{"id":47810,"date":"2025-11-22T07:32:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=47810"},"modified":"2025-11-22T07:32:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:32:34","slug":"melissa-joan-hart-reveals-why-she-turned-down-playboy-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2025\/11\/melissa-joan-hart-reveals-why-she-turned-down-playboy-cover.html","title":{"rendered":"Melissa Joan Hart Reveals Why She Turned Down ‘Playboy’ Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eugene Powers \/ Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Melissa Joan Hart is still casting spells long after her days as Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She joined the \u201cSibling Revelry<\/a>\u201d podcast to reflect on some of the decisions that made her career, including a decision to not appear in Playboy<\/em>. The opportunity occurred in 1999, and by then she\u2019d already made a nearly career-killing mistake when she agreed to pose topless for Maxim <\/em>magazine. It was a move that nearly cost her the role in \u201cSabrina, the Teenage Witch\u201d with allegations that it broke a clause in her contract against nudity and caused a lot of family turmoil.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did Maxim magazine once and my brother was pretty young, he was like in middle school or high school, and I did Maxim<\/em> magazine and he and my father were both being tortured by people at work going like \u2018Look at your daughter! Look at your sister!\u2019 And then Playboy magazine came and asked me to do something, and I was like, \u2018I can’t do it,\u201d she told hosts Kate and Oliver Hudson. Hart was 23 at the time of her Maxim <\/em>appearance. According to Hart, Playboy <\/em>offered her \u201ca lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hart shared that she\u2019s had no qualms with her own body image at the time . \u201cAnd I would have been willing to do it because I was like, I’m not ashamed of my body. I’m proud of my body. I’m fine with that,\u201d she said. The decision not to, however, has had long-term benefits given that Hart, 49, is now the mother of three boys. She expressed relief that the images aren\u2019t out there for her boys. \u201cKind of happy I made that choice for my brother, which then also translates to my children,\u201d she said. \u201cI always kind of knew that that would be a correlation that someday I would have children, what do I want them to see? And I kind of played that through my sibling’s eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hart was able to keep her role as Sabrina after issuing an apology, stating she had done the shoot as a way to promote her new movie, \u201cDrive Me Crazy,\u201d without any idea the shoot would mention her role as Sabrina. She referred to the Maxim <\/em>shoot as the \u201cleast professional moment\u201d of her career. She reflected on her family\u2019s impact on making her career decisions. \u201cMy siblings have always been my sort of, my guiding light\u2026What do I want to portray for them? And, you know, I don\u2019t want to embarrass them. I don\u2019t want to hurt them,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to be able to share things with them. So, you know, I\u2019ve always kind of built my career based around my siblings, which then leads to my children\u2026So, kind of in a careful way of crafting things so that, you know, I never am embarrassed about anything I\u2019ve done or said or shown.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa Joan Hart is still casting spells long after her days as Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She joined the \u201cSibling Revelry\u201d podcast to reflect on some of the decisions that made her career, including a decision to not appear in Playboy. The opportunity occurred in 1999, and by then she\u2019d already made a nearly career-killing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":47813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-television"],"yoast_head":"\nMelissa Joan Hart Reveals Why She Turned Down 'Playboy' Cover<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Melissa Joan Hart shares turning down "Playboy" after her Maxim cover nearly cost her career\u2014calling it a choice that blessed her family.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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