Why Melissa Joan Hart Says She Turned Down Offer to Pose For Playboy

While appearing on a recent episode of Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson's Sibling Revelry podcast, the 49-year-old Sabrina the Teenage Wild alum recalled how she refused an offer to appear in Playboy after her family was "tortured" by her 1999 Maxim spread.

"I didn't want to do anything that would embarrass them or hurt them," said Hart, who is the oldest of eight children.

"I did Maxim magazine once and my brother was pretty young, he was like in middle school or high school, and I did Maxim magazine and he and my father were both being tortured by people at work going like 'Look at your daughter! Look at your sister!'" she continued. "And then Playboy magazine came and asked me to do something, and I was like, 'I can't do it.'"

"'I can't do it,' and they offered me a lot of money, and I was like, 'I can't do it because I don't want my brother to be hurt by that, like the last thing he needs. He's already getting tortured by me and underwear, let alone completely [naked].' And 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."

"But then I'm really glad I didn't because now I have three boys and I don't need those images out there for them," added Hart, who shares sons Mason, Braydon, and Tucker with husband Mark Wilkerson. "Kind of happy I made that choice for my brother, which then also translates to my children. I 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."

The actress has previously discussed the negative repercussions that resulted from her Maxim spread.

During an appearance on the Pod Meets World podcast in 2023, Hart detailed one truly horrific day that saw her dumped from a major franchise role, held up at a movie premiere waiting for Britney Spears, and actually fired from her starring role in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

After discussing with the podcast hosts how she had been crying in a photo from the New York premiere of her 1999 romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy after she had split from her boyfriend at the time.

Hart recalled how at the the premiere she was told she couldn't get out of her limo as they wanted her to "wait" for Britney Spears to show up. Once she'd finally finished her press obligations, clearly already emotionally drained as evidenced by the photo, she was "whisked away" at around 11pm to film a scene for this new horror parody called Scary Movie."

"I was supposed to be the opening, vivacious, big-breasted one that’s like murdered or something in the beginning," she said. "I was put in a limo, and I was taken away, and I had just broken up with my boyfriend while we were in the movie, and I’m crying and I’m upset."

But things only went from bad to worse, as she said she got a call en route that she was fired from Scary Movie. With her evening free, Hart pivoted back to the film premiere and went to the Planet Hollywood afterparty, where she got even more bad news.

She said she was confused because her publicist had known she was going to do the Maxim photo shoot. "It’s Maxim, of course you’re gonna be in your underwear," said Hart.

It turns out, though, that the problem was Maxim using the line "Sabrina, Your Favorite Witch Without a Stitch" on the cover. It was seen as a violation of her Archie Comics contract which Hart said assured she "would never play the character naked."

Ultimately, Hart said she apologized while also pushing back because she had no say in what the magazine chose to write on their cover, so the violation wouldn't have been hers in the first place.

She was also representing as Melissa Joan Hart, not "Sabrina," explaining that the shoot was her promoting her movie and not the television show.

"The silver lining here is that for weeks, the top news [was] ‘Can Melissa be sexy’?’ ‘Why is she being fired from her TV show?’ and all this drama," Hart recalled. "But it made for Drive Me Crazy to come out and be a huge success. It was insane."

Despite her argument, Hart said it took weeks for her to sort it out, with her uncertain if she even had a job on a hit sitcom anymore throughout the tumultuous experience. She said that it all hit her at once that first night. Ultimately, Hart was not fired from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was good news for her, the network, and the production team.