Melissa Joan Hart Says She Met Britney Spears On The ‘Worst Day Of My Life’

Actress Melissa Joan Hart is opening up about a photo she took with pop star Britney Spears where it looks like she has been crying.

The 47-year-old actress opened up on the experience in a recent podcast episode, where she revealed that her decision to pose for Maxim in 1999 nearly got her kicked off “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”

During an appearance on the Pod Meets World podcast, Hart admitted that she had the “worst day of my life” when she received a phone call from her lawyer while attending the premiere of her movie “Drive Me Crazy.”

“My lawyer shows up and goes, ‘You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?’” she recalled in comments transcribed by People magazine. “I'm like, ‘Yes, I did.’ They're like, ‘Well, you're being sued and fired from your show. So don't talk to the press. Don't do anything.’”

She then received phone calls from her mother and producer, who started questioning that she was about to get axed from “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” after posing in her underwear. The actress said that producers “flipped off” and let her go.

Although her father was not usually “warm and cuddly,” she said that he gave her a big hug to console her after he saw how much she had been crying. "He lived in New York while I lived in LA so he wasn't really around for the emotional stuff, and he comes up to me and goes, 'You OK?' I was like, 'No!'" she recalled.

“I'm like crying even harder because my daddy's hugging me. I'm being fired from my show. I was just fired from the movie. I just broke up with my boyfriend,” she revealed.

Amid the chaos, she ended up posing with Britney for a photo. The now 41-year-old pop star was at the red carpet event because her hit song “(You Drive Me) Crazy” was featured on the film’s soundtrack.

Fortunately for Hart, and as fans already know, she was not kicked off the show. “Nothing came of it,” she explained on the podcast. “But of course, in the moment, I didn't know what was going on.”

Hart would continue to star as Sabrina from 1996 until the show ended in 2003. On the podcast, she revealed that producers had “no ground to stand on” to legally fire her for appearing in Maxim.

To add to the confusion, they had used her character’s name without approval, not her actual name, which created another headache for producers.

“What happened was the magazine wrote ‘Sabrina, your favorite witch without [a stitch]…’” she explained. “I’d never heard of someone being on the cover of a magazine and not using their name, they used Sabrina.”

“In my Archie Comics contract, it said I would never play the character [of Sabrina] naked… so here they were thinking I’m in breach because I’m playing the character,” she explained. “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.”

Unfortunately, the Princess of Pop's name has been in the news lately after her husband, Iranian actor Sam Asghari, filed for divorce. The court documents were filed on August 16; however, the "Special Ops: Lioness" actor listed July 28, 2023, as the official date of separation.

The two started dating after meeting on the set of her "Slumber Party" music video in 2016. He popped the question in September 2021, only two months before her 13-year conservatorship was struck down by a judge in November 2021. They went on to tie the knot in a star-studded ceremony at her Thousand Oaks estate in California on July 9, 2022.

Unfortunately, their marriage only lasted fourteen months. On Tuesday night, the couple finally reached an agreement on how to settle the custody of their five dogs.