''
SABRINA, THE TEENAGE WITCH
When: 9 p.m. ET Fridays
Where: ABC
(c) 1997, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
Visit the Register on the World Wide Web at http://www.ocregister.com/
Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-01-09-97 0649EST
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eric@ezz.u-net.comEric Last, 25/5/97